Put that MD 20/20 down TD. Pay attention.
Saddam cuts and runs at the first sign unless you threaten his hold on power.
That's all I said....that's all AlD said...that is all that history supports...Saddam will fight to the last drop of someone else's blood but he'll probably gas RP if he's about to go down.
Small wonder then that every single country in the Big Guy's 'hood has opposed Bush Big Bumble.
Stop and think about:
Iran - gassed in a brutal war
Syria - war with Saddam in Baath power struggle
Kuwait - invaded
Saudi Arabia & Gulf States - threatened by Kuwait invasion
Not to mention Jordan & Egypt
All but two of those countries, against all historical odds, fought with the US and its Euro allies.
Now all have expressed their opposition to Bush.
So again tell me which regime is the real threat -Saddam's or Georgie's?
Its not surprising that the Times of London reported recently that Pentagon generals do not consider Iraq to be any threat to US national interests, not even a leeeetle one.
2. jexster - 8/22/2002 5:27:10 AM
So rally round the Flag TD...and join the Bloodletting to Make Bush Believable because right now, the West Texas snake oil salesman is shaping up to be a world historical buffoon.
Major career move.
3. jexster - 8/22/2002 5:32:18 AM
Lead on Oh Great Bumble Boy
Here comes TommieDaschole your little drummer boy
"On Tuesday, Canada said it would not aid U.S.-led military action against Baghdad unless it had stronger evidence of imminent Iraqi aggression."
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
With glowing hearts we see thee rise,
The True North strong and free!
From far and wide,
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
God keep our land glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee
4. jexster - 8/22/2002 5:38:50 AM
"Getting rid of Saddam is in the world's interest" - Bar W Phoney Baloney Ranch 8/21
"There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again."
"I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here."
"I can assure you that, even though I won't be sitting through every single moment of the seminars, nor will the vice president, we will look at the summaries."
"Tommy [Thompson, Health and Human Services secretary,] is a good listener, and he's a pretty good actor, too."
"The trial lawyers are very politically powerful. … But here in Texas we took them on and got some good medical—medical malpractice."
"I firmly believe the death tax is good for people from all walks of life all throughout our society."
—Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002
5. jexster - 8/22/2002 5:39:41 AM
Keep Canada Bushrein
6. jexster - 8/22/2002 11:54:28 AM
Britain Just Says No to WarLord
Evidently Battle to Make Bush Believable Not in "World's Interest"
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain set itself apart from top ally the United States, which has made a "regime change" in Baghdad a priority, saying on Thursday its main aim in Iraq was to get weapons inspectors back in.
In comments that underlined differences between President Bush ( news - web sites) and London, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the main threat was from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites)'s suspected capability with weapons of mass destruction.
"What everybody is concerned about...is particularly the threat that Saddam Hussein poses from both his capability and his record to the security of the region and the security of the world," Straw told BBC radio.
"The best way of trying to isolate and reduce that threat is by the introduction of weapons inspections," he said. "The crucial issue here is weapons inspectors
Jerusalem
AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
William Blake
7. jexster - 8/22/2002 12:12:08 PM
A few weeks ago, Powell was sent packin on a world tour while Georgie met with this lunatic council of war.
I smell smegma...Panty Waist Powell in his Purty Pink panties has been givin knowing winks and nods to world learders...
The Guardian
Britain's top diplomat at the time of the 1991 Gulf war warned yesterday that a military attack on Iraq could have devastating consequences.
Lord Wright of Richmond, former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, joined the growing number of voices warning the government of the dangers of backing an American assault on Baghdad.
"I do believe that ministers need to examine the case very carefully.
"The implications of an attack against Iraq could be absolutely devastating," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that there is a strong body of opinion here, both in parliament and more widely, that an attack against Iraq would be a costly mistake", he said.
"I don't personally believe that the case has yet been made."
Lord Wright said it would be a mistake for the Americans to take action without the "widest possible measure of support" from the international community.
8. PelleNilsson - 8/22/2002 12:28:03 PM
wonkers
Those who disagree might be well advised to say why instead of fulminating about an "unsavory melange of trotskyites and chic fellow travelers" as if there was no other side to the argument. Israel's policy under Bibe and Buthead has been brutal, but, more than that, ineffective. An academic boycott might well cause some Israeli citizens to have second thoughts.
If you have read my posts here during the past two years or so, you will know that I'm as critical of Likud's politics as anybody. I blame Bibi far more than Sharon who is doing (more or less) what he was elected to do. And, yes, it is brutal but ineffectual. But boycotts are also ineffectual. Not even the mother of all boycotts, the sanction regime against Iraq has achieved what it was intended to do.
In my opinion, the idea that a boycott, in the present political climate in Israel, "might well cause some Israeli citizens to have second thoughts". is nonsense. All it will do is to increase the Israeli's feeling of persecution and, possibly, generate accusations of anti-semitism. I would be interested to see Rustler's opinion on this.
In any case, that is not the purpose of the boycott. Its purpose is is to give leftist academics in the West and their hangers-on that soothing feeling of fighting on the barricades against Israel's neo-colonialist, apartheid-like oppression. It's an ego trip exercise. You can trust me on this because I am a leftist academic.
Finally, the notion that anything positive can come out of blocking contacts between intellectuals strikes me as absurd.
9. jexster - 8/22/2002 12:44:03 PM
Blunder of World-Historical Dimension
The LAT is reporting that Schroeder laughed off recent attempts by Bush's Ambassador to intimidate the Reich.... 
Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Und im Unglück nun erst recht.
Nur im Unglück kann die Liebe
Zeigen, ob sie stark und echt.
Und so soll es weiterklingen
Von Geschlechte zu Geschlecht:
|: Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,
Und im Unglück nun erst recht. :| )
10. concerned - 8/22/2002 12:50:37 PM
jexster -
Get some sleep, man. You're scaring us.
11. jexster - 8/22/2002 1:09:22 PM
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land
12. jexster - 8/22/2002 1:20:37 PM
Ahhh recht again...
"Washington Goes to War" From: FOREIGN POLICY IN FOCUS
War has been declared in Washington, although it's not against any foreign country. It's an inside the Beltway war, but its outcome will have global repercussions.
13. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 2:35:49 PM
Jexster:
I've used my Mossad connections on your behalf. Turns out there are some very cute guys in southwestern Baluchistan who really want to spend some quality time with you. When you reach there, contact me from an internet cafe and I'll give you further directions, OK?
14. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 2:37:04 PM
aaargh.
15. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:11:41 PM
"Meretz was involved in anti-Egyptian pressure? You sure?"
Yep. I get their email notices and copies of letters sent to George W..
16. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:15:20 PM
Actually, I should check back to make sure about that--I may be confusing this with their efforts to fight that anti-Arab housing bill and the seizure of Sari Nusseibah's office.
17. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:21:51 PM
"Of signal import, however, Kissinger also says the U.S. should seek a new international inspection system before resorting to military action..."
Jexster, Kissinger does not expect, nor does anyone, that inspections will be permitted by Iraq, and he DID say explicitly that he does not rule out war at all. He just wants Bush to lead up to it properly, plan well, and follow through effectively. Which is what any sane person wants. But Kissinger is not in Eagleburger's camp and said just as explicitly that they disagreed.
18. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:25:10 PM
"Now what have we learned about the Kurds young lady?"
That they are at present quietly allied with high level Jordanian elements, little buster.
19. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:26:49 PM
"HK has more finesse than GWB, more cunning."
Ah. It's reassuring to see that you would support a war against Iraq if it were to be directed by Henry Kissinger.
20. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:45:33 PM
"HK's iron fist had such a thick velvet glove over it that I can see why you missed the point."
I didn't. You're the one who implied Kissinger opposed going to war with Iraq. I'm the one who said he didn't.
"But its clear nonetheless. His "reservations" are as much anathema to Bush's Big Blunder into War as Bush's regime change is to continued inspection."
I can't be bothered ot decipher this garbled sentence. What Kissinger is saying is that insisting on resumption of inspections is the best means by which the war can ultimately be prosecuted with Europe on board, should that become necessary, which it may well be already.
I could go along with that--one thing Bush pere did right was to get his ducks in a row--but on the other hand, Kissinger isn't always much of a prophet. For instance, he announced in a very grave tone, a few months before Ariel Sharon thumbed his nose at George Bush's demand that Israel withdraw from Jenin, that Israel would never defy the United States of America.
I have a hard time believing France and Russia are somehow going to be more willing to go along with an Iraq attack after just one more game of Find the Nukes. They've got their own economic interests in the region; Bush has done nothing to court or even please them lately; it's in other countries' interests to stall on military action and let the US take the consequences. More inspections could well facilitate this--could as easily forge disunity as coalition.
21. Andonly - 8/22/2002 4:58:49 PM
"Well all 1967 did was prove my point..."
No. The particular part of the conflict that Iraq abetted was launched by the then occupier of the West Bank: Jordan. Israel repeatedly requested that Hussein stay out of the fight begun by Syria and Egypt with prodding from the USSR. But Abdullah waded right in and began shelling Israeli cities. Iraq joined the fun, and in the end both it and Jordan got their asses whupped, with Jordan losing quite a chunk of territory in the process. Territory it could have gotten back a couple of weeks later if it had simply consented to make peace--which it categorically refused to do.
22. Andonly - 8/22/2002 5:00:34 PM
"Saddam spills no blood"
Yes he does. You just don't give a fuck.
23. Andonly - 8/22/2002 5:08:46 PM
"..the idea that a boycott, in the present political climate in Israel, "might well cause some Israeli citizens to have second thoughts". is nonsense. All it will do is to increase the Israeli's feeling of persecution and, possibly, generate accusations of anti-semitism."
Right.
"In any case, that is not the purpose of the boycott. Its purpose is is to give leftist academics in the West and their hangers-on that soothing feeling of fighting on the barricades against Israel's neo-colonialist, apartheid-like oppression. It's an ego trip exercise."
Right.
"Finally, the notion that anything positive can come out of blocking contacts between intellectuals strikes me as absurd."
Very right.
24. Andonly - 8/22/2002 5:10:40 PM
"But Abdullah waded right in and began shelling Israeli cities" should have read "But Hussein waded right in and began shelling Israeli cities."
Abdullah, of course, was Hussein's father.
25. concerned - 8/22/2002 5:15:26 PM
Andonly -
Aren't you getting a bit tired of shooting fish in a barrel?
26. concerned - 8/22/2002 5:19:03 PM
Of course, I recognize the service you are performing by neutralizing the pernicious effects that jexster's flapdoodle would otherwise have on the hordes of gape jawed Lefties of small mental capacity who might come across this.
Carry on.
27. Andonly - 8/22/2002 5:50:20 PM
Pike, I must have mentally transposed some other Meretz action with a protest against the sentencing of Saad Eddin Ibrahim. The Meretz USA website has no mention of Ibrahim--which makes sense, I guess, since the last thing the poor guy needs now is Israelis speaking up on his behalf.
28. Andonly - 8/22/2002 5:53:38 PM
"Aren't you getting a bit tired of shooting fish in a barrel?"
Hey. Everybody needs some kind of recreation.
(But to answer your question...yes.)
29. jexster - 8/22/2002 6:32:42 PM
Bush Calls Musharraf a 'Terror Ally'
Was that just MoronSpeak or do we start bombing in the morning?
30. jexster - 8/22/2002 6:55:34 PM
Jexster, Kissinger does not expect, nor does anyone, that inspections will be permitted by Iraq, and he DID say explicitly that he does not rule out war at all.
Look neither you nor I know what Kissinger expects other than what he said. And neither of us knows what Bush expects except what he said
Kissinger - wants us to enforce a UN resolution under UN auspices
Bush- does not want to enforce the UN resolution under UN auspices
Bush doesn't want to go the UN route because, ostensibly, he believes that will frustrate his call for a regime change..gives Saddam years to dick around (Bush has to move before 04) and gives the Security Council control over his big adventure
HK is playing the basically the same game that the Allies are and that Bush wants to avoid
To Bush then HK's statement is every bit as onerous a position as Scowcroft's Hagel Schwartzkopf, the Pentagon, Powell, the world
ANd it is a poison pill in a velvet glove (mixing metaphor)
31. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:02:02 PM
HK has more finesse than GWB, more cunning."
Ah. It's reassuring to see that you would support a war against Iraq if it were to be directed by Henry Kissinger.
Dyslexia on top of smelly smegma?
Did I say anything more than what I said?
Message # 12819
So what? All you've done is restate facts which prove my point - Iraq has consistently been willing to fight to the last drop of everyone else's blood when it comes to Israel and therefore there is no basis upon which Israel much less the US can plausibly claim based on past experience that iraq/Saddam is a threat to either or if he is, that he has not been deterred
32. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:04:53 PM
"But its clear nonetheless. His "reservations" are as much anathema to Bush's Big Blunder into War as Bush's regime change is to continued inspection."
"I can't be bothered ot decipher this garbled sentence. What Kissinger is saying is that insisting on resumption of inspections is the best means by which the war can ultimately be prosecuted with Europe on board, should that become necessary, which it may well be already. "
Aaah more dyslexia...let me help you little girl
But first read my Message # 12829
Should be simple enough even for you
33. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:07:07 PM
and when you are ready to present a justification for war that is something more than the product of your Jewish frenzy for Israel, that has some - any -reliable factual basis, and just the tiniest trace of analytic worth...
I'll deal with you again
34. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:09:29 PM
And try fewer words...plowing through all that puff 'n fluff is tiresome
35. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:12:53 PM
RP...tnx for your efforts in Baluchistan...hold off for now...a cute young yid lawyer, Yalie, JFK MPP, 26, R. Mandelman(!) has been making pretty eyes at me
36. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:16:00 PM
mmmm ...could that be it? Might my animal attraction to those of the hebrew persuasion explain the excessive moisture and unsanitary condition of Ando's privates, and her wet and stinky rejoinders?
Golden schictze(sp?) syndrome in reverse?
37. jexster - 8/22/2002 7:35:51 PM
And whether or not Ando and cogency cross paths, fact is that outside of Israel and its partisans, the only support Bush has for his little adventure are the editorial boards of 3 relatively obscure publications, a clique of extreme right wing hawks in the Pentagon, Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay and a few assorted of his ilk in the Congress.
Fact also is that Bush cannot extricate himself from one of the most fouled up decision making disasters this side of Wilhelm's Blank Check...
So Ando can understand -
1 - World consensus of indifference at best, opposition most likely
2 - Idiot up shit's creek in a jew canoe
38. jexster - 8/22/2002 8:01:30 PM
Here's a Jewess even a goy fegle can love...and such excellent personal hygiene...
Ando take notes
Dear Jeximan-the-Magnificent:
Thank you for contacting me regarding expanding the war
on terrorism to Iraq. I appreciate hearing from you on this
important issue.
I believe we need to employ every tool at our disposal to
protect our nation, including, if necessary, the use of our armed
forces. However, before we resort to using force against Iraq, the
Administration must exhaust all other options . As a result, I
introduced Senate Concurrent Resolution 133, which calls for
Congressional authorization or a declaration of war before force is
used against Iraq.
The resolution expresses the sense of the Congress that:
The United States and the United Nations Security Council
should insist on a complete program of inspection and
monitoring to prevent the development of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq;
39. jexster - 8/22/2002 8:01:49 PM
Iraq should allow the United Nations weapons inspectors
"immediate, unconditional, and unrestricted access to any and
all areas, facilities, equipment, records and means of
transportation which they wish to inspect" as required by
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1284 of
December 17, 1999;
The United States should not initiate the use of force against
Iraq without specific statutory authorization or a declaration
of war under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the
Constitution of the United States (except as provided by the
existing Rules of Engagement used by coalition forces to
exercise the right of self defense, or under the National
Security Act of 1947).
If the Administration presents Congress with evidence to
justify military action against Iraq, I will consider the information
with great care to ensure any action taken is in the best interests of
our nation. I also strongly believe that if the United States is to take
action against Iraq we must have a just cause, the threat must be real
and immediate, and we must have the support and assistance of the
international community.
Again, thank you for your views during this difficult time. If
you should have any additional comments or suggestions, please do
not hesitate to contact my Washington, D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.
DF:wk
Sincerely yours,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
40. jexster - 8/22/2002 8:02:08 PM
tampons
41. Al D - 8/22/2002 8:04:56 PM
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.), chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, said that "at the grass roots" among African American voters, there is a growing perception that "Jewish people are attempting to pick our leaders. . . . There is some concern about that. It's concern about any candidate being targeted by a special-interest group for voting on any one issue."
The above from the Washington Post in reaction to the defeat of McKinney is more than interesting:it is frightening. The Jews in U.S. have been the blacks best friends, and yet if they fear a Palistinian loving Congressperson, who may be a Jew and American hater as well, they dare not work against her. It is important that one know who the enemy is.
M
42. joezan - 8/22/2002 8:37:28 PM
That is mighty scary, Al.
...Really.
This country is getting very wierd.
If we polarize along that kind of issue, the next election cycle could be very, very interesting. If the Rs are smart, they'll start playing that up BIG time.
43. jexster - 8/22/2002 9:04:11 PM
Ando - forgot - HK gave Bush the other sleeve out of his vest with his "reservation" that Bush Blundered into this mess all by his lonesome..
Maybe a picture will help you with this one....they work for LittleTDaschole 
44. ronski - 8/22/2002 9:33:00 PM
Al,
Rep. Johnson is wrong, and out of touch. As much as I appreciate your posts, relax, and see this.
It's so refreshing to see the Times have it right, at least in part.
As for the "Jewish" influence, the victor's out-of-state contributions were nothing compared to McKinney's, who received humungous gobs of anti-Israeli, Arab-friendly money.
Since Black people are not stupid, they will understand this.
The notion that Jews had anything significant to do with McKinney's defeat is preposterous.
The U.S. Left is just getting panicky about all the people who are leaving the reservation (gays, blacks, etc.).
45. ronski - 8/22/2002 9:39:07 PM
And I must add how sad it is that the JesterBlog moves on, relentlessly, devouring all facts, all perspective, all compassion, all decency, all amusement, in its path.
Not so much as a JexsterBlog (why doesn't he just start a Blog and deliver us from this torture?), as a JexsterBorg.
Of course, you know what happened to the Borg.
46. Al D - 8/22/2002 9:42:18 PM
Ronski
I have always said you are the voice of reason on the Mote. I don't think blacks are stupid, but they listen to Farrakhan more than most people realize. Main stream Blacks are afraid to criticise him. Rep. Johnson is considered a more reasonable Black. McKinney's words don't bother me as she is off the wall. Will the media bring Johnson to task for her comment?
I discuss the matter here because America is very envolved with Israel.
47. joezan - 8/22/2002 10:08:28 PM
I wish I could share your optimism, ronski. But it sure seems as though anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Black body-politic. You're right - McKinney is a nut. But Johnson?
Where's the outrage? I mean, the usual (White) suspects in the House may, very gently, refute his statement, but they won't rebuke the man.
And what about the Black reps - his cohorts in the CBC? Where are they on this?
No - I'm sorry.
I see a long, ugly season ahead.
48. jexster - 8/22/2002 10:16:56 PM
JexsterBlog
Mar-ti-ni's at the Townwhouse Ronski...
BTW do you have the right stardate?
49. jexster - 8/22/2002 10:23:51 PM
JexsterBlog
Mar-ti-ni's at the Townwhouse Ronski...
BTW do you have the right stardate?
50. jexster - 8/22/2002 10:25:12 PM
Captain RonksiJane and the Voyager crew may think they have destroyed us - but they are wrong...
We are The Borg. We are Eternal. We will return. Resistance is Futile...
51. jexster - 8/22/2002 10:37:09 PM
Und im Unglück nun erst recht
52. Andonly - 8/22/2002 11:02:12 PM
"therefore there is no basis upon which Israel much less the US can plausibly claim based on past experience that iraq/Saddam is a threat to either or if he is, that he has not been deterred"
You can pretend to listen to Henry Kissinger all you like, but you're simply spouting stupid Brezinskiisms (in addition to the smegma, which an early circumcision would have spared you).
I feel so unkosher, I want to break into Pig German.
Vy em I zo vorried, Herr Doktor? Der Fuhrer hast done us Jews no zpecial harm. Zehr ist no real reazon zu efraide zein! Zo many nations der Nazis sind up against--zhey vould not permit zis mann zu ect out ze thinks ve fear might heppen. Er ist all talk, ja? End yet, Ich kann nicht geschlafen, nicht geschlafen... Please, vill yu tell me, vaht insidious neurosis tortures my veak mind?
Ach, mein dear, mein dear. Du bist zuffering von die Pervertete Judische Electra Komplex, in vich du imaginst zet dein vater vishes zu getoten you vor egspressing ein zexualische dezire vor deine mutter. Uze deine rational mind! Gewissen sie vhat ist real! Zere ist no basis upon vhich you, much less Juden in general, ken plauzibly believe bazed on passt egsperience zet Hitler ist eine threat zu deine tzurvifal.
53. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 11:37:10 PM
ronski:
And I must add how sad it is that the JesterBlog moves on, relentlessly, devouring all facts, all perspective, all compassion, all decency, all amusement, in its path.
This is a community. Jexster's posting reflects certain problems the man has, but he is a part of the community and we have to put up with him. It's like having a mentally retarded child around, I guess.
Besides, once every 100 posts or so he says something interesting.
OK, 200.
54. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 11:40:41 PM
marj, if you're lurking - can you give me some info about the Bnei Menashe people? Someone told me their DNA did turn out to be Jewish, and that therefore they truly seem to be the lost tribe of Menashe.
Which means there are 2 million more Jews is the world than I'd thought until now.
55. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 11:41:11 PM
in
56. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 11:44:34 PM
Ando:
See? There's no way Meretz can ever do anything remotely pro-Israeli. They are femmie lefties, and thus, by definition, the opposite of a pro-Israeli party.
57. RustlerPike - 8/22/2002 11:47:49 PM
I think the Jewish influence on the African American candidacies is legitimate. And I imagine Majette and others like her will speak up more forcefully, eventually. And it's good that African Americans are electing better leaders than they used to.
58. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 4:03:57 AM
Question: is this an Israeli thing or does everybody have a place under the sink where they keep used plastic and paper bags?
59. joezan - 8/23/2002 6:06:34 AM
Yep - in a coffee can.
60. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 9:07:08 AM
Whew.
61. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 9:12:16 AM
So I've been reading Debka's stories on Abu Nidal's life and death (Debka link in the Parkay bar).
One of the things they say is that Abu Nidal was working for Qaddafi in the 1980s.
Then I read this in FOX: Report: Abu Nidal Behind Lockerbie Bombing, Former Aide Says.
So I says to myself, Russ, I says: maybe Abu Nidal did it for Libya. Duh!
62. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 9:20:40 AM
Debka claims Egypt, and then the CIA, were using Abu Nidal - who was a mercenary type of terrorist - against Al Qaeda at a certain point. Then there's a complicated story about Saddam using Abu Nidal for sussing out how trustworthy Al Qaeda was before he hooked up with it. Then, they say, Saddam began training the Qaedans in the bases at Biyar and Tawil in northern Iraq.
The Bush administration held off acting on the information partly to wait for its verification beyond doubt, but mostly for fear of letting the cat out of the bag on Abu Nidal’s role in the Bin Laden-Baghdad connection and how Saddam Hussein used that role to dig out Washington’s hapless involvement.
But this constraint may have been superseded, providing the Iraqi ruler, who is perfectly aware of the approaching US threat to his regime, with a pressing need shut Abu Nidal’s mouth. He saw the US president under mounting pressure from critics of the coming offensive against Iraq to come up with proof of a direct link between Saddam and terrorists as justification for the offensive. Under this pressure, he feared Bush would jump in one of two ways: He could have sent a covert American force to secret northern Iraqi training bases to snatch al Qaeda trainees with their Iraqi WMD instructors red-handed. Alternatively, American special forces might have abducted Abu Nidal and brought him to America with his damning testimony against Saddam.
Both options boded grave danger to the Iraqi ruler, but neither is any longer available to Washington.
Tipped off to their potential as President Bush’s cassus belli against Baghdad, the al Qaeda and Iraqi birds have flown Biyar and Tawil, while Abu Nidal’s mouth was permanently shut five days ago by four bullets.
Sounds both implausible and convincing at the same time.
63. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 9:36:10 AM
There's also an interesting and not at all implausible story in there about the connection between Oslo, PA corruption, a group of Israeli businessmen and President Bush (who is against all of the above).
The story appears to show that Ariel Sharon is not clean of the Oslo corruption taint. Which I believe. Sharon shares certain business connections and interests with the PA.
64. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 9:55:01 AM
Spike,
can you give me some info about the Bnei Menashe people? Someone told me their DNA did turn out to be Jewish, and that therefore they truly seem to be the lost tribe of Menashe.
I seriously doubt that the Mizo DNA will reveal evidence of Jewish roots.
I've posted about the Mizo "Jews" at length before on this site and its predecessor. Basically, the Mizos are a coherent tribe that has its own mini state in India's troubled North-East. They were converted to Christianity almost en masse some 75-90 years ago by evangelical missionaries (of the old, Brit, school).
Some time in the 50's, one of the Mizo leaders had a vision whence he derived the idea that the Mizos are actually Jews, and he and a constantly growing number of his cohorts started practicing some Jewish rites, and then (with the help of Israeli rabbis) converting formally. The total number of thus converted Mizos can't be much more than 10,000. But an engine for further such activity was provided when Israel started accepting Mizo migrants in the 80's. There are Mizos in the IDF now and several hundred in a burgeoning community in Israel.
I'd be interested in seeing/reading about any genetic testing that has been done on the Mizos, any links are welcome.
65. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 10:00:07 AM
The Pashtun legend about Jewish origins is much more compelling historically, and (given the isolation of several Pashtun groupings) I would not be surprised at all to find DNA evidence corroborating the story.
In which case, the worldwide population of Jews would shoot up, not to mention the gaugeable incidence of Jewish wife-stealing, drug smuggling and goatjacking.
66. jexster - 8/23/2002 10:46:41 AM
IzzieLand Braces for 'Raq Attaks If Boy Blunder Comes to Play in Arik's Big Sandbox
67. jexster - 8/23/2002 10:55:54 AM
In the "World's Interest"? In America's Interest? In Israel's Interest? Or in Sharon's Interest and in the Interest of Horny Little Ando?
During the Gulf War, the United States pressured Israel to remain out of the fight, even though Iraq launched 39 Scud missiles at Israel, for fear of losing the support of Arab allies in the military coalition against Iraq. But Israeli officials say that rationale does not apply this time because the United States is unlikely to line up an Arab coalition for an attack against Iraq.
"I don't think America will ask us to hold our fire this time," said a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "America understands there is no real need for a wall-to-wall coalition because it will never have the support of the Arab world for an attack on Iraq."
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
68. jexster - 8/23/2002 10:58:12 AM
"This whole gas mask thing is like giving aspirin to somebody who is suffering from a terminal disease,"
Hey RP..howza bout a picuture of you in your new gas mask?
69. jexster - 8/23/2002 11:01:14 AM
Blunder Boi Bumbles On:US Poll Shows Support for Big Adventure Dropping, Zan Klan Buys Gas Masks
70. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 11:32:16 AM
I agree with the guy who said that and I don't have a gas mask.
I have gas, but no mask.
Katzir is high up on a mountain, surrounded by a sea of Arab villages. Anything that kills us would kill tens of thousands of Arabs too. I'll be in my IDF uniform with my M-16 in hand, provided the current bid by my judge to have me taken out of the unit fails. Then again, even if I'm not removed, I may not have my M-16 in hand, because the roads may be blocked by Ahmed Tibi's Arabs once the shit starts falling, and I may not be able to get to the base. In which case Katzir will be cut off and a horde from Barta'a may try to converge upon us.
Hmmmm.
Maybe I better buy me an illegal weapon, just to be on the safe side?
It's an option, I guess.
Eh, but the way things look now, the war won't start until Sharon decides to start it.
71. jexster - 8/23/2002 11:34:17 AM
As King Blunder Boi scrambles to back away from IraK AttaK, the Los Angeles Times asks Did The Idiot Cause Iraq "Frenzy"? in the first place.
Complete with Chronology of Incompetence
72. jexster - 8/23/2002 11:39:58 AM
Oh you mean your guests bring masks when they drop by...
I bet Zan has a mask
73. jexster - 8/23/2002 11:42:09 AM
You can pretend to listen to Henry Kissinger all you like, but you're simply spouting stupid Brezinskiisms
Hell witch I have QUOTED the man, spoon fed the import of his comments to you and this is all you can manage as return fire?
Whore for Israel that's all you are; all you ever have been, and likely all you ever will be
74. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:08:18 PM
OK Jexster, you're getting on my nerves now. Enough posting for one day. Go away.
75. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:12:39 PM
Mark Steyn in 'The Spectator':
The other day, the National Education Association — i.e., the teachers’ union —announced their plans for the anniversary of 11 September: an attractive series of lessons and projects augmented by public TV documentaries and sponsored by Johnson & Johnson. From the company’s point of view, the sponsorship makes perfect sense: many of us have already gone out and bought a couple of extra crates of Johnson’s Baby Lotion, Extra-Strength Tylenol, etc., to deal with the blinding headaches and intense rectal irritation brought on merely by reading the NEA’s advance literature. And, funnily enough, once you’ve chugged down a few dozen pills and the soothing Johnson & Johnson unguents are caressing one’s pores, the peculiar emphases of the union’s 9/11 curriculum seem to pass through painlessly.
Can someone characterize the Brit papers for me: Spectator, Guardian, Telegraph, Independent - who's on left, who's on right, who's tabloid?
76. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:13:25 PM
Published in Arabia.com, believe it or not.
77. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:22:34 PM
I will add Arabia.com to the Parkay bar post-haste.
This is also from their 'Cartoonopia' section: 
78. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 12:25:39 PM
Guardian=Left
Telegraph (aka Torygraph): Right
Independent: Centrist
Times: Murdoch
Mirror/Sun/Mail/Evening Standard (70% of the papers sold in the UK) : tabloid junk
79. jexster - 8/23/2002 12:31:04 PM
80. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:35:43 PM
Jexs:
The Gay Area reps interest my butt, as the Israeliism goes.
81. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 12:37:49 PM
Oh yes, the Spectator is a conservative, right-leaning weekly. It's balanced somewhat by the left-leaning weekly, The New Statesman.
82. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 12:39:06 PM
The Independent isn't truly centrist, like the Financial Times is on its political pages and in its op-eds. Within the UK spectrum, therefore, I re-characterize it as liberal, left-leaning.
83. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:39:34 PM
One more from Cartoonopia.
Too bad only some of them have English captions.
84. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:41:48 PM
Thanks, marj.
I may ask you to remind me every few months. I forget this stuff. But it'll sink in eventually.
Basically, the rule of thumb is that the papers go from left to right alphabetically, though, yes?
85. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:48:22 PM
New links on the Parkay bar: Cartoonopia and littlegreenfootballs, a blog by a couple of politically minded (Jewish?) web designer brothers.
86. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:51:48 PM
Nope, they don't seem Jewish at all. And they're called Johnson. 
87. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 12:53:26 PM
Michael's a ballet dancer.
88. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 1:07:44 PM
Kahil is good! 
89. marjoribanks - 8/23/2002 1:09:25 PM
Spike,
Today you have asked questions, one of me directly. I have responded in full to these queries.
Where is my fulsome thanks? Where, Spike, are your manners?
90. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 2:20:03 PM
marj:
Does your browser not support posts numbered 12883?
91. RustlerPike - 8/23/2002 2:22:03 PM
Also, I've inducted a post of yours into the Hall of Fame and I've recommended you as an assistant in the proposed WoR thread. Is this not enough for you, you thuggee?
92. concerned - 8/23/2002 4:28:32 PM
Wrt Kahil, I recall looking over some of his cartoons a few months ago, and I wouldn't imagine that RP would be very pleased with most of those.
93. jexster - 8/23/2002 7:02:04 PM
Editors (The New Sun Tzu's at TNR):
In your September 2nd editorial, you defend Bush's plans for waging preemptive war against Iraq on the sole basis that Iraq used chemical weapons against the Iranians and the Kurds some 15 year ago. For a war to have the "moral" justification you claim, five criteria must be met simultaneously. TNR's purported justification meets not a single one.
The criteria are for just war are:
94. jexster - 8/23/2002 7:14:09 PM
JustWar Theory - Stanford University On-line Encyclopaedia of Philosophy
95. jexster - 8/23/2002 7:26:40 PM
Just war theory insists all six criteria (some see 5, some 7) must each be fulfilled for a particular declaration of war to be justified: it's all or no justification, so to speak. I
t is important to note that the first three of these six rules are what we might call deontological requirements, otherwise known as duty-based requirements or first-principle requirements. For a war to be just, some core duty must be violated: in this case, the duty not to commit aggression. A war in punishment of this violated duty must itself respect further duties: it must be appropriately motivated, and must be publicly declared by (only) the proper authority for doing so. The next three requirements are consequentialist: given that these first principle requirements have been met, we must also consider the expected consequences of launching a war which seems justified according to first principles.
Thus, just war theory attempts to provide a common sensical combination of both deontology and consequentialism as applied to the issue of war.
96. RustlerPike - 8/24/2002 1:06:05 AM
Jexster:
Kindly limit your posts to 15 per day.
You're at 20% of your quota at present.
97. RustlerPike - 8/24/2002 3:55:52 PM
Waht is it about these doctors named Goldstein?
98. jexster - 8/25/2002 1:05:01 PM
I'll try RP.
From Todays NyT Op-Ed
Boy Blunder Get Nuther Big Behine Whuppin :
The Right Way to Change a Regime
By JAMES A. BAKER III
wherein Consiglierie to the House of Bush and Director General of the Great Election Theft says Boy Bush is one fucked up incompetent little shit.
99. jexster - 8/25/2002 4:05:35 PM
The UN option at least Baker sketches is from a political and strategic standpoint, a vast improvement over Bush's Macho Talk, Swishy Walk, and Costly Stumbles, but the question remains, would such a war, otherwise illicit, be made just one simply because the UN blessed it and a dozen nations waged it?
100. jexster - 8/25/2002 7:11:15 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amid an intensifying debate over whether the United States should attack Iraq, former Secretary of State James Baker won early support on Sunday for suggesting the United Nations ( news - web sites) send in weapons inspectors backed by the threat of force.
Reuters Photo
Slideshow: Iraq and Saddam Hussein
Baker, writing an opinion piece in The New York Times, was the latest in a series of public figures and former U.S. officials voicing reservations about unilateral U.S. military action to topple Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) as President Bush ( news - web sites) pushes for "regime change" in Baghdad.
The former secretary of state, who helped Bush's father craft the international coalition behind the 1991 Gulf War ( news - web sites), said the United States should first approach the United Nations for a final resolution authorizing weapons inspections in Iraq at any time, backed by the threat of the force.
"Seeking new authorization now is necessary, politically and practically, and will help build international support," Baker wrote.
Baker's proposal for intrusive U.N. inspections as a way to justify military action against Baghdad won swift bipartisan backing from the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, and Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. Both appeared on CBS' "Face the Nation" program.
"By going to the United Nations, making the request, even if it results in Iraq stonewalling it, would move us into the moral high ground in appealing to our allies for their collaboration and gaining the support of the world for whatever form of action we end up taking against Iraq," Graham said.
Specter agreed. "Before we use military force, we ought to try all of the alternatives: economic sanctions, diplomacy, inspections."
101. jexster - 8/25/2002 11:50:43 PM
LET's ROLL JOEZ! And let's see who rolls with you morons.
Idiot Savants in the Court of King Boy Blunder - HOLY SAND DUNES Batman - Richard Perle
Washington's faceful bureaucrat
Maybe Sickles should sign up with that Rummy crew of dolts and macho men....fit right in!
Better be quick for
Iraq pushes to isolate Bush
Saddam Closes for the Kill
US History has rarely if ever witnessed such colossal incompetence in the Executive Branch,
In the Name of Allah and His Prophet (HIS NAME BE PRAISED!), DEATH TO TEXUS for dumpin their trash on the rest of us. 
102. jexster - 8/26/2002 12:12:02 PM
I think Our Very Own Jewish American Princess oughta be comfort girl to the GOP Whip...we'll call her a gift from Israel
Iraq & The Nine Other Countries TD Would Invade
103. RustlerPike - 8/26/2002 2:49:42 PM
Ahem.
104. RustlerPike - 8/26/2002 2:50:28 PM
Ahem.
105. RustlerPike - 8/26/2002 11:40:20 PM
Ahem-hem.
106. RustlerPike - 8/27/2002 3:03:37 AM
marj:
Are you being a meanie towards concerned?
107. jexster - 8/27/2002 11:40:33 AM
San Francisco, Calif.: 1. An article today recounted a dispute among your colleagues concerning the possible outcomes of urban warfare with Gen Hoak being decidedly pessimistic (realistic?). Question, how effective can U.S. tactics of "a synergy of violence and speed" be in urban fighting?
2. How might this be different from the experience of the last violently swift force to try, the German 6th Army?
Gen. Bernard Trainor: Urban warfare is ghastly. Nobody wants another Stalingrad or Grozney. The defat of the Iraqi army in the field could reduce the need to fight in the cities. As Mao did in China in 1949, he took the countryside and the Nationalists holed up in the cities facing the communists and a hostile population became discouraged and gave in. We saw the same thing in Kurst in Afghanistan.
Jeximan The Magnificent aka Commander Baba Jex and Gen. Bernard E. Trainor (USMC Ret)
Adjunct Senior Fellow,
Council on Foreign Relations
108. jexster - 8/27/2002 11:49:03 AM
Experience:
Associate, Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government (1996-present); Military Analyst, NBC News (1993-present); Director, National Security Program, John F. Kennedy School of Government (199096); Military Analyst, ABC News (1990-91); Military Correspondent, New York Times (1986-90); career in the Marine Corps, retiring as Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans, Policies and Operations and Marine Corps Deputy to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1951-85).
Selected publications:
The Generals' War, (co-author 1995); After the Storm (1993).
Honors:
Presidential Commission of Roles and Missions; Member, International Institute of Strategic Studies; Member of the Board of Visitors, Air Force Academy; Member of the Board of Directors, World Affairs Council; Member of the Editorial Board, Joint Force Quarterly; Editorial Advisor, Naval War College Review; Advisor, Center for Naval Analysis.
Education:
Distinguished Graduate, Air War College
M.A., University of Colorado
B.A., Holy Cross
109. jexster - 8/27/2002 11:51:07 AM
you can give your soul to Jessus but your ass belongs to the Corps...one for the Commandant...one for the Corps
110. jexster - 8/27/2002 11:52:15 AM
where's my J.A.p?
111. jexster - 8/27/2002 12:04:53 PM
BOY BLUNDER CHRONICLES: General Anthony Zinni [USMC]- re: Attack on Iraq One Stoopid Idea
Joining Gen Joseph Hoar [USMC -ret] former Cmndr Central Command
112. jexster - 8/27/2002 12:08:29 PM
Zinni derided the plan as ``Bay of Goats,'' a sarcastic reference to the failed U.S.- backed invasion by Cuban exiles at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.
113. concerned - 8/27/2002 12:55:00 PM
jexster - honorary Muslim.
114. jexster - 8/27/2002 1:05:38 PM
Cows are dying, buzzards are flying
TDashole- bugle boy to the Boy Blunder WarLord
Iraq Moves to Isolate the Imbecile
"George W. Bush is a geopolitical incompetent. He has allowed a clique of hawks to induce him to take a position, an invasion of Iraq, from which he cannot extract himself and which will have nothing but negative consequences, for everyone but first of all for the United States. He will find himself badly hurt politically, perhaps fatally. He will diminish rather rapidly the already declining power of the United States in the world. He will contribute dramatically to the destruction of the state of Israel by furthering the suicidal madness of the Israeli hawks. Of course, there will be many persons in the world who will be happy to see such negative consequences. The trouble is that, in the process, Bush will conduct warfare that will destroy many lives immediately, lead to a degree of turmoil in the Arab-Islamic world of a kind and at a level hitherto unimagined,"
115. jexster - 8/27/2002 1:07:07 PM
One for the Commandant, one for the Corps!
116. RustlerPike - 8/27/2002 4:06:40 PM
Jexs:
7 more posts and you reach your quota. Carry on.
117. jexster - 8/27/2002 4:47:09 PM
Affirmative.
URGENT MESSAGE FROM STARFLEET FOR RONSKI
118. jexster - 8/27/2002 4:50:55 PM
and lastly an email from my good buddy - Bernie Trainor
My gift to the IDF's premiere reservist!
----- Original Message -----
From: MC151rvn@aol.com
To: jex2@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 1:24 PM
Subject: Re: Live Chat 8/26/02 - Washington Post - Thank You
Thank you for the nice note and the reference. Urban warfare is indeed grim. Since WWII, we have only had to do it twice, when the Marines captured Seoul in Sept. 1950 during the Korean war and again when the Marines liberated Hue during the Vietnamese Tet offensive of 1968. Both caused terrible casualties and I personally lost five good friends between the two actions. Hopefully that will be avoided if we go into Iraq. Here is an excerpt on a strategy for Iraq from an OPED I just submitted to the Washington Post. I don't know yet whether they plan on publishing it.
By concentrating air power on the Iraqi military in the field, and not on Iraq's infrastructure as was the case in the Gulf war, civilian casualties would be minimized. However, it would probably force retreating military units loyal to Saddam Hussein to fall back on the cities, where American power would be less effective. Fighting in cities is a nasty business accompanied by terrible casualties all around to say nothing of the destruction wrought. This may be Saddam's plan as there are reports that the Iraqis are digging trenches and erecting fortifications around urban centers. But, historically, when a regime's army is defeated in the field and loses control of the countryside cities don't long hold out. This was the Chinese communist experience in 1949 when it defeated Chiang Kai-shek. When it becomes clear to Iraqi troops holed up in Baghdad that defeat is in! evitable, defections and surrender become more likely. This is particularly true if the populace welcomes the attackers as was the case in Afghanistan.
119. jexster - 8/27/2002 9:18:58 PM
Pat Buchanan writes: "the GOP establishment is beginning to split over the issue of war on Iraq. Majority Leader Dick Armey was the first to speak out against it, followed by Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to Bush I. An attack on Iraq now, says Scowcroft, would 'jeopardize, if not destroy (our) global counter-terrorist campaign.' It could cause Saddam to launch weapons of mass destruction at Israel, provoking Israeli nuclear retaliation, igniting Armageddon. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf concurs...When Bush returns from Crawford, Texas, in September, he is going to face a hellish situation. With Armey, Scowcroft, and now ex-Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger, Sen. Chuck Hagel and Jack Kemp deserting the War Party, Democrats have all the political cover needed to oppose the president's pre-emptive war...If the president [sic] and War Cabinet are still committed to pre-emptive war, they will have to make a far more compelling case to the country and Congress."
Send in the reserves RP...send in the J.A.P brigades, your team is losing big time
120. jexster - 8/27/2002 10:02:42 PM
Last one RP..if you look closely you can see the Ando's First JAP Brigade
And you said I was afraid Bush would what..come again? And what was that Yiddism about your Butt and the Bay Area congressional delegation? Come again?
Its no surprise to me that the NATO allies are bailing on Bush. They know that he's headed for disaster
Lawrence Eagleburger 
121. joezan - 8/27/2002 10:28:17 PM
(Yawn)
The invasion of Iraq is inevitable, jex.
You can post all the retarded Oliphant cartoons you please, but it will happen.
Deal with it.
122. ronski - 8/27/2002 10:37:57 PM
jexster,
And you don't honestly think I am going to bother opening that, do you?
123. RustlerPike - 8/27/2002 11:30:03 PM
Why do the three guys on the right in that cartoon have mustaches?
Were there many Mexican officers in the Union Army?
Or is this Oliphant's way of saying 'macho, non PC people'?
124. RustlerPike - 8/27/2002 11:31:57 PM
I admit there were a lot of mustachioed Americans back then, too, but those three look more Mexican than American.
Anyhow...
125. joezan - 8/27/2002 11:54:49 PM
...those three look more Mexican than American.
You're right, Pike.
In fact, that middle mustachioed guy looks just like Eli Wallach.
126. joezan - 8/28/2002 12:05:57 AM
In fact, he should probably be saying, Allies? We dun nid no steenking allies!"
127. RustlerPike - 8/28/2002 1:01:31 AM
You know, it's not fair that only certain threads get nudie pics, while others have to make do with pixellated pics of Jexster's aging e-pals.
This woman is called Tuesday Weld and she was once married to Dudley Moore.
128. RustlerPike - 8/28/2002 1:05:56 AM
You know, it's not fair that only certain threads get nudie pics, while others have to make do with pixellated pics of Jexster's aging e-pals.
This woman is called Tuesday Weld and she was once married to Dudley Moore.
129. RustlerPike - 8/28/2002 1:07:15 AM
I got the error message so I reposted. So now you see Tuesday twice. I don't figure anyone will be suing over that.
131. RustlerPike - 8/28/2002 12:45:20 PM
She thought she could get away from me.
132. jexster - 8/28/2002 1:58:06 PM
Saddam Moves to Isolate Bush: War to Make Boi Blunder Believable Under Attack from US Friends & Foes Alike
Let's roll?
Let's send in the JAP Brigades
133. jexster - 8/28/2002 2:01:39 PM
Jexster's aging e-pals.
Gunnery Sergeant Jexster, Drill Instructor: Who said that? Who the fuck said that? Who's the slimy little communist shit, tinkle-toed cocksucker down here who just signed his own death warrant? Nobody, huh?! The fairy fucking godmother said it! Out-fucking-standing! I will PT you all until you fucking die! I'll PT you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk. (grabs private Pike) Was it you, you scroungy little fuck, huh?
Private Pike: Sir No Sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, Drill Instructor: You little piece of shit you look like a fucking worm, I bet it was you!
134. jexster - 8/28/2002 2:05:14 PM
135. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 11:13:30 AM
I'll PT you until your assholes are sucking buttermilk. (grabs private Pike) Was it you, you scroungy little fuck, huh?
No man grabs my privates and lives.
Besides, I'm a first sergeant.
136. PelleNilsson - 8/29/2002 12:14:14 PM
Your privates were discussed, recently, in the Café. You shoul really get out more instead of sulking in your hut.
137. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 1:48:55 PM
Pelle:
I saw that, but I figured I'd let my privates deal with it in a private manner, as they saw fit.
138. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 1:59:50 PM
Pelle:
Some rabid anti-femmie Israeli guy (more rabid than me, if you can believe that) claims that feminism in Sweden is so bad that women have their own, less expensive public transportation and men are not allowed to pee standing up.
Do you have any idea where he is getting these stories from?
139. PelleNilsson - 8/29/2002 2:03:46 PM
Fine, mature, manly thinking, First Sergeant. BTW, I am (i.e. was) an artillery captain. How's that for oneupmanship?
140. concerned - 8/29/2002 3:34:12 PM
RP -
I'm waiting for the women to start using the urinals in Sweden, since the stalls will be occupied by men. That'll prove that they've reached sexual equality.
141. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 4:23:46 PM
Well, I just feel like crying. My monster wife is holding a birthday party for my daughter and nobody even told me about it.
142. judithathome - 8/29/2002 4:48:16 PM
My husband's ex did that to him with his son. He just called his son and said he was sorry he missed the party but wanted to take him someplace special for dinner and to buy him a special present afterward. What he didn't do was tell the kid what a shit his mother was for excluding him from the party...it's not the kids fault and they shouldn't be made to feel thay are the the cause of bad feelings between the parents.
I know you tend to think I'm siding with your ex but I'm not; just giving you the benefit of having been there and seen what works out best IN THE END. Don't give in to a momentary feeling of rage that could ruin what comes after. It isn't worth it.
143. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 5:17:43 PM
Yes, well, thank you for sharing that, Judith. Men should never give in to their momentary rage, should they? That's an all-female prerogative.
Well I will give into my rage, and unless that party is called off, I'm crashing it. And don't answer me either, Judith, I'm fuming right now. Respect that. Believe me - although I know you want to lecture me and make me feel even angrier than I already am, don't. You'll feel better IN THE END. Believe me - I've been there.
As for the urinal affair - the guy seems to be right.
UnbefuckingLIEVEable.
WOMEN VICTIMIZED BY URINALS. A women's anti-urinal movement in Sweden, Germany and Australia is partly based on the idea that males who stand up to urinate are committing "a nasty macho gesture" suggestive of violence toward women. The U.S. Navy stumbled into this argument by announcing that it is thinking of replacing urinals on its ships with stainless-steel toilets. Feeling victimized by criticism, Rear Admiral S.R. Pietropaoli wrote a testy letter to the Washington Times saying that plans to remove "trouble-plagued urinals" have "nothing to do with gender."
And this, too.
Save the Urinals
Ed T. Barron, edtb@aol.com
Some feminist groups here in the U.S. and overseas are campaigning to have urinals removed from men's rest rooms. The rationale is that, because men can aim and women can't, this is degrading to women. At the University of Stockholm, in Sweden, urinals are being removed from men's rest rooms in response to these feminists.
This appears to be something that was going on a year or two ago.
144. RustlerPike - 8/29/2002 5:18:47 PM
This is way too much.
Women most definitely suck.
145. PelleNilsson - 8/30/2002 2:04:52 AM
This has all the hallmarks of an urban legend. It probably has its origin in some paper spoofing the feminists, which was picked up by the irony-impaired. I can say this with some confidence since I use the urinals at Stockholm University on an almost daily basis.
146. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 5:35:26 AM
You chauvinist pig!
I hope you use them sitting down!
147. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 5:43:53 AM
Scandinavian toilets are just different enough to be strikingly weird. The bowl shaft is longer and narrower than that of american pottery; not that the nordic toilets are taller, but the base porcelain allows a greater distance for doo drop.
The net effect, corroborated by at least two swedes, is that often shits will splash. Svante says that's cuz I'm an amateur, but I don't think one should have to wiggle and target the output of one's arse to hit the slopes and not the deadly dampening depths below.
(...) 
On the other hand Swedish urinals are brilliant for their beauty... These urinals are a vision of simplicity in parabolic curvature. The urinals glide out of the wall like pods for pee: something simple, streamlined, and Star Wars, all at the same time.
(click pic)
148. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 5:46:36 AM
Arlanda Airport urinal: 
149. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 6:35:41 AM
A proposed law in Sweden wants wall urinals banned in men's restrooms because for a male to stand is a symbol of male dominance - an outgrowth of sexual harassment legislation in America. This proposal is illustrative of the irrational pettiness to which 'female victimization' can and does sink.
I'm adding dadi.org to the SWoM links. Good stuff there.
150. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 6:38:42 AM
Ummm - where are my SWoM links?
151. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 6:53:28 AM
Has there always been a maximum number of links in the Parkay bar or is this a new thing?
152. joezan - 8/30/2002 7:15:18 AM
What is it with Swedes and pee anyway?
Wasn't it Sweden where this new pee funnel, which allows women to use urinals, was recently invented and met with a great feminine chorus of hallelujahs?
153. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 7:27:18 AM
Swedes would appear to be particularly wussy.
Pelle? Your input?
154. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 7:43:23 AM
This is not bad.
Some restrooms have little partitions between urinals, but on the whole I'd say 95% don't. There's really no privacy, and as bad as it is for women to have to sit on disgusting toilet seats, at least you can close the stall door and enjoy the billions of wriggling germs in relative solitude.
Just try doing your business with someone next to you. I mean, right next to you. I don't really like brushing elbows with complete strangers anywhere, least of all in a bathroom. Not to mention: Guys are weird, especially when they relieve themselves, and there are a few categories they fall into.
The Chatters: I know, people love to talk, but c'mon, man, I've got my dick in my hand, here. And so do you. Do we really need to talk about the traffic or sports or the memo you just got? It's somehow even more disconcerting when you actually know the person, I find.
Chatters don't just talk to people in the bathroom anymore, however, thanks again to technology. In the past year I've pissed next to several guys who were busy chatting away into cellphones. It's still pretty distasteful, but at least I don't have to keep up my end of the conversation.
The Grunters: I guess maybe these guys have prostate problems, or something, but there's a lot of grunting going on in the bathroom, and it's a little disturbing. I know there are masturbation jokes to be had here, but I'll just skip to the sound effects, as if that is somehow better. Basically, you get:
*UNZIP*
(pause... pause... pause...)
*GRUNT* TINKLETINKLETINKLETinkletinkletinkletinkletinkletinkle...
*teenk*
*tik*
*GRUNT*TINKLETINKLETINKLE...
This goes on for a long, long while. Weird, whatever it is.
>>>
155. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 7:44:25 AM
>>>
The Farters: I know, I know, the bathroom is the place for it, but sheez, these guys must be storing it up for week beforehand, because it sounds like the Titanic leaving port.
Please, keep in mind, while the activities of said gentlemen are occurring, they are standing less than four inches away from me. Okay, ladies? That stall looking a little better to you now? I thought so.
In closing, let me just say that, yes, I'm aware of the device you can order online, that looks like a little funnel thing and allows women to pee standing up. So, no need to forward the link to me. And women, I'd think twice before ordering one for yourself. Might not be worth it.
156. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 7:50:57 AM
Guys, read this, will you? It's funny as shit. Is this C. Thomas Howell guy real? Was he really in The Outsiders?
Funny shit.
157. PelleNilsson - 8/30/2002 1:22:50 PM
Wasn't it Sweden where this new pee funnel, which allows women to use urinals, was recently invented and met with a great feminine chorus of hallelujahs?
Never heard of it.
< dour>
On the other hand, it seems we have finally hit on a subject that manages to engage the feeble powers of what some might call, charitably, your intellect.
< /dour>
158. joezan - 8/30/2002 1:31:27 PM
Pelle:
Then you must not be paying much attention, there in the loo at the University of Stockholm.
159. wabbit - 8/30/2002 2:14:29 PM
I've recreated this thread in hopes that this past week's error message problem will be alleviated. Please see Message # 4064 in thread 27. The same has been done here.
160. PelleNilsson - 8/30/2002 2:21:03 PM
Joe
It's ineteresting that you know more than me about the loos at Stockholm University.
Teleportation?
161. RustlerPike - 8/30/2002 3:38:23 PM
Watch it, Pelle. Joe has sacred status in this thread.
Joe: 'loo'?
Let's do this: there was a femmie campaign to remove the urinals at Stockholm U. It failed to remove the urinals, but it got half the world talking about it, which is good for the femmies because they like to strike fear into our hearts and make us think there is nowhere where we can just be guys. Femmies like to insert themselves anywhere guys group, to prevent any kind of male bonding and report to their sistern about any worrying trends. They can't be physically present in the public toilets, so they insert themselves through obscenely ridiculous ideas they float in the media. Since urinals are a sort of homage to the coolness of being male, urinals must go. This is especially true of military toilets: the army is the classic male bonding site, and women make sure to have at least one woman present in every possible unit, at every possible moment.
The reason the Israeli femmie scene is in such a huff right now is that men are getting called up for reserve service, and the women can't be present in the places where the army is now, because it's too scary, and women don't do reserve duty, not even for the femmunist cause (after all, they do the world a favor when they even agree to serve their shortened term in regular army service. About 40% of them don't even do that). They have infiltrated the standing army quite thoroughly, including the Air Force, but the reserve grunt units patrolling in the Territories are impenetrable.
So now Israeli femmunism is in deep shit, and losing ground daily, thanks to Yasir Arafat and Saddam Hussein.
162. jexster - 8/30/2002 5:44:14 PM
First Sergeant Pike, I will gouge out your eyes and skull fuck you so you can see me feed your privates to Ando and Pack of Wild JAPS.
163. jexster - 8/30/2002 10:14:36 PM
Jerusalem -- A series of provocative and clearly political remarks by top military figures has spurred anxiety among left-leaning Israelis that a new generation of military leaders is wading into waters where it does not belong.
Chief of staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon described Palestinian militants earlier this week as a "cancer-like" threat that must be defeated at all costs.
Speaking before a rabbinical assembly Sunday, Ya'alon blamed Palestinian leaders for fomenting violence against Israelis and said they are "not prepared to recognize Israel's right to exist as an independent Jewish state."
Just a few days earlier, air force chief Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz stepped into a raging political debate over the army's dropping of a 1-ton bomb in a residential neighborhood of Gaza, defending the strategy as "militarily and morally" proper.
The attack killed 14 civilians -- nine of them children -- as well as its intended target, Hamas leader Salah Shehadah.
IsraelitesDefendingFascism IDF todays force for the political freaked, morally weak, the 21st century IzzieNazi
164. jexster - 8/30/2002 11:09:58 PM
Pelle's was right to spurn the Affrikaner/Israeli analogy.
The Afrikkaner apartheid was not as violently oppressive. The Affrikaner was not an occupier rather was a segregationist not an eliminationist. The colored had limited rights physical segregation, and was a fellow citizen in South Africa and the state's goal was to perserve that special status. The PAL has no guarantee of rights, status or place. What the PAL has now is simply the remainder left over after yesterday's theft available for tommorrow's. The Israeli occupation is implicitly radical, impermanent, elminationist. Apartheid was conservative, permanent, and preservationist.
And as b4, the ANC was more radical, better organized, more powerful, more violent, politically more extreme than te PLO.
165. RustlerPike - 8/31/2002 3:37:05 AM
As usual, jexster, your analysis of the Mideast situation is succinct and spot-on, leaving nothing out of the picture.
There are 22 Jewish countries in the Middle East, and only one for the Arabs (Palestine). Yet the Jews won't even let the Arabs have that, the fuckers. They want to shove a Jewish country west of the Jordan down the Arabs' throats and demand that the Arabs "respect democracy" in their tiny country, when they themselves respect only autocracy, racism, militarism, violent religious fanaticism and criminal state-funded sadistic atrocity campaigns, featuring "martyrdom operations" like causing huge office buildings to burn and collapse on their occupants.
Skull-fuck the Jews, I say!
166. RustlerPike - 8/31/2002 3:39:35 AM
Let me say this: there were 3,000 dead in the World Trade Center, and there are about 600 Israelis dead in the current terror war. There won't begin to be a sense of normalcy and justice in the world until there are at least 100 Arab deaths for every Israeli and American one.
167. RustlerPike - 8/31/2002 11:51:02 AM
It strikes me that PelleNilsson is quite easily rearranged as PenislesLlon.
Whereas, if I spell it PelleNissson (which is as good a spelling as any), I get PenislessLon - which is what I was aiming at, of course.
I'm sure that'll get me some brownie points with the Triumvires, eh?
168. RustlerPike - 8/31/2002 12:17:26 PM
Ah, what the hell.
PenisLessOne.
169. RustlerPike - 8/31/2002 12:17:54 PM
PenislessOne?
170. LadyChaos - 8/31/2002 7:34:39 PM
Just War Theory... blah-blah-blah...
Saddam Hussein has never complied with the cease fire agreement that his generals signed at the end of the Gulf War. GWB has all the international law he needs to justify going in and smacking the guy around.
Nobody should ever have to buy the same horse, twice.
171. Al D - 8/31/2002 8:30:36 PM
I spent a couple of hours listening to an Islamic group explaining Jihad. There were four speakers; the only names I remember are Tireq Ramadan and Jackson, who had an Arabic first name. The first speaker assured all that Islam is a religion of peace, but peace must be with justice:no justice, no peace, no justice, no peace. I was worried they all might run out and start looting Korean shops. He never got around to saying exactly what "justice" he would settle for.
The last speaker came to Islam from his jail cell, and was rescued from sin by Allah. Some get saved by Islam, some by Jesus, but many don't stay saved once they get our unless they can make a career out of it. He talked about his slave ancestors. He could have made a shorter speech. You white motherfuckers made slaves of my kin and I'll get your white ass for sure.
They were all very interesting.
172. Al D - 8/31/2002 8:31:46 PM
LC
I don't come here often, so you might be here a lot, but it sure good to see you and hope is all well with you.
173. RustlerPike - 9/1/2002 12:44:31 AM
Al:
What exactly was the venue for these speeches?
174. Edmund Dantes - 9/1/2002 10:20:17 PM
Palestinians kill teenaged girl for "collaboration"
18-year-old Rajah Ibrahim was the second female in a week to be killed by members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, who are affiliated with Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. The first was her aunt, a mother of three.
175. RickNelson - 9/2/2002 8:59:10 AM
Al, can you give the name of that group to a local tv news affiliate who can do one of those investigative reports? We've two such choices to call if there is something we want to report. They chose to or not, but trying is Ok.
176. jexster - 9/2/2002 9:47:17 AM
From the BBC, This is the World Service
The Stoopid Questions, Stoopid People Show
First we go to today's guest Colin Powell with the Stoopid Question of the Hour...
"Iraq has been in violation of many U.N. resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years. And so, as a first step, let's see what the inspectors find. Send them back in. Why are they being kept out?"
For an answer we take you to Baghdad and Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Assiz calling Baghdad, come in
Baghdad...
"It's a non-starter because it's not going to bring about a conclusion. Is the return of inspection going to stop the American attack on Iraq? There are doubts about that. I have here the number of statements by high-ranking American officials telling that with or without the inspectors."
Thank you very much Mr. Foreign Minister. We appreciate you appearing on our show in such difficult circumstances.
What with Boi Blunder Bumble Bombs dropping on Baghdad and your responibilities in "Operation Cut the Idiot's Balls Off and Feed Em to Cheney" you must be quite busy.
"Pleasuably busy. Why, to paraphrase one of your charming metaphors, its been like stealin camels from a baby at a whadi"
Now that was one DUMB question eh JoeyZ?
177. joezan - 9/2/2002 9:54:54 AM
Yeah, jex - real dumb.
What about 4 years ago, when the inspectors were kicked out?
What about all this time since, when all Iraq had to do to comply with UN sanctions and prevent "millions of Iraqis starving", and get everyone off their backs, was allow inspectors back in, when they weren't being threatened with attack?
178. jexster - 9/2/2002 10:01:00 AM
If ya got a problem with the present Strongman of the Fertile Crescent, just wait...a new more terrifying model is now being trained at the Institute for Care of the Mentally Infirm in Crawford Texus
179. jexster - 9/2/2002 11:50:17 AM
What about 4 years ago, when the inspectors were kicked out?
They weren't "keicked out". Richard Butler ordered them out because of the bombing.
Here are a few "what abouts" for you?
- What about some evidence that Saddam has nuclear weapons of mass destruction?
- What about some evidence that he has chem-bio weapons that are usable?
- What about some evidence that he can deliver as much as a pipe bomb to Basra?
-What about all these complainst NOW about weapons that were last used in the 1980's with tactic approval from Rumsfeld?
- What about the chicken hawk's apologia for death and destruction "Saddam is now so weak that he can't find tred replacements for his rusting tanks?
- What about the of all the countries that, face imminent and grave danger (according to Cheney), not a single one supports Bush's Big Bumble?
- What about the fact that every such country opposes the Regime's adventurism?
And HOW ABOUT a little less bombastic bushshit?
180. jexster - 9/2/2002 11:53:47 AM
Dumb questions or dumb people?
181. RustlerPike - 9/2/2002 1:15:08 PM
If there is one thing I've had enough of, it's Arab spokesmen like Aziz or Erekat using Americanisms like 'non-starter' and 'endgame' and 'this is the politics of - '.
I mean really, if you hate America that much, why are you trying so hard to keep abreast and savvy?
182. PelleNilsson - 9/2/2002 1:55:39 PM
Haaretz story
Damascus has allowed some 150-200 Qaida operatives to settle in the Palestinian refugee camp Ein Hilwe near Sidon in Lebanon. The group, including senior commanders, arrived from Afghanistan through Damascus, Iran and directly to Lebanon. These Qaida operatives are responsible, among other things, for the latest outbreak of fighting inside the refugee camp, as part of their effort to take over the camp.
These details and others have lately been gathered by various intelligence services.
This looks like a planted leak which may or may not be true. Question: Why now?
183. jexster - 9/2/2002 7:40:03 PM
Operation Isolate the Imbecile: Iraq Presses Case, Victories Continue for Saddam
Regime's WarLord Confused in Crawford Returning to Washington
Pakistan shuns action against Iraq (02-Sep-02)
Pakistan will not join the United States in any military action against Iraq and its leader Saddam Hussein, the country's president, General Pervez Musharraf has said. (CNN)
Musharraf Critical of Attack on Iraq (AP)
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, whose alliance with the U.S.-led campaign on terrorism was crucial to the war in Afghanistan, has warned that an American attack on Iraq would cause more turmoil in the Muslim world.
Russia warns against Iraq attack Russia says it will not support any U.S. military action against Iraq because it would only "complicate" attempts to resolve problems in the Middle East. Foreign minister blasts Bush for not presenting a single fact based argument to support claims that Iraq threatens US interests"
China declines to single out Pakistan and Iraq as special targets of its new regulations for missile technology exports (AP)
... require that missile technology exports be approved by government regulatory agencies and that exporters be registered.......Specific regions or countries, such as North Korea ( news - web sites), Pakistan and Iran — nations whose missile programs have concerned the United States —...
Iraq Continues Diplomatic Campaign (AP)
Negotiations can still avert a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, Iraq's vice president said as his country pressed ahead with its diplomatic campaign and the United States got more advice to proceed with caution.
184. jexster - 9/2/2002 7:40:17 PM
Muslims Keep Heat on U.S. as Europeans Warn Iraq (Reuters)
Muslims leaders kept a united front of pressure on Washington on Thursday to avert a strike against Iraq, saying it could unleash fresh turmoil in the Islamic world by widening a gulf between Muslims and the West.
China, India Decry Plan to Strike Iraq (Reuters)
China and India, the world's two most populous countries, stressed their opposition to the use of force against Iraq without mentioning the United States by name.
- Aug 28 7:33 AM ET
Mandela Criticizes U.S. on Iraq (AP)
Nelson Mandela said Monday that he is "appalled" by U.S. threats to attack Iraq and warned that Washington is "introducing chaos in international affairs." He said he had spoken with President Bush's father and Secretary of State Colin Powell
185. jexster - 9/2/2002 7:48:32 PM
PelleNilson, Captain of Artillery Troops, We - who are about to die so that all nations will believe in Our King and not scorn him - we salute you! 
186. jexster - 9/2/2002 7:49:06 PM
187. jexster - 9/2/2002 7:54:20 PM And you can cut your defense expenditure Pelle. You fella don't need those bitchin Leopard II tanks and death dealin Haubits 77's. King George will take care of you. 188. jexster - 9/2/2002 8:11:57 PM 189. jexster - 9/2/2002 8:35:47 PM And fear not JoeZ, its all in the mind..a question of mind over Moron ... of minding one's own bidniss...of what happens to the brain when you JUST SAY YES to cocaine and Arik 190. joezan - 9/2/2002 8:54:01 PM They weren't "keicked (sic) out". Richard Butler ordered them out because of the bombing. 191. jexster - 9/2/2002 9:40:59 PM Don't worry Joe, I will save you... 192. joezan - 9/2/2002 9:55:03 PM Don't bother, jex: 193. jexster - 9/2/2002 10:05:53 PM Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company 194. RustlerPike - 9/2/2002 10:14:21 PM Jexs: 195. joezan - 9/2/2002 10:18:16 PM Do you think we're idiots here, or are you really not aware that that was in November. Iraq officially expelled UNSCOM in December, refusing to let them back in to continue inspections. 196. RustlerPike - 9/2/2002 10:26:22 PM This looks like a planted leak which may or may not be true. Question: Why now? 197. RustlerPike - 9/2/2002 10:31:28 PM I donno, Joe, I think the point was that even when the inspectors were there, they were being misled continually. 198. jexster - 9/2/2002 10:42:05 PM No JoeZ I think you are a WarFrenzied Moron. 199. joezan - 9/2/2002 10:42:08 PM Whose point? 200. joezan - 9/2/2002 10:45:50 PM Anyway - wrt Syria: I think Pelle's question was a rhetorical one - he knows the deal. 207. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 12:44:39 AM Jexs is strangely silent. 208. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 12:46:09 AM I would have expected a six-post, boldfaced, untoy-picked-upped highly pixellated rant from old Jexs. 209. Andonly - 9/3/2002 12:58:48 AM Well, I'm glad someone else noticed that Schiff article in Haaretz today. I'd been wondering what the hell was up in Ein Hilwe--like, why would someone want to start trouble there just lately? I wondered whether it was because Arafat was appearing weaker and more than ever incapable of overcoming the old-man halitosis that every news photo confirms he must reek of. But a) Arafat has not actually been knocked off his steed yet, so I don't know why Pal "refugees" in Lebanon would bother getting all excited just yet, and b) surely Syria would have quickly constrained your garden-variety Pal uppityness in Lebanon. The al Qaida connection, if true, would make some sense. 210. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 2:40:54 AM Ando, 211. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 6:49:09 AM Ehhh, kids don't need moms. 212. Dr.XavierTColtrane - 9/3/2002 10:27:28 AM The good doctor believes this Pike wight lacks a single drop of Irish blood. 213. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 11:33:29 AM I will look up 'wight' when I get back from the grocery store. 214. PelleNilsson - 9/3/2002 11:37:32 AM He is calling you a creature. 215. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 11:46:09 AM Oh. 216. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 11:58:38 AM The thing that got me going was that I had been under the impression that the judge had given her final decisions on my matter, and that it was all over, at least until next spring, when my wife may start her ritual of saying she wants to move out of Katzir with the kids all over again. 217. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 12:03:55 PM I think I'll beat up the wife's lawyer. This is really going too far. What can I get? A person has got to slug people once in a while. He doesn't seem that strong. 224. Andonly - 9/3/2002 1:39:04 PM The Financial Times ran a fuckiung Gareth Smyth piece on the Schiff article this morning--or rather, a brief mention of the piece shorn of any specifics, followed by a tissue of raging Palestinian bloviation about how the US and Israel are conspiring to cut up the Arab world and Israeli claims about 200 al Qaeda in Ein Hilwe are all lies. (There are only 199, goddammit.) 227. PelleNilsson - 9/3/2002 2:25:06 PM Rustler 228. joezan - 9/3/2002 2:29:15 PM Well, whaddayaknow - at least on this point, the US is even more PC than Swedeland. 229. Andonly - 9/3/2002 2:45:10 PM Pike, I'm with the Swede on this: relentless jexstronism is a turnoff. Isn't there some Judaic proscription against spilling one's seed on the ground? 230. PelleNilsson - 9/3/2002 2:59:11 PM joe 231. ronski - 9/3/2002 3:12:55 PM A friend of a friend had a parakeet named Onan (because he spilled his seed). 232. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 3:13:24 PM Pelle: 233. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 3:16:32 PM (Ando: 234. RustlerPike - 9/3/2002 3:18:11 PM Jexster was over his daily quota anyways. 235. jexster - 9/3/2002 9:36:04 PM The Hon. Nancy Pelosi 236. jexster - 9/3/2002 9:37:48 PM 237. jexster - 9/3/2002 9:38:27 PM Bite me Pike....go suck some Sarin 238. jexster - 9/3/2002 9:45:25 PM So Zan, are you still legion? 239. ronski - 9/3/2002 10:38:19 PM jexster, 240. RustlerPike - 9/4/2002 12:19:10 AM OK, here's a funny thing (the funny part comes at the end): 241. RustlerPike - 9/4/2002 12:20:56 AM >>> 242. Andonly - 9/4/2002 12:41:01 AM R-"A friend of a friend had a parakeet named Onan (because he spilled his seed)." 243. RustlerPike - 9/4/2002 7:38:56 AM Yahweh actually presented me with that towel in my dream and commanded me to use it. 252. PelleNilsson - 9/4/2002 2:49:17 PM jexster 253. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:46:01 AM Move them where you'd PPickelhaube. As I am sure you know, I don't much care. But if Zan thinks he's going to get way with calling me a "pathetic liar" by hiding under his First Sgt's skirts... 254. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:49:52 AM Copyright 1998 Agence France Presse 255. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:50:36 AM 256. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:54:48 AM Wait til Bush puts the Zan Clan on the front lines of his War for Believability... 257. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:55:12 AM 207. RustlerPike - 9/3/02 5:44:39 AM 258. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:58:16 AM 259. jexster - 9/5/2002 11:12:12 AM In his interview is the second of a series in which national and world figures reflect on the terrorist attacks and their effect on a year of public life and policy. 260. joezan - 9/5/2002 11:20:39 AM (hee-heeeeee!!!) 261. jexster - 9/5/2002 11:57:37 AM Meet Gen Zinni Zan...a real "euroshit" if ever one there was... 262. jexster - 9/5/2002 1:45:09 PM Until we get those pics of the Zan Clan in gasks masking waiting to meet Jesus in the air on the banks of the River Jordan, we'll have to make do for yuks... 263. joezan - 9/5/2002 1:52:43 PM One from today's news - how much more do you need, jex? 264. jexster - 9/5/2002 2:23:43 PM You benighted bloodthirsty little imbecile... 265. jexster - 9/5/2002 2:24:57 PM 266. jexster - 9/5/2002 2:25:48 PM "What is your name?" 267. jexster - 9/5/2002 2:32:04 PM 177. joezan - 9/2/02 2:54:54 PM 268. jexster - 9/5/2002 2:32:48 PM Sound off like you got a pair asshole 269. jexster - 9/5/2002 3:28:44 PM CAIRO (Reuters) - Arab League chief Amr Moussa said Thursday a strike against Iraq would "open the gates of hell" in the Middle East, and urged Baghdad to readmit weapons inspectors in coordination with the United Nations ( news - web sites). 270. marjoribanks - 9/5/2002 5:27:08 PM Jex, 271. joezan - 9/5/2002 9:39:48 PM What are you doing, kissing up for Arky's job, marj? 272. joezan - 9/5/2002 9:41:43 PM 273. joezan - 9/5/2002 9:43:36 PM (heee-heeee) 274. wonkers2 - 9/5/2002 9:43:40 PM Has arky left us? 275. jexster - 9/5/2002 9:56:19 PM One resounding failure deserves another (and a tee-hee-hee from the littlegirlie in the gas mask) 276. jexster - 9/5/2002 9:59:33 PM Marj... 277. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:02:09 PM FYI - I have already tried to focus argumentation with that insipid little cretin...he gave his answer...and now its time for mine 278. joezan - 9/5/2002 10:09:17 PM I am going to wipe the fuckin floor with JoeZ 279. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:11:29 PM People may and people have hurled all manner of insult my way...and it don't matter shit to me...but NO ONE, NOBODY is going to impugn my character and get away with it... 280. jexster - 9/5/2002 10:12:19 PM I think its time you acted like a man and apologized. 281. joezan - 9/5/2002 10:14:48 PM How can anyone possibly impugn the character of a guy who screamed bloody, obsessive, psychopathic revenge against the "subhuman Slerbs" for 100 posts-per-day, three months running? 282. joezan - 9/5/2002 10:55:40 PM Ok - I'll give you this, jex: the inspectors were not formally expelled. They left on the advice of the Clinton admin, for their own safety. 283. concerned - 9/6/2002 3:35:32 AM the underlying reason for my wife's belligerent behavior towards me is, I believe, what mgleason termed her depression. Since coming to this country - and even since the weeks before she got on the plane - she has had been in a state of deep fear that she cannot fit in, is not good enough, clever enough, whatever. Somehow this feeling of 'I'm too stupid to make it among the white people' transmogrified itself into very aggressive behavior towards me. With the help of her local Kenyan friend, my wife decided that I was the root of all her problems. 284. concerned - 9/6/2002 3:40:51 AM How else to explain the appeal of such as Al Qaeda and African dictators who are actually believed when they claim the AIDS is a CIA plot or that GM food is 'poison', thus won't be distributed to their starving countrymen? 285. concerned - 9/6/2002 3:41:53 AM & all these idiots never consider why most of East Asia isn't having any such trouble as they are. 286. concerned - 9/6/2002 4:18:22 AM Re. the attempt on Hamid Karzai's life and the explosion in Kabul: 287. concerned - 9/6/2002 4:19:50 AM ...terroritory, resulting from changing words in mid word, but there's sort of a ring to it. 288. jexster - 9/6/2002 2:05:53 PM Say what you will about the Bush administration's determination to go to war with Iraq, the bottom line is that any strike on Baghdad will cost us dearly -- not just immediately, but for years to come. 289. jexster - 9/6/2002 2:12:57 PM jexster, 290. ronski - 9/6/2002 2:33:01 PM jexster, 291. jexster - 9/6/2002 3:03:50 PM WASHINGTON –– President Bush telephoned leaders of China, Russia and France on Friday in hopes of softening their opposition to ousting Saddam Hussein, but he made little noticeable progress. 292. jexster - 9/6/2002 4:40:02 PM Earth to Zan..what IS your Name? 293. jexster - 9/6/2002 5:02:06 PM The witness of sacred history 294. jexster - 9/6/2002 5:03:46 PM "What have you done?" 295. jexster - 9/6/2002 11:07:42 PM 296. RustlerPike - 9/7/2002 8:49:47 AM Thread host is in the middle of an rl upheaval which has included 24 hours in the slammer and house arrest in a neighbor's home, pending a court-order move from his Katzir residence to a nearby location. 297. Dr.XavierTColtrane - 9/7/2002 8:53:01 AM > included 24 hours in the slammer and house arrest in a neighbor's home, pending a court-order move from his Katzir residence to a nearby location. 298. RustlerPike - 9/7/2002 1:10:36 PM Alwight alweady, XTC. 299. RustlerPike - 9/7/2002 1:31:11 PM About half the people in my cell and the adjoining one were there on account of charges by their wives. 300. RustlerPike - 9/7/2002 1:34:45 PM Happy Rosh Hashana to all - whether you have foreskin or not. 301. RustlerPike - 9/7/2002 1:43:16 PM 302. joezan - 9/7/2002 11:12:48 PM Was the food any good, Pike? 303. concerned - 9/8/2002 1:49:27 AM So, I take it, RP, that you wouldn't say "Shofar, so good."? 304. Andonly - 9/8/2002 11:45:13 AM L'shana tovah. 305. RustlerPike - 9/8/2002 1:24:25 PM Ando: 306. RustlerPike - 9/8/2002 1:27:32 PM Bummer is, they're going to make me see my children in those god-awful visitation centers for the duration of the trial, which could take up to nine months. 307. joezan - 9/8/2002 7:57:44 PM I dunno, Pike. Until very recently (when most African Americans learned it was in their interest to talk the PC talk, whether they walked the walk or not), if you'd asked most AA men in a mixed marriage why they chose a White woman, they'd tell you flat out - because Black women are just too combative, or words to that effect. And actually, sometimes you still hear them say stuff like that. There was even a play about it (although, of course, in the play this was all a misperception on the part of the man, who really couldn't help harboring this misperception because whitey'd kept him down so long - self-esteem and all that). 308. wonkers2 - 9/8/2002 8:01:02 PM The Scopes monkey trial didn't take nine months! 309. RustlerPike - 9/8/2002 8:37:42 PM wonk: 310. Dr.XavierTColtrane - 9/8/2002 9:33:27 PM > erections are scheduled for sometime between 11/03 and 04/04, depending on whom you believe. 311. joezan - 9/8/2002 11:13:39 PM Back on topic here: 312. RustlerPike - 9/9/2002 12:37:40 AM Arafat has become irrelevant, as Sharon said he would make him. But I figure he and Yasin are planning their big Last Hurrah for when Saddam strikes. 313. RustlerPike - 9/9/2002 12:56:53 AM I think it's about time for getting me a divorce though. 314. RustlerPike - 9/9/2002 1:08:49 AM T7 to me: "you went crazy because of the birthday, didn't you, daddy? And you were right." 315. robertjayb - 9/9/2002 2:13:37 PM I think it's about time for getting me a divorce though. 316. RustlerPike - 9/10/2002 1:51:06 PM Much more respectable, this look, I find. 317. alistairconnor - 9/10/2002 1:56:48 PM Well spotted. One of them is hard coded, the other is in the database. I'll fix that... 318. alistairconnor - 9/10/2002 1:57:52 PM Sorry, wrong thread. Answering another question about the redesign. No, I'm not going to fix that : ask wwabit. 319. jexster - 9/10/2002 6:48:07 PM I need the spiritual advice of a rabbi. 320. RustlerPike - 9/11/2002 1:55:23 PM Look at how cool the links in the tan bar look! 321. Wombat - 9/11/2002 1:57:29 PM Pistachio=Greenish 322. judithathome - 9/11/2002 2:00:29 PM I think the link bar is beige. The Beige Bar. Sounds like someplace with potted ferns that serves Cosmopolitians. 323. RustlerPike - 9/11/2002 2:33:07 PM Well, firstly, thanks for answering me, people. I owe you both. 324. RustlerPike - 9/11/2002 2:39:41 PM Iac, this place feels decidedly more luxuriously upholstered. I think we should do this every other year, at least. 325. robertjayb - 9/11/2002 11:21:17 PM Rustler, 326. judithathome - 9/11/2002 11:39:05 PM It's gelato... 327. ronski - 9/11/2002 11:48:29 PM It used to be butterscotch. Now it looks beige to me. 328. alistairconnor - 9/12/2002 6:12:06 AM It looks like strawberry to me (natural strawberry icecream, with no preservatives or added colouring). 329. alistairconnor - 9/12/2002 6:14:20 AM I asked one of the Arabs who spent the daytime hours with me in the courthouse lockup what the Kishon jailhouse was like. 330. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 11:51:22 AM Spike, I do hope that you are keeping yourself sane and not entering into a zero-sum game with your opponents. Why not just fuck off from the scene for a few weeks - go and soak yourself in Eilat for a while or something, take a trip outside the country, anything? 331. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 12:00:09 PM Now, on to today's speech by Bush at the UN. 332. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 12:03:56 PM By the way, I did not make up the word bushbaby. It's a small, wide-eyed animal, also known as the galago. 333. PelleNilsson - 9/12/2002 12:38:06 PM Good observation, marj, and the ones that crafted the speech must have been aware of these implications. 334. joezan - 9/12/2002 12:46:51 PM Well, there are of course major differences between Israel's intransigence and Iraq's. 335. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 12:56:08 PM What the hell are you babbling about so incoherently, Zan? 336. PelleNilsson - 9/12/2002 1:10:31 PM Joe 337. Edmund Dantes - 9/12/2002 1:11:36 PM As the Israelis put all their eggs, every last one, into a US basket, they risk reducing their own futures to fiat or whim by whatever US administration is in power. It's just dumb policy. 338. PelleNilsson - 9/12/2002 1:15:18 PM This is what Bush had to say re I&P: 339. JJBiener - 9/12/2002 1:32:31 PM Banks - What the hell are you babbling about so incoherently, Zan? 340. joezan - 9/12/2002 1:42:54 PM Anyway - a joke for Pike: 341. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 2:12:26 PM Which other nations should Israel be courting? I didn't realize she had spurned a lot of offers of friendship and support. 342. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 2:16:23 PM Israel refuses to comply with UN resolutions because to do so would threaten its very existence. Israel has been attacked by its neighbors repeatedly without provocation. Withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza without appropriate security measures could ultimately result in the destruction of Israel. 343. JJBiener - 9/12/2002 4:04:10 PM Banks - It is so tiresome to read these cookie-cutter, inane, arguments. 344. marjoribanks - 9/12/2002 4:12:25 PM Biener, 345. JJBiener - 9/12/2002 4:55:13 PM Banks - what about Israel's occupation, which we know is as much or greater a threat to global security as Saddam's Iraq? 346. Al D - 9/13/2002 10:23:49 PM JJ 347. JJBiener - 9/14/2002 12:30:31 PM Al - Whose fault is that? Israel has had nuclear weapons for years and never even considered using them against its neighbors. If its neighbors acquire similar weapons and the situation becomes unstable, isn't this then because they are threatening Israel? 348. RustlerPike - 9/14/2002 4:00:15 PM Thanks for #329, ac. I was in my home though I wasn't allowed there anymore and was thinking of spending the night. Then I read that and got the hell out of there. You probably saved my butt in a way it has never been saved before. 349. RustlerPike - 9/14/2002 4:04:10 PM Good one, Joe! 350. Andonly - 9/14/2002 8:08:04 PM Rustler Pike, 351. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 12:12:57 AM Hey Ando, thanks for your support in my time of personal distress. I will remember your warm friendship when you are also in dire straits. 352. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 12:48:41 AM rjb: 353. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 12:50:37 AM marj: 354. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 12:54:58 AM From the site you linked: 355. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 2:08:13 AM 356. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 2:10:26 AM The jpeg does not do justice to the beauty of this place, with its olives and surrounding Judean semi-desert mountains, where I spent a formative period of my childhood. 357. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 2:11:42 AM I really should go for a walk instead of staring at this screen. 358. concerned - 9/15/2002 2:29:38 AM RP - 359. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 4:36:34 AM Connie: 360. RustlerPike - 9/15/2002 6:08:23 AM Retouched. Best I can do for now. 361. Andonly - 9/15/2002 11:35:59 PM "Andonly, who I thought was "with me" somehow, is trying to pounce on the opportunity to get rid of me." 362. Andonly - 9/15/2002 11:36:28 PM "Am I imagining this or is the prospect of what is about to go down in the Middle East - and its implications for you as a Jewish person in the US - making you exceedingly hostile towards me and what I stand for?" 363. alistairconnor - 9/16/2002 9:51:24 AM The funniest things come out in moments of truth like these: ac, who I thought hated me (and on certain levels perhaps does), gave me some extremely important advice when I was confused and needed it. 364. ronski - 9/16/2002 10:26:09 AM Palestinian Totalitarianism: Terrorism is Tolerated, but Gay People Are Not 365. robertjayb - 9/16/2002 11:40:52 AM Noted without comment...(Reuters News Service) 367. concerned - 9/16/2002 5:40:44 PM Re. 359 - 369. RustlerPike - 9/16/2002 9:52:13 PM ac, Ando: 374. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 11:24:16 AM Where did the posts prior to 22 August go? 375. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 11:33:00 AM Andonly, I came across this written by you: "What Kathy may have been referring to in her 3,000-year remark was the existence of the Hebrews, who could, perhaps, have lived 3,000 years before Jesus' time. They may have later been the "hapiru" of Ramese II's time, who built the pyramids--although the word meant laborer or brickmaker and did not apparently refer to an ethnic group per se. So the hapiru may have been a class of Egyptians who ultimately left Egypt and founded a nation; or they may have originally been an ethnic group (Hebrews) which migrated to Egypt per the Joseph story, occupied a particular class there, and *then* left to found their nation." 376. Andonly - 9/17/2002 11:48:44 AM Message # 374 377. Ms. No - 9/17/2002 12:38:24 PM PE, 378. Andonly - 9/17/2002 12:49:00 PM PE, 379. Andonly - 9/17/2002 12:49:28 PM Incidentally, the departure from Egypt itself may have been prompted by disease (possibly leprosy)--the Hebrews' or the Egyptians, I can't guess. It has been suggested that the Hebes didn't flee Egypt but were thrown out as a means of containing some scourge or other. But it's impossible to read Numbers and not come away with the sense that the Israelites of this period were themselves unusually concerned with disease and explicitly set out to separate themselves from Egyptians and, post Exodus, all other groups. One divine punishment for mixing with other folk seems to have been plague. 380. ronski - 9/17/2002 1:12:53 PM I thought hapiru or apiru meant "wanderers" or something like that. 381. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 2:13:33 PM Message # 378: "Linguistic data alone is insufficient to determine who the Hebrews were (or weren't)... There are good reasons to believe that whatever their distant ethnic origins, the people who eventually wrote the Pentateuch did have their collective cultural beginnings--those which led to them becoming Jews--in Egypt.". 382. Andonly - 9/17/2002 2:49:05 PM "I would say the linguistic evidence is primary." 383. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 3:09:11 PM "I know you would." 384. Andonly - 9/17/2002 5:03:25 PM PE, 385. Andonly - 9/17/2002 5:26:30 PM Wait, I see now you were referring to my original remarks to Kathy Kattenburg, where I said, "So the hapiru may have been a class of Egyptians who ultimately left Egypt and founded a nation; or..." 386. RustlerPike - 9/17/2002 9:02:51 PM Wrt Ando's curious Egyptian-origin campaign: 387. RustlerPike - 9/17/2002 9:19:22 PM >>> 388. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 9:58:26 PM Actually I now recall that "Hebrew" is the Graeco-Roman rendering of the Aramaic "ebaru". It's in the OED. 389. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 9:58:51 PM RP is there ever an end to your psychosis? 390. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 10:26:29 PM Andonly: I interpreted the passage of yours in Message # 375 to mean that there were two possibilities for the origins of the Hebrews: (1) They were ethnolinguistic Egyptians who left Egypt for ancient Canaan/Palestine and founded the Hebrew ethnos; or (2) Some Canaanites/Palestinians went to Egypt at some point and returned to Canaan/Palestine. 391. RustlerPike - 9/17/2002 10:50:55 PM Pe: 392. Andonly - 9/17/2002 11:18:39 PM "I don't know what makes you think researchers are convinced that the root ain-bet-resh (from whence Ivri - Hebrew) stems from heh-peh-resh (your hapiru, which sounds Assyrian or something). Iac, hapiru may sound like the English word 'Hebrew', but it doesn't sound a lot like Ivri, which is how the Hebrews say 'Hebrew'." 393. Andonly - 9/17/2002 11:30:56 PM "Why, I'd even gander a guess that you, Ando, are not called Rivka or Leah or Avigail, but something like Joanne or Patricia or Tina." 394. sakonige - 9/17/2002 11:35:34 PM Well, not really. Maybe you should leave him out of it. 395. pseudoerasmus - 9/17/2002 11:51:17 PM The morphological characteristics of Kennewick man suggest an ancestry in common with the Ainu of Japan. 396. sakonige - 9/17/2002 11:53:49 PM Yes. I'd like to know how many skeletons of about the same age have been discovered in the Eastern portion of North American continent. I wonder if it will be discovered that people arrived in the Americas in more distinct waves than previously thought. 397. sakonige - 9/17/2002 11:55:15 PM 398. pseudoerasmus - 9/18/2002 12:00:44 AM 399. Andonly - 9/18/2002 12:13:45 AM "(1) They were ethnolinguistic Egyptians who left Egypt for ancient Canaan/Palestine and founded the Hebrew ethnos;" 400. Andonly - 9/18/2002 12:17:26 AM "The morphological characteristics of Kennewick man suggest an ancestry in common with the Ainu of Japan." 401. Andonly - 9/18/2002 12:23:57 AM Excellent chart. 402. sakonige - 9/18/2002 1:43:19 AM Andonly, if you are thinking of that jerk Sixty Minutes put on camera Sunday, he's an extremist taking advatage of the fact that the Kennewick Man's skeleton was found on his turf. Not even all the people in his tribe agree with him about this. I'm pretty sure most American Indians want to know where the Kennewick man came from and how he is related to the rest of us, base on quotes I read and heard. We're not as backward about science as that guy is trying to make us look. I really wish Sixty Minutes had interviewed some of the may opposing opinions on this subject among native Americans. 403. sakonige - 9/18/2002 1:51:56 AM There really isn't any conflict between respecting traditions and letting native American artifacts tell us their story, or the Museum of the American Indian wouldn't be greeted with such enthusiasm from all the tribes. This Umatilla guy blocking the scientific analysis of the Kenniwick Man is an ignorant goof who will eventually be put in his place. Eventually, samples will be taken and the skeleton will be reburied, and everybody will be happy and enlighted by it all. 404. sakonige - 9/18/2002 1:54:25 AM boy, I made a few typos in that mess, didn't I? 405. sakonige - 9/18/2002 12:08:03 PM Sorry for babbling on about Amerindians in your Israel thread, RustlerPike. Do feel free to delete this off-topic garbage. I was just so startled to be addressed on this subject in a friendly tone for once. 406. Wombat - 9/18/2002 12:17:10 PM A judge recently permitted scientists to examine the Kennewick man's remains. 407. alistairconnor - 9/18/2002 5:49:56 PM I'll become normal when the world does. 408. Jenerator - 9/18/2002 7:22:28 PM [[Hello RustlerPike.]] 409. RustlerPike - 9/18/2002 11:31:33 PM Jennie!!! 410. RustlerPike - 9/18/2002 11:34:34 PM The Middle East will not find peace until you get your shit together. 411. RustlerPike - 9/18/2002 11:43:16 PM Well, it's the first time terror has struck this close. 412. RustlerPike - 9/19/2002 12:17:52 AM OK, people, there's only one thing I can possibly do now in order to come out of this a winner. 413. Wombat - 9/19/2002 1:14:37 PM As the pathetic charade that is Sharon's "policy" against terrorism continues... 414. RustlerPike - 9/19/2002 11:22:47 PM Pe: 415. RustlerPike - 9/21/2002 9:04:02 AM Arafat's compound is being demolished, with Arafat inside it. 416. RustlerPike - 9/21/2002 6:16:41 PM 417. sakonige - 9/21/2002 8:16:18 PM I would never let anyone take a picture of me crying at my son's funeral, let alone publish it. 418. Edmund Dantes - 9/21/2002 9:08:35 PM Your boast is as empty as a fresh recruit predicting how he'll behave in battle once the shooting starts. 419. pseudoerasmus - 9/21/2002 9:37:50 PM RP: The Bantu languages -- which also include Swahili, Xhosa [Nelson Mandela's native language] and Zulu -- are a subset of the Niger-Congo macro-family of languages. These languages are distributed across West Africa below the Sahara, all of Central Africa, most of southern Africa and parts of East Africa. Any Semitic-sounding words in East African languages are either coincidences or loanwords from Arabic or the languages of Ethiopia/Somalia. 420. RustlerPike - 9/21/2002 11:19:43 PM Pe: 421. joezan - 9/22/2002 3:39:11 PM Hey Pike - are the bookies taking odds on Arafat's chances of making it out alive? 422. alistairconnor - 9/23/2002 8:34:23 AM Sharon is a master. 423. pseudoerasmus - 9/23/2002 7:07:35 PM all the languages of Kenya. There are half a dozen Cushitic languages in Kenya. 424. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 11:33:02 AM joe: 425. RickNelson - 9/25/2002 11:41:52 AM alistair has a good point. 426. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 12:18:34 PM Never heard of any of those Cushitic tribes (other than the Somalis). They must really be small. 427. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 12:19:23 PM I've moved to Harish. 428. PelleNilsson - 9/25/2002 1:09:36 PM Of course Alistair has a good point. That's why the usual Israelophiles have been silent. They like to think of Sharon as a consummate politician with A Plan. Now even they will have to admit the he is a dinosaur who thinks with his ass and whose only solution to every problem is violence. The man is a simpleminded thug who is destroying his own country. 429. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 1:13:39 PM I donno, I sorta feel like Hairy is in deep shit. Why would anyone think otherwise? Because some Euro-peons are pleading for his life? I don't think anyone outside of Europe really cares if the top floor gives in. 430. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 1:28:38 PM Jeez. I need to find out my social security number. How the f--k do I do that? 431. PelleNilsson - 9/25/2002 1:40:15 PM Nobody in Europe, except some fringe elements, give a shit about Arafat. You have missed the point. Read Alistair's post again. 432. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 2:44:33 PM I'm living in an apartment on the main road. Second floor. A/C. 78 sq. meters, I think. Doesn't seem too noisy. 433. robertjayb - 9/25/2002 3:04:58 PM rustler, I hope you are comfortable in your new digs. Are you far from Katzir and your kids? 434. alistairconnor - 9/25/2002 3:32:08 PM This is just a theory, but it seems to me that ongoing civil war is Sharon's only plan. He kicked it off, he'll do whatever he can to keep it on the boil. Of course, he has plenty of allies on the Palestinian side who are delighted to play along. 435. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 10:30:21 PM rjb: 436. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 10:45:46 PM >>> 437. joezan - 9/25/2002 10:51:39 PM However, development of Harish has so far failed, largely due to the council head's total incompetence... 438. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 11:09:40 PM >>> 439. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 11:23:24 PM >>> 440. RustlerPike - 9/25/2002 11:28:09 PM I'm a troublemaker. 441. betty - 9/25/2002 11:52:19 PM No Pike, you're a whore and a bore. And it is very difficult to be both of those things at the same time, so do consider yourself accomplished. 442. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 2:47:46 AM You're right, bets. I'm a whore and a bore. I'll go back to hosting the sex thread and walking around nekkid in my house and telling people I don't know all about it. 443. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 3:02:18 AM I see no contradiction between being right of Sharon on sovereignty and being just as firm on anti-discrimination. I don't think there's any justification for the Arab toddlers to be stuck at home all day because the uppity Jews won't give them a nursery school. These Arabs aren't throwing rocks or doing anything nationalistically-motivated. Anyone who really knows my history and views on things knows I am not switching sides or being inconsistent at all. 444. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 3:04:02 AM The Karajas doing my campaign crowd control... shades of Altamont. 445. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 5:33:31 AM My deal with the Arabs is: you accept my (Jewish-Israeli) sovereignty, I'll give you full equality. Stop disputing my right to the land, and I'll give you full rights on it. 446. PelleNilsson - 9/26/2002 6:19:32 AM Thomas Friedman: Is Ariel Sharon leading Israel to a dead end? 447. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 6:44:02 AM Burp. 448. Andonly - 9/26/2002 6:58:04 PM "On the other hand, you are invited to read and comment on this article which suggests that Israel is giving Marwan Barghouti the Nelson Mandela treatment." 449. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 10:16:18 PM Ando: 450. RustlerPike - 9/26/2002 10:17:03 PM I would call that more of a farticle than an article. 451. RustlerPike - 9/27/2002 12:48:30 AM Sharon is brilliant. He waited until the White House started the Iraq thread, then found an excuse and bombed jasper out of his presidential compound. 452. RustlerPike - 9/27/2002 2:23:09 AM Hey, cool, the American embassy works fast. They have my social security number for me. Only took one day. 453. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2002 9:43:32 AM Another articla on Sharon's politics, this one by Henry Siegman, a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations: Sharon's real purpose is to create foreigners 454. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2002 9:44:31 AM On Friday, General Eitan Ben Elyahu, the former head of the Israeli Air Force, declared on Israeli television that "eventually we will have to thin out the number of Palestinians living in the territories," enriching Israel's political lexicon with another euphemism for ethnic cleansing. 455. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2002 9:50:37 AM And then we have Official report exposed by Sarid slams Hebron settlers for 'thuggery' 456. concerned - 9/27/2002 11:51:50 AM Jews losing Israeli Demographic Race 457. concerned - 9/27/2002 11:59:43 AM I reject much of the criticism of the US and Israel from Yurrup because I am anti-emetic. 458. PelleNilsson - 9/27/2002 12:03:43 PM Note that in his projections Mr Dayan includes the West Bank and Gaza in "the Land of Israel". Not everybody, and notably not the present US administration, would agree to that. 459. Andonly - 9/27/2002 2:05:39 PM "What this article shows - apart from its factual contents - is that the criticism levied at Israel from Europe, which Sharonistas love to call "anti-semitic" is in fact a reflection of similar opinions voiced by Israelis themselves." 460. Andonly - 9/27/2002 2:10:39 PM "Note that in his projections Mr Dayan includes the West Bank and Gaza in "the Land of Israel". Not everybody, and notably not the present US administration, would agree to that." 461. Andonly - 9/27/2002 2:20:23 PM Don't know if anyone has noticed, but the NYT has 'discovered' this morning that Hizballah has rockets supplied by Iran, and can open a front on Israel's northern border. 462. Andonly - 9/27/2002 2:44:12 PM This is the sort of thing Siegman would never try to assert in a situation where he could be challenged directly: 463. RustlerPike - 9/27/2002 3:48:18 PM I will give MK Sarid a call on Sunday. I want him to help me with my new initiative - the Harish-Katzir action group. We will open a nursery school for the Arab kids and a computer room for all kids. Then we will hire guards for the entrances to Harish. 464. concerned - 9/27/2002 5:18:00 PM You could sound more like marj if you became incandescently indignant at any hint of criticism of your more spurious ideas and worshipped at the altars of the likes of Robert Fisk. 465. RustlerPike - 9/27/2002 11:57:28 PM That is admittedly beyond my reach, connie. 466. RustlerPike - 9/27/2002 11:58:13 PM >>> 467. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 12:11:15 AM The thing is, this would be happening in Wadi Ara - which is, as of now, the symbol of Jewish-Arab strife here and the hopelessness of the entire situation. 468. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 12:20:53 AM Actually, that anniversary is being marked today. 469. concerned - 9/28/2002 3:50:41 AM 470. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 4:03:32 AM Amen. 471. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 4:05:49 AM Giant leap for mankind: my wife agrees to come over and drink coffee in my new place. She suggested it, even. 472. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 5:34:52 AM The council has managed to bring in some religious Jews to settle in Harish. 473. RustlerPike - 9/28/2002 8:21:21 AM Btw - that's my car in the lower left corner. 474. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 10:03:57 AM Sharon's forces are out of Arafat's compound. 475. RickNelson - 9/29/2002 10:16:10 AM Sad, very sad. 476. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 10:51:57 AM My wife even said to our son that she wished it could all go back to the way it was, but I think she's just bullshitting. 477. PelleNilsson - 9/29/2002 11:08:44 AM Rustler 478. pseudoerasmus - 9/29/2002 11:28:34 AM Rustler: Last week I read a book about Nestorian Christianity. Nestorianism was the branch of Christianity which, in effect, denied the unity of Christ's divinity and humanity and insisted they were independent (whatever that means). It was anathematised at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and thereafter only existed outside the Roman/Graeco/Byzantine world, that is to say, mainly in Asia. After the Nestorian Church severed its links with Constantinople, the Persian empire (which was officially Zoroastrian at the time) ended its official policy of persecution and recognised the Nestorians as the "Church of Persia". This policy continued under Arab Islamic rule because the Nestorians' anti-Byzantine attitudes were valuable for the Muslims. So under both Zoroastrian and Islamic patronage, the Nestorian Church was able to prosper and expand freely, such that between the 7th and 13th centuries, Nestorianism flourished in India, Central Asia and western China. Whole nations in Central Asia converted, including the Uighurs, the inhabitants of Xinjiang, China's western-most province who are today Muslims. Marco Polo found Nestorian Christians of many different nationalities dominant among the advisers at the court of Kublai Khan. 479. pseudoerasmus - 9/29/2002 11:29:04 AM I mention this to you, and in this thread, because of a fascinating piece of linguistic trivia associated with Nestorianism. The liturgical language of Nestorianism is Syriac, a form of Aramaic written in a script different but derived from the Hebrew script. With various modifications, the Syriac/Aramaic script was adopted by the Uighurs, who used it until they converted to Islam. From the Uighurs, the Mongols got their traditional script (the one used until 1919 when Cyrillic was adopted by the communists); and from the Mongols, the Manchus adopted their own script in the 1600s. The Manchurians being the rulers of China between the 1636 and 1911, all official state documents were written in both Chinese and Manchurian, using the script that was derived from Syriac and which still bears an unmistakeable "Middle Eastern" look (except that it's written in the Chinese top-to-bottom, right-to-left direction): 481. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 2:14:14 PM So it is "Sharon's forces" now, not "our forces" or "the IDF"? Interesting. 482. PelleNilsson - 9/29/2002 2:17:21 PM Rustler 483. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 2:20:11 PM I think a truly excellent leader, in Israel, has got to find a way of both standing up to Arab nationalism and respecting - even rewarding - Arab loyalty to Israel. 484. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 2:21:49 PM Pelle: 485. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 2:29:01 PM Pe: 486. PelleNilsson - 9/29/2002 2:33:09 PM Read Message # 350 again. 487. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 2:40:35 PM Pelle: 488. judithathome - 9/29/2002 2:42:36 PM This thread has become about your personal drama, which has fuck all to do with anything that affects Israelis in general, Palestinians, or the rest of us. I'm not interested in serving as the audience for your elaborately spun personal duel with authority. 489. Andonly - 9/29/2002 8:39:37 PM "Nestorianism was the branch of Christianity which, in effect, denied the unity of Christ's divinity and humanity and insisted they were independent (whatever that means)." 490. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 9:58:11 PM Judith: 491. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 9:59:27 PM Ando: 492. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 10:01:58 PM Hah, you see. I'm a clever Pikester, I am. 493. RustlerPike - 9/29/2002 10:08:27 PM God fucking damn, I hope I'm in business. 494. RickNelson - 9/30/2002 9:48:39 AM They don't believe in the three as one? hmmm.... interesting p.o.v. from my Christian upbringing. I've believed the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are the trinity for my whole Christian life. This is an interesting idea. 495. PelleNilsson - 9/30/2002 12:12:07 PM andonly and Rick 496. RustlerPike - 9/30/2002 12:43:37 PM This whole move to Harish has suddenly infused me with renewed political energy. But it keeps going nowhere. I just get all excited about stuff and start making bombastic speeches here on the Mote, I call Knesset members and their aides, but in the end I'm just pooped and I don't really have anything to show for it. 497. RustlerPike - 9/30/2002 12:49:11 PM The whole point about the Christian disputes and heresies over the centuries is that they were always pointless. It always seemed to me that there was something about the Christian church that made these splits inevitable, but that this had nothing to do with the actual points disputed. Maybe the church was too big. Maybe the leadership was too weak. 498. Wombat - 9/30/2002 2:56:52 PM Q: How many temples would a solitary jew build on a desert island? 499. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 2:57:25 PM The Nestorians did not deny the trinity or the divinity of Christ. Their dispute with the Orthodox Church was hair-splitting even by the standards of the 5th century. The Orthodox Christians insisted that Christ was both human and divine, but his divinity and his humanity were "neither divided nor separate" (whatever that means). The Nestorians rather ferociously insisted that Christ's humanity and divinity were separate and divided, i.e., in effect, there were two Christs. 500. Wombat - 9/30/2002 3:00:00 PM hahahahaha! 501. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 3:08:21 PM Message # 489: "And, what script do the Uighurs use now that they are Muslims?" 502. concerned - 9/30/2002 3:23:24 PM It'd be interesting see PE's sectarian breakdown of attitudes relating to Muhammad expressed in terms of his pedophilia. 503. concerned - 9/30/2002 3:24:34 PM It'd be interesting to see PE's sectarian breakdown of attitudes relating to Muhammad expressed in terms of his pedophilia. 504. PelleNilsson - 9/30/2002 3:39:33 PM Very good PE. Of course Muslims, and, I suspect Jews, are not convinced by these theological sophistries and condemn Christians as polytheists and I dare say they are right. Ordinary Christians see God and Christ as separate entities, although perhaps united on some higher plane, and have no clue about the Holy Spirit. 505. concerned - 9/30/2002 3:51:43 PM Would this 'polytheism' then also apply to the angels and demons, not excepting Satan, which are most notably a staple of Islam? 506. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 3:57:46 PM The Sunnis believe a girl can be married off at any time after conception, but the marriage can only be consummated when the girl is pubescent. 507. concerned - 9/30/2002 3:59:21 PM Bravo! 508. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:00:21 PM Holy Spirit, Schmoley Schpirit, it's just some pedantic upstart's version of the Shekhina. 509. RustlerPike - 9/30/2002 4:00:47 PM Some Protestants see Catholics as polytheists (the Virgin Mary cult) and idol worshippers (the crucifix), I think. 510. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:17:41 PM "...while the Muslims, for whom Christ is known as Isa bin Maryam and is the antepenultimate prophet of God..." 511. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:18:59 PM "When the Uighurs converted to Islam they of course adopted the Perso-Arabic script. This was abandoned in the 1930s in favour of two scripts -- Latin and Cyrillic. But in the 1980s the Uighurs re-adopted the Arabic script with official Chinese approval. But this Arabic script was very different from the earlier one. The current version is a fully vocalised script." 512. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 4:29:21 PM (1) Oops, yes, Jesus is the penultimate prophet of Islam. Yahya (John the Baptist) is the antepenultimate. 513. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:36:51 PM So the Uighurs invented vowel characters that weren't there in classical (if that's the right term) Arabic? What, if anything, are they derived from? 514. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:40:25 PM About written vowels in Hebrew: they aren't necessarily absent in script, or in block letters either. But fluent speakers just don't use them. They are certainly taught to and used by novices learning the language. 515. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 4:45:47 PM What the Uighurs adopted in the 1980s was the so-called Ottoman Reformed Script, proposed originally for Turkish by scholars allied with the Young Turks early in the 20th century, but never adopted. The ORS got rid of all the Arabic letters which were not necessary in Turkish and introduced new letters for all the vowel sounds present in Turkish but missing in Arabic. For more information, see my remarks here. 516. Andonly - 9/30/2002 4:53:35 PM PE, I wonder if you've ever seen Hebrew tropic notation. At this point I can't recall any longer what it looks like, or even whether it's written above or below the phrases to be sung. But I remember (about 200 years ago, when I had to learn them in preparation for my bat mitzvah) that the notation for Hebrew tropes reminded me of Hebrew vowels. 517. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 4:53:43 PM Message # 514: "About written vowels in Hebrew: they aren't necessarily absent in script, or in block letters either. But fluent speakers just don't use them. They are certainly taught to and used by novices learning the language." 518. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 4:56:11 PM I have always theorised that the word semitic was coined in spite of the fact that the root is Shem because some German Orientalist got confused by the undotted Shin and mistook it for Sin. 519. transient1a - 9/30/2002 5:09:59 PM Nestorius and Nestorianism 520. Andonly - 9/30/2002 5:54:40 PM "Yes, I am aware of that. But vowel markers for learners don't count. Arabic has the same thing: vowel markers are used, but only in dictionaries and the Qur'an." 521. Andonly - 9/30/2002 5:55:26 PM "I have always theorised that the word semitic was coined in spite of the fact that the root is Shem because some German Orientalist got confused by the undotted Shin and mistook it for Sin." 522. pseudoerasmus - 9/30/2002 6:16:10 PM "Most insidious perhaps is the vav that, if it's got a dot next to it, makes the oo sound as in "tool." Ordinarily the vav would be a fucking consonant (V).." 523. RickNelson - 9/30/2002 6:29:52 PM 499 has to be the funniest post I've ever read! 524. RickNelson - 9/30/2002 6:34:20 PM Drool ya'all, my wife made roti chani. 525. Andonly - 9/30/2002 6:38:29 PM "Don't you mean the letter tsadi can represent the /ch/ sound in addition to the normal /ts/ sound?" 526. Andonly - 9/30/2002 6:44:27 PM Actually, wrt to the kaf/khaf (c/ch, k/kh) business, I think what I was remembering was simply the difference between an ordinary and a final k(h)af. (Hebrew has 22 letters plus 5 finals.) 527. Andonly - 9/30/2002 6:45:52 PM "But Hebrew and Arabic have it easy. In Urdu, the V letter can mean /v/, /w/, /o/, /u/, or /au/." 528. Andonly - 9/30/2002 6:46:51 PM Oh, wait, you mean ch, not kh? 529. Andonly - 9/30/2002 6:48:28 PM "tsadi = /ts/ or /ch/ 530. concerned - 9/30/2002 6:49:22 PM Re. 514 - 531. Andonly - 9/30/2002 9:20:34 PM "Religiously, it appears that the Hebrews were a bit more....catholic...than is commonly admitted" 532. RustlerPike - 9/30/2002 11:46:29 PM Ando is talking about khaf which becomes kaf when a dot called a dagesh (emphasis) is placed inside it. 533. RustlerPike - 9/30/2002 11:48:58 PM transient: 534. RustlerPike - 10/1/2002 12:22:40 AM 535. transient1a - 10/1/2002 12:37:37 PM Message # 531 536. transient1a - 10/1/2002 12:38:17 PM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> 537. Andonly - 10/1/2002 1:45:51 PM "Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt -- explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say." 538. Andonly - 10/1/2002 2:49:39 PM Transient, your "Moses" link covers a great deal of ground, much of which I'm familiar with, but a lot of it is entirely speculative and in some instances the author presents as fact things that remain in dispute among Egyptologists. 539. transient1a - 10/1/2002 4:43:44 PM Andonly, 540. transient1a - 10/1/2002 5:14:33 PM A little bit of searching and it appears highly probable that Ahmed Osman is simply a crackpot. 542. RustlerPike - 10/1/2002 10:22:50 PM From a FOX piece: 543. RustlerPike - 10/1/2002 10:25:21 PM Jexster: 544. joezan - 10/1/2002 10:38:21 PM Ahmed Osman? 545. RustlerPike - 10/2/2002 12:00:06 AM joe: 546. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 12:09:45 AM In Turkish, Ottoman is Osmanli. Germans say Osmanisches Reich for the Ottoman Empire. 547. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 12:23:25 AM I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case. The noun lah simply means "god" and is cognate to the Hebrew el. Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god"). 548. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 12:37:07 AM "Arab Christians of all denominations -- Maronites, Catholics, Syrian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox -- use the word Allah to say God. " 549. transient1a - 10/2/2002 10:28:16 AM Message # 547 550. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:44:26 AM I don't know what I am supposed to be wrong about. 551. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:47:24 AM "Allah is the personal name of the One true God." 552. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:48:07 AM ...equivalent to sayING.... 553. transient1a - 10/2/2002 11:14:26 AM pseudoerasmus, 554. transient1a - 10/2/2002 11:21:30 AM Correction: 555. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 12:27:36 PM Transient1a, you are a deeply stupid man. I did NOT argue about the meaning of the word "allah" according to its etymology. I merely cited a simple grammatical fact: the Arabic definite article is al and the Arabic word for "god" is lah. Thus, al lah is grammatically the same phenomenon as al qaedah or al alamein. It is a common noun with a definite article in front of it. This is NOT etymology -- it is grammar. 556. transient1a - 10/2/2002 1:07:44 PM Message # 555 557. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 1:30:32 PM "So what you claim is grammatical is, in fact, etymological." 558. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 1:34:48 PM And the views expressed therein are those of an Islamic foundation based in Saudi Arabia. 559. transient1a - 10/2/2002 2:07:00 PM pseudoerasmus, 560. transient1a - 10/2/2002 2:08:49 PM OOPS. 561. PelleNilsson - 10/2/2002 2:15:41 PM Because you are simply wrong. 562. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 2:20:23 PM Sorry, but references on Arabic grammar and lexicography trump Britannica. And what I said earlier, which is: 563. transient1a - 10/2/2002 2:28:01 PM PelleNilsson, 564. PelleNilsson - 10/2/2002 2:56:33 PM And transient1a bows out, ungraciously. 565. transient1a - 10/2/2002 4:17:55 PM 566. transient1a - 10/2/2002 4:28:26 PM The post referred to should have been: 567. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 4:52:55 PM I repeat: Britannica agrees with me when it says "Allah is Standard Arabic for God". 568. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 5:08:12 PM this phRase 569. JJBiener - 10/2/2002 5:11:24 PM PE - Sputter all you like, but Transient got you on this one. You made the grand pronouncement that Allah is not the proper name of the diety in Islam, and he demonstrated that in fact it is the proper name. Whether the name also translates as "the god" doesn't change the fact that you were wrong. 570. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 5:21:21 PM How did Transient demonstrate that? He hasn't done that at all. 571. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 5:24:41 PM According to Biener and Transient1a, Yemeni Jews and Maronite Christians worship an Islamic deity. 572. transient1a - 10/2/2002 7:12:38 PM pseudoerasmus, 573. transient1a - 10/2/2002 7:18:05 PM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 574. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 8:15:52 PM As I said earlier, Transient has absolutely no discrimination about websites he cites and quotes. In Message # 549, he quoted from some Muslim website of unknown provenance and reliability; and in the same post he had a link to a site run by some Christian lunatic fringe group talking about paranormal experiences. Then in Message # 559 he quoted someone who quotes from Britannica, which didn't really support his case at all.. And now his fourth citation, in Message # 572, is a website of........... 575. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 8:17:04 PM I will add that The Cambridge History of Islam never uses "Allah" and opts always to translate it as "God". This is justified thus: 576. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 8:21:29 PM 577. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 8:21:51 PM Additionally, in English, the only difference between "God", meaning a false God, and "God", meaning the One True God, is the capital "G". In the Arabic alphabet, since it does not have capital letters, the word for God (i.e. Allah) is formed by adding the equivalent to the English word "the" (Al-) to the Arabic word for "God/God" (ilah). So the Arabic word "Allah" literally it means "The God" - the "Al-" in Arabic basically serving the same function as the capital "G" in English. Due to the above mentioned facts, a more accurate translation of the word "Allah" into English might be "The One -and-Only God" or "The One True God". 578. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 8:26:03 PM Those who insist that "Allah" is a name of the deity in Islam -- much like Zeus or Vishnu is a name, as opposed to a word which simply means "God" -- are generally those who wish to deny Islam's links with Judaism and Christianity for ideological reasons. 579. Andonly - 10/2/2002 8:29:58 PM More to the point: 580. Andonly - 10/2/2002 8:32:17 PM Ruling to Disband Association Has Finally Been Published 581. Andonly - 10/2/2002 8:33:02 PM Disseminating the Culture of Peace Does Not Serve the Law 582. Andonly - 10/2/2002 8:33:21 PM "[Ibrahim Yusri] stresses that the [Egyptian] political leadership decided to freeze all forms of normalization except for what could serve the [Palestinian] issue. The activity of the Cairo Association for Peace deviated from this framework, because it calls for a culture of so-called peace at the height of a sweeping tide of blood pouring out onto the land of Palestine." 583. Andonly - 10/2/2002 9:00:27 PM Transient: "Allah is thus a proper name, not derived from anything, and the Al is inseparable from it." 584. Andonly - 10/2/2002 9:01:39 PM Oops, sorry, thats aleph-lamed-YUD-lamed for elil, which probably renders any comparison moot. 585. transient1a - 10/2/2002 9:43:00 PM pseudoeramus, 586. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 9:49:40 PM "So much for no argument over etymology...." 587. transient1a - 10/2/2002 9:51:31 PM Andonly, 588. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 9:52:01 PM On the question of etymology alone, I am now persuaded by this eminently linguistic reasoning that "allah" is not a contraction of "al-ilah": 589. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 9:55:14 PM Let me quote the Al Haramein Foundation of Saudi Arabia once again: 590. transient1a - 10/2/2002 9:55:21 PM pseudoerasmus, 591. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:02:15 PM Well, is "God" a personal name or just a word? 592. transient1a - 10/2/2002 10:20:43 PM pseudoerasmus, 593. transient1a - 10/2/2002 10:24:06 PM Have to go. Probably will not be back until late tomorrow. 594. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:27:57 PM "To me a deity is a deity. God is a deity." 595. pseudoerasmus - 10/2/2002 10:29:09 PM correction: 596. RustlerPike - 10/2/2002 11:15:57 PM Advice: 597. RustlerPike - 10/2/2002 11:34:31 PM The discussion on the meaning of Allah is disconcertingly Nestorian in character. I have no idea what anyone - especially Pe - is trying to prove up there. 598. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 12:18:04 AM It's actually much more down to earth than that. 599. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 4:34:56 AM Allah bless you, Pe. 600. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:36:28 AM But Pseudoerasmus, alilah aside, your quote from Christoph Heger in Message # 588 undermines your contention that Allah tanslates to "the God". For, rather than the first sylable, al, standing for the definite article which I assumed (and you asserted) indicates the uniqueness of the deity in the same way a capital G defines "God", 601. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:40:38 AM Transient, re Message # 587, you are the only person in this forum whose messages to me I find regularly indecipherable. Perhaps the problem extends in both directions, but I don't know how to fix it. 602. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:41:24 AM Unfuck, Eldammit. 603. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:42:58 AM Wrong deity, I guess. YAHWEH! CLOSE ITAL! 604. Andonly - 10/3/2002 10:39:23 AM It seems that in pre-Islamic Arabic, allah meant "god" in its masculine form and allat meant "god" in its feminine form--goddess. The terms allat and alilat both were used to refer to various goddesses, including foreign ones such as Aphrodite and Venus. 605. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:08:02 AM Interestingly, I stumbled on the Hebrew for Elohim's enimatic statement about his identity, "I am that I am." 606. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 11:09:05 AM I'm thinking out loud here: does this mean Al Bundy is not really Al Bundy but just 'the Bundy'? 607. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:13:55 AM Sigh. Once more, with corrections and clarifications: 608. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 11:15:36 AM Ando: 609. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 11:19:02 AM Those passages are so beautiful. 610. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 11:20:56 AM Actually the sneh is a tree, not a bush. 10 points to whoever finds the Latin name and a picture. 611. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:33:20 AM More to suggest "Allah" was the name of a pre-Muslim deity: 612. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:34:48 AM Allah, back in your box, in the name of 613. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:35:51 AM /> Ooh, scary. I typoed right before I tried to write "Yah." Must be a sign. 614. JJBiener - 10/3/2002 11:40:35 AM Here is my contribution to the discussion on the name of God. 615. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:41:32 AM 616. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:47:10 AM Biener, I always liked the ending of that Clarke short story. 617. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 11:56:44 AM Message # 600: "But Pseudoerasmus, alilah aside, your quote from Christoph Heger in Message # 588 undermines your contention that Allah tanslates to "the God"." 618. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 12:01:48 PM Message # 604: "If the name Allah derives from Arabs' polytheistic period, then I don't see why supposing a derivation of al- from El is not preferable to the notion that al in the word "Allah" means "the". 619. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 12:02:31 PM But the question of what root "allah" derives from is moot isn't it since both the Arabic al-'ilah and the Syriac alaha are cognates to el and elohim. 620. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 12:43:49 PM correction: khalq is "creation" not "mercy" 621. jexster - 10/3/2002 1:09:25 PM Operation 'A Matter of Time' was an unmitigated failure. The cabinet … did not succeed in weakening Arafat's status. Indeed, the outcome of the siege, and of the destruction of those Palestinian government buildings that were still standing, was the opposite of what those who dreamed up the operation had intended: Arafat's position was strengthened, at least temporarily. 622. Andonly - 10/3/2002 1:36:50 PM "This last phrase, lil-lahi, occurs in the second line of the Qur'an." 623. Andonly - 10/3/2002 1:45:01 PM "But the question of what root "allah" derives from is moot isn't it since both the Arabic al-'ilah and the Syriac alaha are cognates to el and elohim." 624. JJBiener - 10/3/2002 1:47:51 PM This discussion of whether Allah is a proper name or not is silly. First it is a mistake to claim anything based on the fact that Arab Jews and Christians also describe God as Allah. Ultimately Jews, Christians, and Muslims all worship the same god. They differ in how they perceive God and how they worship that God, but they all fundamentally follow the one, true, all-powerful God. 625. Andonly - 10/3/2002 1:58:27 PM "Yes. But I have now dropped that argument in light of Heger's persuasive derivation." 626. Andonly - 10/3/2002 2:18:42 PM Now, this answers something I was wondering about, which is whether there are actually two L's written in the Arabic spelling of "Allah": 627. Andonly - 10/3/2002 2:20:32 PM The previous excerpt came from this page. 628. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 2:55:00 PM Message # 626: "Now, this answers something I was wondering about, which is whether there are actually two L's written in the Arabic spelling of "Allah": .... If this is so, it indicates still further that Allah was originally El-something, not "the god." 629. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 2:55:58 PM Message # 622: "Yes, but the Quran was written long after the Allah was in use." 630. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 2:56:15 PM Message # 624: But we're saying the same thing, you just don't recognise that. When I said "Allah" is not a personal name of God in Islam in the same way Zeus or Vishnu is, I mean by "personal name" a designator which is to be transliterated but not translated. I have been holding that "Allah" is a translateable word because it refers to the same thing that the word "God", "Dios", "Dieu", etc. refers to in the Jewish and Christian contexts. By contrast, Zeus and Vishnu have no equivalents outside Graeco-Roman and Hindu religions, respectively. Therefore, I reckon these two are personal names while "Allah" is a word. 631. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 2:58:13 PM "Most of our names mean something in one language or another. Then name Alexander is Greek for helper and defender of mankind." 632. JJBiener - 10/3/2002 3:07:50 PM PE - If Allah is not the personal name of God in Islam, what is Allah's name? 633. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 3:12:20 PM Islam holds that God has 99 "names", but they are all translateable attributes like "the compassionate" or "the merciful". 634. JJBiener - 10/3/2002 3:28:27 PM From PE Link: 635. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 3:31:13 PM Clarification to Message # 628: Thus, according to the way it's pointed, the full rendering of the Arabic "Allah", showing both the letters and the markers, is ALLLAH." 636. alistairconnor - 10/3/2002 4:17:53 PM Pseud's definition of Christian sects missed out the Manicheans, probably for the sake of simplicity. 637. JJBiener - 10/3/2002 4:25:32 PM Alistair - I try to stay away from Christiany. Too much sects and virulence. 638. transient1a - 10/3/2002 5:11:27 PM Andonly, 639. transient1a - 10/3/2002 5:24:16 PM pseudoeramus, 640. transient1a - 10/3/2002 5:26:30 PM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 641. Andonly - 10/3/2002 5:50:22 PM "These are reduced to two by Heger's observation that the shadda is a late embellishment." 642. Andonly - 10/3/2002 5:51:00 PM "If "allah" is directly derived from "el" ( instead of first having been borrowed from "alaha" which itself was derived from "el" ), then the /h/ is explicable as a transference of the same phoneme evident in the variant "eloh-", "elohim"." 643. Andonly - 10/3/2002 5:51:15 PM Incidentally, the pointed text you call a "shadda" looks rather like a shin--or, as it is known when it stands for some name or aspect of God I've forgotten, and graces a mezzuzah, a "Shaddai". As in "El-Shaddai". 644. transient1a - 10/3/2002 6:13:14 PM Andonly, 645. transient1a - 10/3/2002 6:43:10 PM JJBiener, 646. Andonly - 10/3/2002 7:18:04 PM Transient, you're bugging me. I took note of your previous reference to your message 585. I ignored it. That is because it said: 647. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 8:39:46 PM In Message # 630 I provided the final and definitive explanation of why "Allah" is not a name of God but is a word meaning "God". The argument does not rely on etymology which, as Transient himself has noted, is not pertinent to meaning, which depends on usage. The usage of the word "Allah" in Arabic is that it is used to mean "God" by Arabic-speaking Jews, Christians and Muslims. 648. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 8:39:54 PM "In Message # 567 pseudoerasmus fabricates the truth to support his contention: 'when an Arab says "Allah" he is well aware that "lah" means "god", as in "false gods" or "pagan gods". 649. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 8:41:56 PM The first plausible connexion between "allah" and "alaha" was made in my quotation of the remarks of Christoph Heger, not in anything Transient said. 650. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 8:56:57 PM Message # 642: "....the Aramaic alaha, which seems to make sense as a forerunner to Allah, is possibly also related to Elohim." 651. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:03:08 PM "According to the Manicheans, Jesus, who was subject, like all of us, to the interplay of heavenly Good and earthly Evil, alternately shat and abstained from shitting. Approaching his death, he attained the final degree of perfection, renouncing meat, sex, and, presumably, defecation. And then he died. There must be a lesson there." 652. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:04:31 PM Andonly, 653. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:05:58 PM Change: state to stated 654. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 9:08:07 PM The /a/ in Arabic is not a long A like the first vowel in "mama", but closer to the American A such as you find in the Americans' pronunciation of "France". That is often the reason the definite article is transliterated "el", as in "El Alamein". 655. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 9:13:02 PM Pustulent keeps ignoring that my Message # 547 contained a two-pronged argument: 656. Andonly - 10/3/2002 9:30:57 PM "I find it inconceivable that it is not related, so I can't understand why you say "possibly also related"." 657. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:32:18 PM pseudoerasmus, 658. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:35:37 PM pseudoerasmus, 659. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:36:15 PM in 'your' head. 660. transient1a - 10/3/2002 9:47:54 PM pseudoerasmus, 661. RustlerPike - 10/3/2002 9:47:58 PM Didn't McGarret use to say "alaha" at the end of every episode of Hawaii Five-O? 662. ronski - 10/3/2002 10:21:34 PM I thought it was "Book 'im, Danno." 663. pseudoerasmus - 10/3/2002 11:13:37 PM Message # 657: "Does this mean you do not read your own quotations? BECAUSE You mentioned the connection between "allah" and "alaha" first in your Message # 577" 664. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:29:51 PM OK. 665. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:30:24 PM (You Jack Lord freaks obviously have sussed out the Hawaiian cop's Aramaic roots.) 666. Andonly - 10/3/2002 11:42:56 PM "In the pointed text, the little mark which looks like a W is the shadda, which indicates that the consonant below it is doubled in pronunciation. The little line above the shadda is the vowel marker for short A. The other other line at the end is the vowel marker for short U." 667. transient1a - 10/3/2002 11:59:34 PM pseudoeramus, 668. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 12:26:25 AM ronski: 669. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:49:27 AM Message # 664: For the Aramaic "alaha" to get to the Hebrew "Elohim" seems to require two things. 670. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:50:44 AM Second is appendage of the plural suffix -im. 671. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 1:22:33 AM Message # 667: In other words, you are trying to win this argument through semantics, i.e., by muddying and obscuring the distinction between "name" and "word" (or between what English teachers call "proper noun" and "common noun"). According to your reasoning, the English word "God" is also a name of the supreme deity. 672. Andonly - 10/4/2002 1:22:56 AM Pike: "The Hebrew for God's statement is not at all what you wrote. It is ehyeh asher ehyeh - 'I shall be what I shall be', or, in Popeye's words, 'I yam what I yam'." 673. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 1:26:36 AM I've been using the word "thus" far too often. Thus, I will try to stop henceforth. 674. Andonly - 10/4/2002 1:33:37 AM "Languages typically borrow a lexeme but not the rules of inflexion governing that class of lexeme. Thus, in Arabic, the word for 'student' is talib and its plural is tulub. But when non-Arabs borrowed this word, they just took talib and applied their own languages' rules of pluralisation." 675. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 1:43:39 AM "Yes, I know, that's just my point: if the imported word were alah or alaha, Hebrew speakers would have employed their own pluralization rules to produce "alahot," not "elohim". So it must first have been changed to sound like "Eloh." 676. Andonly - 10/4/2002 1:46:33 AM I'm tired. Thus, anon, and henceforth until morning, I shall be sleeping... in my bed... which is not hither... but rather, being up the stairs, thither. 677. Andonly - 10/4/2002 2:07:57 AM "But if there was borrowing, it would almost have to be from Hebrew to Aramaic, since Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic as the speech of Jews and that would have introduced many Hebrew words into Aramaic." 678. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 2:32:26 AM Over and anon, Ando. 679. stostosto - 10/4/2002 5:22:18 AM Insh al'ilah. 680. stostosto - 10/4/2002 5:25:32 AM Al 'ilah is a concept by which we measure our pain. 681. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 6:32:07 AM Explain that one please, o norseman. 682. stostosto - 10/4/2002 6:41:19 AM Rustler, 683. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 7:12:09 AM Ah - the friend of Bul Makarti? 684. stostosto - 10/4/2002 8:11:39 AM Ah - the friend of Bul Makarti 685. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 9:07:56 AM But they kicked out drummer Bita Ibn Basta, first. And then they were discovered by Harun Ibn al-Satun, and producer Harij Mart al-'Un. Yes? 686. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 9:22:18 AM Rustler, why does Hebrew call Greece "Yavan"? 687. TabouliJones - 10/4/2002 9:26:25 AM On the recommendation of Andonly (or, was it, stostoso?) I just picked up Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. I have only read about 10 pages, but it looks like it will be an excellent, comprehensive, history of the Six Day War and its repercussions. If I get a chance I will attempt a review and summary of it in here or the book thread when I am done. 688. Wombat - 10/4/2002 9:35:55 AM Benny Morris wrote an excellent history of the Arab-Zionist (Israeli) interaction from pre Israel to post-first Intifada. He was one of the first, and probably the best of the "revisionist" school of Israeli historians that has swept away some of Israel's founding myths. 689. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 9:38:21 AM If I am not mistaken, Vav or Waw also serves as the vowel /o/. (This is paralleled in Arabic.) So perhaps Yavan or Yawan was originally pronounced Yon but the original pronunciation was forgotten under the influence of the written language. Classical texts would of course not have been vocalised, so it's not difficult to imagine that the original pronunciation was lost and the Vav was read as a V. I am encouraged in this belief by the spelling of "Zion": Tsadi, Yud, Vav, Nun. 690. TabouliJones - 10/4/2002 9:38:49 AM Thanks Wombat. Suggestions noted. 691. stostosto - 10/4/2002 9:42:08 AM (or, was it, stostoso?) 692. transient1a - 10/4/2002 9:42:32 AM pseudoerasmus, 693. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 9:47:20 AM So you do or do not recognise a distinction between "proper noun" and "common noun"? 694. stostosto - 10/4/2002 9:47:59 AM A god forbid that transient1 succeeds in prolonging this debate. 695. stostosto - 10/4/2002 9:48:56 AM (Or should I say "the transient 1"? 696. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 9:49:37 AM Tabouli, a recommendation: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Making of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin. 697. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 9:50:25 AM Yes, there is irony in the moniker "Transient1a" since he gives indelible impressions of permanence.... 698. stostosto - 10/4/2002 9:51:42 AM Pseud, 699. Wombat - 10/4/2002 9:55:13 AM In reading Van Creveld, I was struck--again--at how inappropriate Israel's current defense structure is for dealing with the threats they face. 700. Wombat - 10/4/2002 9:56:39 AM The Fromkin book is excellent. 701. transient1a - 10/4/2002 10:07:51 AM pseudoerasmus, 702. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 10:12:45 AM Message # 698: I do not know anything about Turkish attitudes toward Jews except from what I read -- the question has never really come up in my personal experience of Turks or Turkey. 703. TabouliJones - 10/4/2002 10:14:11 AM PE, 704. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 10:15:13 AM 705. Wombat - 10/4/2002 10:29:12 AM The Turkish and Israeli governments have close ties in the area of defense (much to the chagrin of the Arab world). PE will correct me if I am wrong, but when the head of the last Islamic Party governing coalition proposed downgrading Turkish-Israeli relations, a delegation from the military visited him and warned that it would be ill-advised to do so. 706. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 10:31:16 AM Ah. Nowadays one speed-reads two or three threads on the Mote, lacking time or energy to post anything of any length or relevance. 707. stostosto - 10/4/2002 10:31:56 AM Pseuder, 708. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 10:32:10 AM Transient, 709. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 10:38:01 AM Sto, 710. stostosto - 10/4/2002 11:01:54 AM marj, 711. Andonly - 10/4/2002 11:12:29 AM Tabouli, I will be interested in learning what you thought of "Six Days...". 712. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 11:20:49 AM Heikal is also the author of a book on Sadat's assassination, which argues that he was killed not because of the peace treaty with Israel -- as is the conventional wisdom in the West -- but because it was the Islamists' opening gambit to destroy the hated Nasserite secular-socialist regime (which was continued by Sadat). Of course the Islamists opposed the treaty also, but that was incidental to their motivation, according to Heikal. 713. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 11:29:04 AM Sto, 714. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 11:43:23 AM Marzipranks just invited Transient to start pleading once again for the Khazar theory for the origins of the Ashkenazim. 715. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 11:48:41 AM "Marzipranks just invited Transient to start pleading once again for the Khazar theory for the origins of the Ashkenazim. " 716. marjoribanks - 10/4/2002 11:50:28 AM I want to see that genetic survey about Pashtuns. 717. Andonly - 10/4/2002 11:50:34 AM Sto, I'm not terribly clear on the chief sources of Jews who settled in Russia, but I'm under the impression that Jews ultimately were settled in most parts of the Islamic empire, so surely some migrated to Russia from the east and via the Slavic countries. 718. Andonly - 10/4/2002 11:53:42 AM "The review essay begins with the fascinating observation that one of the conspirators in the assassination plot, after he was arrested, declared "I have killed Pharoah" in front of the media." 719. Andonly - 10/4/2002 11:58:55 AM "By the way, a recent genetic study of Pakistani populations has found no evidence for the folkloric claim that Pashtuns are descended, in part, from Jews." 720. TabouliJones - 10/4/2002 12:00:21 PM Andonly, 721. stostosto - 10/4/2002 12:06:22 PM Thanks, Ando, that timeline is very informative given my level of knowledge. 722. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 12:10:34 PM Pseudo: 723. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:10:59 PM From the Abstract: 724. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:11:39 PM From the text: 725. JJBiener - 10/4/2002 12:21:12 PM Sto - Try Paul Johnson's History of the Jews. 726. ronski - 10/4/2002 12:23:20 PM What language or languages do the Makrani speak? 727. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:28:26 PM The Makranis speak Baluchi, but they are the descendants of African slaves. Oman used to have a colonial enclave in Pakistani Baluchistan along the Makron coast, Gwadar, and the predominant population of Gwadar is Makrani (apart from recent migrants). 728. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 12:28:54 PM Makran, not Makron... 729. transient1a - 10/4/2002 2:26:43 PM pseudoerasmus, 730. transient1a - 10/4/2002 2:27:50 PM Why red? 731. transient1a - 10/4/2002 2:29:20 PM Oh. I know what happened. Sorry. 732. transient1a - 10/4/2002 2:33:27 PM Easier to read: 733. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 3:28:13 PM ALLAH is the proper name of God among Muslims, corresponding in usage to Jehovah (Jahweh) among the Hebrews...." 734. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 3:32:57 PM REPOST 735. transient1a - 10/4/2002 3:45:34 PM pseudoerasmus, 736. transient1a - 10/4/2002 3:46:30 PM Ouch; 737. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 3:48:09 PM Come to think of it, one of the most famous phrases in Islam, bismillahi.... (In the name of God) is a contraction of: 738. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 3:55:07 PM "Some people, who are not Muslims, may have been brought up in a culture where they are taught that their 'God' and Allah are sufficiently close in properties that the two words are interchangeable. Think about custom -- or, if you want, characteristic sociolinguistic properties." 739. transient1a - 10/4/2002 4:01:26 PM pseudoerasmus, 740. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 4:10:57 PM Transient, you are trying to pull a fast one. In response to my point that Christian Arabs say "Allah", you replied: 741. transient1a - 10/4/2002 4:36:28 PM pseudoerasmus, 742. transient1a - 10/4/2002 4:43:29 PM pseudoeramus, 743. transient1a - 10/4/2002 4:49:37 PM Change: with to within 744. Andonly - 10/4/2002 4:55:00 PM "Well, as I have already told you, Arab Christians, who are not Muslims, have been brought up in a language where the only word for God is Allah." 745. Andonly - 10/4/2002 4:55:20 PM You have admitted yourself that usage, not etymology, determines words' definitions. All people of the Abrahamic faiths who are half awake know that God has many names. Why ordinary folk should believe that "God" and "Allah" are not proper names in the languages they happen to speak, I can't imagine. 746. Andonly - 10/4/2002 5:01:03 PM (By the way, when I speak of "ordinary folk", I do not mean people who spend ungodly amounts of time sweating the name of the Deity in online forums, but rather, trailer trash from Fort Worth, illiterate Islamists from Peshawar, and people from France.) 747. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 5:16:41 PM Message # 741: 748. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 5:27:42 PM #744, #745 749. pseudoerasmus - 10/4/2002 5:36:50 PM Fanatical Muslims will never say "God" or "Dieu" even when speaking English or French because they don't think holy words and holy texts should ever be translated. Fanatics in Pakistan "confiscate" bilingual editions of the Qur'an and "retire" them (bury them). I'm sure they would like to burn them but they can't burn the Arabic part, so they give the books a "burial". 750. Andonly - 10/4/2002 6:45:52 PM "So this whole issue should be thought of as "should 'Allah' be rendered as 'God' in translation from Arabic into English"?" 751. Andonly - 10/4/2002 6:46:15 PM Me: "...the descriptive term "Allah," which in Arabic usage means "the one and only god," becomes in common parlance the proper name of God for Arabs, just as "God" becomes the proper name of God for Anglophones." 752. Andonly - 10/4/2002 6:52:50 PM De-Yiddishizing and clarification: 753. Andonly - 10/4/2002 6:53:16 PM Fuck a duck and delete the last not. 754. Andonly - 10/4/2002 6:59:01 PM "Fanatical Muslims will never say "God" or "Dieu" even when speaking English or French because they don't think holy words and holy texts should ever be translated. Fanatics in Pakistan "confiscate" bilingual editions of the Qur'an and "retire" them (bury them). I'm sure they would like to burn them but they can't burn the Arabic part, so they give the books a "burial"." 755. RustlerPike - 10/4/2002 7:14:36 PM ronski: 756. Andonly - 10/4/2002 9:02:51 PM But is that "Andole-a," as in "the Andole"; or "Andoleah," a masculininzed form of "Leah" with the /r/ in andro- mysteriously dropped; or an-d'olea, meaning, "pertaining to that which is of oil"? 757. Andonly - 10/4/2002 10:54:09 PM "Lewis also observes that while the left-wing Egyptian intelligentsia was opposed to the peace treaty with Israel, the Egyptian masses were in favour. Which if true, means there's been a big change in attitude since the late 70s /early 80s." 758. RustlerPike - 10/5/2002 12:34:05 AM Andullahi: 759. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 4:45:18 AM Message # 746: Andonly, "illiterate Islamists", even in Peshawar, is virtually a contradiction in terms. 760. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 4:57:17 AM Message # 750: "Fair enough. But surely the answer will depend on a given translator's intentions, which one would hope would surrender to the preponderance of usage. But if not, who is a prescriptivist to say that the rendering of Allah as Allah in languages not Arabic is incorrect? It might be deliberate and politically motivated, or simply chauvinist, but that in itself would not make it wrong as translation, if you follow me." 761. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 5:01:32 AM Message # 741: "The Christian God and the Jewish God have, at least some, different characteristics... Yet in English speaking 'Christian' countries, many Jews use the word God. And, perhaps, after, say, 100 years of living in the US or UK it would not be unreasonble for those Moslems to also use the word 'God'. But, just as the Jews are aware that there are significant differences between the Jewish God and the Christian God, so the Moslem would realize that their God is different. This is the phenomenon which you seem to find so puzzling that you wish, in some way, to reflect it in the classification of the word for designating the name of the deity. However, culture and custom do not necessarily follow clear logical rules." 762. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 5:03:17 AM Message # 742: "When a serious schism occurs [within] a religious society which of the two divergent sects gets the 'logical' right to keep the name of deity." 763. transient1a - 10/5/2002 7:20:28 AM pseudoerasmus, 764. transient1a - 10/5/2002 7:26:44 AM >>>>>>>>>>>> 765. transient1a - 10/5/2002 7:32:57 AM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> 766. transient1a - 10/5/2002 7:33:26 AM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> 767. transient1a - 10/5/2002 8:14:41 AM pseudoerasmus, 768. PelleNilsson - 10/5/2002 10:38:33 AM transient's #763-67 are a massive demonstration of obscurantism. What does it all mean? Nobody knows, except (possibly) transient himself. 769. transient1a - 10/5/2002 11:07:27 AM PelleNilsson, 770. PelleNilsson - 10/5/2002 11:16:52 AM 1. I think PE is correct in this matter. 771. transient1a - 10/5/2002 11:29:58 AM PelleNilsson, 772. Andonly - 10/5/2002 12:58:57 PM Pelle, 773. Andonly - 10/5/2002 1:01:28 PM It might be worth noting for some reason that the proper name of the document from which that reference is drawn is "The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, Phase II" 774. Andonly - 10/5/2002 1:05:15 PM "I suspect that what motivates transient to exhibit his flawed mental acrobatics in public is a refusal to acknowledge that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same supernatural entity." 775. Andonly - 10/5/2002 1:08:06 PM "If you sit real close you can get an occasional glimpse of his varicose veined scrotum - looks like a third knee, with pubes dyed pink - from under his galabiya!" 776. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 2:33:09 PM What Transient linked to was not a work of descriptive linguistics, but a KEY to the abbreviations and terminology used in the scholarly annotations in a corpus of Middle English texts. 777. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 2:41:44 PM Transient1a is still arguing without the least reference to the translatability issue. A "proper noun" and a "common noun" are not just some arbitrary terms; they must have some correlation with a distinction in the reality of usage. And the usage I've pointed to is this: common nouns are usually translated between languages, proper nouns are not usually translated. As I said before, Mexican newspapers say "Bush", not "Zarza", in reference to the occupant of the White House. So if the "God" of the Hebrew- 778. transient1a - 10/5/2002 3:19:49 PM pseudoerasmus, 779. transient1a - 10/5/2002 3:44:00 PM psuedoerasmus, 780. transient1a - 10/5/2002 3:45:11 PM Ouch: a source they can check. 781. RustlerPike - 10/5/2002 3:57:15 PM God is an omniscient and omnipotent noun. 782. transient1a - 10/5/2002 4:05:19 PM RustlerPike, 783. stostosto - 10/5/2002 4:26:41 PM Re: Message # 755 784. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 10:00:33 PM What style manuals like "The Handbook of Current English" say is irrelevant because these are written -- never by linguists -- but by teachers, editors and others with an interest in prescribing and promoting an authoritative standard for "correct usage" in language. Thus, such books say that grammatical phenomena like ain't are "incorrect". 785. pseudoerasmus - 10/5/2002 10:01:43 PM Those toponyms which do get translated refer to old and well-known geographical entities whose names have an ancient and classical pedigree in the languages in question. Thus, since Egypt has been known as Egypt in the west for thousands of years, the name is not about to get changed to Masr (the Arabic word for Egypt). But geographical entities which are new or recently become known, almost never get translated. Bolivia is Bolivia is Bolivia in any language, albeit with a few phonological adaptations to account for those sounds which do not exist in some languages (such as L in Japanese). 786. Andonly - 10/5/2002 10:57:40 PM "What Transient linked to was not a work of descriptive linguistics, but a KEY to the abbreviations and terminology used in the scholarly annotations in a corpus of Middle English texts." 787. RustlerPike - 10/5/2002 11:27:51 PM sto: 788. RustlerPike - 10/6/2002 1:57:28 AM Hey guys, here's a death clock. 789. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/2002 4:35:01 AM Pseudus is the late-mediaeval translator of the Neo-Platonist works of the crypto-Jewish Muslim convert al-Anaduli, while Anti-Pseudus was Pseudus's Neo-Aristolelian opponent in the debates held in Ravenna between Byzantine and Rome church theologians over the personhood of the Islamic Allah. 790. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/2002 4:37:14 AM "in common usage endorsed as a matter of course by linguists, God is a proper noun. He then brings up the Handbook of Current English, which, however prescriptivist it may be, is also an indicator of standard usage, and lists God as a proper noun." 791. PincherMartin - 10/6/2002 5:58:38 AM PE -- 792. PincherMartin - 10/6/2002 5:59:33 AM transliterated 793. transient1a - 10/6/2002 9:41:55 AM pseudoeramus, 794. transient1a - 10/6/2002 10:29:37 AM God as a proper name: 795. transient1a - 10/6/2002 10:40:47 AM Just to fair. 796. Andonly - 10/6/2002 10:45:35 AM I've just recalled another glaring instance of the word "God" being treated quite unambiguously as a proper noun. 797. Andonly - 10/6/2002 10:54:26 AM Transient, your Message # 795 excerpt is advocacy crap. 798. transient1a - 10/6/2002 11:13:23 AM Andonly, 799. Andonly - 10/6/2002 2:56:47 PM "If you went to the URL's, you would see that my last two posts were from the Catholic Encyclopedia." 800. RustlerPike - 10/6/2002 3:39:52 PM (God allahmighty, when will it stop?) 801. PelleNilsson - 10/6/2002 3:45:05 PM And when will somebody post something on topic? Why don't you give it a try Rustler? Let's see something about the new settlements that are reportedly going up and your views on them. 802. RustlerPike - 10/6/2002 3:54:41 PM What new settlements? I remember reading something a week or so ago, about a new settlement somewhere. 803. robertjayb - 10/6/2002 3:55:24 PM Yes, please. 804. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/2002 10:30:55 PM In English and other languages written in the Roman, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets where the concept of "capitalisation" exists, a "proper noun" is distinguished from other nouns only according to one standard: they are capitalised regardless of their location in the sentence. This standard is obviously meaningless in those languages where the very phenomenon of capitalisation does not and cannot exist; and in the past it was meaningless even in languages using Roman, Cyrillic and Greek alphabets since small-case letters are a relatively late innovation. Greeks and Romans wrote in all capitals. (In German, all nouns are always capitalised, so this standard is also totally meaningless.) 805. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/2002 10:31:27 PM Message # 791: "How did the Romans speak of Zeus and the other Greek Gods in Latin? In English, when speaking of the Roman deities, we refer to Zeus as Jupiter, Hermes as Mercury, Hera as Juno, etc. Is this distinction maintained in Latin when speaking of the Greek gods? Or are those Greek names tranliterated into Latin as you earlier argued?" 806. pseudoerasmus - 10/6/2002 10:32:23 PM Message # 793: "I think your attempt to reclassify proper nouns was misguided." 807. transient1a - 10/6/2002 11:36:32 PM pseudoerasmus, 808. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 1:32:22 AM Pe: 809. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 6:09:10 AM 810. transient1a - 10/7/2002 6:29:09 AM pseudoerasmus, 811. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 6:45:20 AM I did not put forward my own method of classification. 812. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 6:56:08 AM For the sake of bringing this discussion about common & proper nouns to an end, I will modify my original claim to "In English, the Arabic word 'Allah' is to be translated as 'God', just as 'Saint Peter' is translated from English to French as 'Saint Pierre' and as Moses (the historical person) is translated from English to Arabic as Musa". As I said, my primary concern is translation, not categories of grammar. 813. transient1a - 10/7/2002 7:41:21 AM pseudoerasmus, 814. transient1a - 10/7/2002 7:49:24 AM Oops: neither new nor novel 815. Andonly - 10/7/2002 9:43:52 AM That ice skating cartoon was hilarious, if slightly overconfident. 816. Andonly - 10/7/2002 10:08:33 AM Sto: "I seriously think I need to dig up some foundation-laying reading." 817. Andonly - 10/7/2002 11:05:50 AM Poking around a bit in search of references to this Christoph Heger guy, whom I'm beginning to find quite interesting, I located a discussion of his, of a Koranic surah, whose traditional meaning he challenges to argue that the verse has its origins in Christian theology. 818. Andonly - 10/7/2002 11:19:41 AM But here is a meta-refutation of Heger , which characterizes his explanation of Surah 25 as "missionary." 819. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 11:22:11 AM Ando: 820. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 11:23:16 AM People: 821. Andonly - 10/7/2002 11:41:10 AM Actually, the refutation of Heger is in some respects very strong. 822. Andonly - 10/7/2002 11:43:10 AM "Fruitcake" means "crazy". I'm guessing you mean "fruit," and who cares. 823. ronski - 10/7/2002 11:48:09 AM Rustler, 824. concerned - 10/7/2002 11:50:11 AM Re. 820 - 825. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 12:05:52 PM ronski: 826. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 2:17:45 PM Message # 813: "The concept that words can be translated from one language to another is neither new or novel." 827. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 2:23:24 PM Thus, there is a quality to the word Allah which is different from the quality in names such as Vishnu or Apollo or George Bush. As I said earlier, "George Bush" is rendered "George Bush" in Mexican newspapers, not "Jorge Zarza". The fact that Arabic-speaking Christians say "Allah" is analogous with saying "Jorge Zarza" in Spanish for the occupant of the White House. I've said all this before. 828. Jenerator - 10/7/2002 2:28:46 PM Andonly, 829. Andonly - 10/7/2002 2:42:27 PM Jenerator, I don't have any recommendations for books about sharia, sorry. 830. stostosto - 10/7/2002 3:49:54 PM There will never be sharia in Bahìa 831. stostosto - 10/7/2002 3:59:32 PM Fourteen Palestinians dead in Gaza. 832. transient1a - 10/7/2002 7:10:44 PM pseudoerasmus, 833. transient1a - 10/7/2002 7:12:52 PM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> 834. transient1a - 10/7/2002 7:20:40 PM Ouch 835. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:32:46 PM Look at Israeli Attacks 836. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 7:41:48 PM Message # 832: "What! The discussion centered on was English -- until you just tried to switch the topic. But that's one of the problems you just keep changing the topic." 837. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:43:21 PM Raid reckless...U.N. 838. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:49:18 PM Hamas vows revenge... 839. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:51:20 PM .....The four-hour raid was the deadliest against the Palestinians in three months and besides the dead, 25 of the injured were in critical condition, doctors said. Most suffered shrapnel wounds in the head, chest and abdomen. The dead ranged in age from 14 to 52. 840. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:53:55 PM ...Abdeen said as troops withdrew, he heard helicopters. ''A big explosion lifted me and blew me 30 feet away,'' he said. 841. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:57:01 PM ...Last month, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat appealed for an end to attacks against Israeli civilians. But a few days later Islamic militants staged a pair of suicide bombings that killed seven Israelis, prompting a 10-day Israeli siege of Arafat's West Bank headquarters. 842. robertjayb - 10/7/2002 7:59:02 PM ... In other developments Monday: 843. transient1a - 10/7/2002 8:07:31 PM pseudoerasmus, 844. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 8:44:32 PM In Message # 843 the Transient Pustule deliberately quotes me incompletely. My original statement in Message # 547 made two points, (1) about the morphology of the word "allah" in Arabic; and (2) the use of the word "allah" by Arabophone Jews and Christians. I publically and openly abandoned approach #1 when I learnt -- on my own -- that although the morphology of "allah" as "al + (i)lah" was widely held to be true (including by sources Transient has cited), I realised it was probably wrong. So then I stuck exclusively to arguing #2 and what that means. 845. Andonly - 10/7/2002 9:02:25 PM How does "arcana" translate into venutian, excuse me, Venutian? 846. transient1a - 10/7/2002 9:07:30 PM pseudoeramus, 847. pseudoerasmus - 10/7/2002 9:48:17 PM "The point is that if there was only language in the world you would claim that "Venus" is a proper noun." 848. arkymalarky - 10/7/2002 9:58:21 PM OK now? 849. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 10:32:55 PM OK now? 850. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 10:33:38 PM Now? 851. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 10:37:08 PM This should do it. 852. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 10:39:53 PM The lazy brown fox jumped over the quick white rabbit. 853. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 10:41:43 PM OK guys, any further posting on the names of God will be moved to Religion, so help me Vishnu. 854. transient1a - 10/7/2002 11:35:43 PM pseudoerasmus, 855. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 11:41:42 PM I found this article in the NYT tremendously enlightening. 856. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 11:44:04 PM transient: 857. RustlerPike - 10/7/2002 11:48:37 PM Well, that's my guess then. 858. Wombat - 10/8/2002 7:11:14 AM Rustler: 859. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 8:16:18 AM Well, then, my guess is maybe chemical Katyushas from the Hizbullah, too. 860. ronski - 10/8/2002 8:48:03 AM Pike, 861. TabouliJones - 10/8/2002 9:28:34 AM Speaking of which, the current newstand edition of The New Yorker is running the first part of a two part series on the Hizbollah. I have read the first part; which is quite good, albeit meandering in the typical New Yorker style. The point the article seems to be building to is that the Hizbollah is the greatest terrorist menace in operation today. This point has yet to be fully substantiated in the article; but, like I said, it is a two parter. Regardless, there are plenty of interesting details about hateful Hizbollah rhetoric and doctrine, especially as espoused on its television channel (the name of which escapes me, sorry); Syria's control of Lebanon and the volatility in the area in general. 862. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 10:23:28 AM Can you guys hear this? 863. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 10:29:47 AM It's a sermon by Rabbi Haim Druckman. I never listened to something like that. 864. ronski - 10/8/2002 10:40:43 AM I can hear it. I can't understand it, of course. What's he saying? Something about Iraq, yes? 865. TabouliJones - 10/8/2002 10:48:53 AM Pike, 866. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 10:54:21 AM It's actually quite fascinating. 867. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 11:00:44 AM ronski, tj: 868. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 11:05:54 AM A short-lived, short-range, small scale incursion - maybe. Air strikes -probably. Commando raids - probably. A reoccupation - I doubt it. 869. TabouliJones - 10/8/2002 11:27:29 AM Rustler, 870. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 11:38:10 AM Tabouli, 871. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 11:40:20 AM Finally, there is considerably more religious freedom in Syria than in any number of close-by countries. You can read William Dalrymple's excellent From the Holy Mountain for details. 872. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 11:42:11 AM Also, it should be noted that there has been a marked increase in behind-the-scenes collaboration between the Syrians and the US in the past year, a development that seems to be a big part of the reason Bush left off that country from his Axis of Evil. The Syrians are currently torturing Al Qaeda suspects on behalf of the Yanks as you may or may not know. 873. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 11:43:47 AM 4) above should be read to mean that the domestic religious right in Israel is more influential than its equivalents in the named countries (also Jordan and Lebanon). 874. TabouliJones - 10/8/2002 11:47:52 AM Okay, Syria is probably a bad example; and I am using the term Islamist too loosely, I am sure. 875. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 11:52:38 AM I don't understand why you are using the word caliph. It's a useless term, there is no caliph and there has not been one for roughly 100 years. 876. PelleNilsson - 10/8/2002 12:01:17 PM Tabouli 877. TabouliJones - 10/8/2002 12:04:49 PM marjori, 878. PelleNilsson - 10/8/2002 12:07:56 PM X-post with marj. However, the caliphat was not abolished 100 years ago but 78 years ago, in 1924. 879. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:10:23 PM Tabouli, 880. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:10:39 PM Marzipranks's citation of Dalrymple is ridiclous. Why does he always cite fucking travel writers? Syria comes out looking good in Dalrymple because while the Turks have essentially effaced the traces of ancient Christian presence from Anatolia, Syria abounds in things Christian. 881. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:13:16 PM (Besides, Turkish objections to Christians were not their Christianity, it was their Greekness and Armenian-ness which implied disloyalty to the Turkish state. The Assyrians, the third major Christian ethnic group in Anatolia, have been untouched.) 882. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:14:44 PM What are you, Pseuder, a Turk apologist? 883. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:17:07 PM I may start referring to Pseuder as Kemal Ourturkapologist from now on. 884. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:17:49 PM How about Kemal Aturkapologist? 885. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:25:06 PM No, Marzipranks completely misrepresents things. 886. concerned - 10/8/2002 12:26:48 PM Why does he always cite fucking travel writers? 887. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:27:36 PM religious freedom today. 888. Andonly - 10/8/2002 12:27:48 PM "This bloke is a progressive person in most matters, for instance he was far more amenable to the UN's Population Summit's findings a decade ago than was the Pope or the American fundies." 889. Andonly - 10/8/2002 12:32:17 PM [I confess to being with the reactionary mullahs on the matter of importing American game show TV into adolescent societies.] 890. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:32:30 PM No, I am not being a Turk apologist. 891. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:34:29 PM Two facts: 892. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:35:51 PM If we rewrote Dalrymple's book with a focus on the Jews of the Middle East, the Turks would come out looking like pretty good and the Syrians like evil villains. 893. Fielding - 10/8/2002 12:37:59 PM 894. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:40:41 PM It should also be noted that the remaining Jews in Syria after 1948 then fled almost en masse after the Madrid Conference in the early 90's. They now live, apparently again en masse, in Brooklyn where their restaurants have markedly improved the ME fare available on Atlantic Avenue. 895. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:44:36 PM Another fact: 896. PelleNilsson - 10/8/2002 12:44:39 PM Jordan is also very tolerant towards its Christians. King Hussein made a point of visiting one or the other of the patriarchs at Christmas and Easter, and several new churches went up while I lived there. I don't know if Abdullah continues the tradition but I would expect he does. 897. Wombat - 10/8/2002 12:46:26 PM Fielding: 898. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:49:15 PM Message # 891: "...Syria enjoys a degree of religious freedom today that is quite unlike many of its neighbors." 899. concerned - 10/8/2002 12:49:18 PM Jordan is also very tolerant towards its Christians. 900. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:50:24 PM 300 not 300 901. Andonly - 10/8/2002 12:54:01 PM "Sheikh Tantawi is indeed quite progressive on most matters, quite unlike the mullahs and imams of popular American imagination." 902. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:54:28 PM "You want to get married not under the strictures of the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel? Too bad - go to Cyprus. That is a great deal more influence than the Muslim religious right has on marriage in Syria." 903. Andonly - 10/8/2002 12:57:25 PM "The religious right also plays a disprortionate role in Israeli politics. It is an unhealthy situation, that cries out for separation of powers, as in the US." 904. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:57:32 PM Look, compare the rights of Christians in Syria or Turkey or even Iraq, to the rights of these religionists in Saudi Arabia - good and valuable US ally -and you will have some reason for pause. 905. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 12:58:36 PM I thought even India, for all its secularism, allows its own Muslims to be governed by Muslim personal law. In the Shah Bano case, the Indian civil courts awarded alimony to a Muslim woman, which caused orthodox Muslims to protest. The Indian government placated orthodox opinion by passing a law which literally made sharia provisions on divorce the personal law for Indian Muslims. 906. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 12:59:54 PM Actually, Israel and Syria have precisely the same policy on the question of marriage and divorce. 907. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 1:00:33 PM Message # 904: "Look, compare the rights of Christians in Syria or Turkey or even Iraq, to the rights of these religionists in Saudi Arabia...." 908. pseudoerasmus - 10/8/2002 1:02:17 PM Message # 906: "Kindly acquaint yourself with the differences in the modern Jewish observance." 909. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 1:04:07 PM The last sentence on India isn't quite right. But yes, India does allow Muslim personal law to apply to adherents. 910. Andonly - 10/8/2002 1:10:32 PM PE, Spanks is saying that the Orths have a stranglehold on Jewish personal law, whereas Jews in Israel are not even predominantly Orth. 911. Fielding - 10/8/2002 1:10:47 PM Wombat: 912. Wombat - 10/8/2002 1:14:45 PM Andonly: 913. Wombat - 10/8/2002 1:16:44 PM Fielding: 914. Andonly - 10/8/2002 3:55:05 PM On the subject of Israeli Jews having to bend to Orthodox custom when marrying, I don't know that this presents any great hardship, unless the couple is interfaith or has a political objection to the Orths (in which case they do go to Cyprus, which can't be more than an hour or two away). 915. concerned - 10/8/2002 7:27:02 PM Top Iranian Cleric slams Falwell, stops short of Fatwa 916. ronski - 10/8/2002 7:58:40 PM Stops short of fatwa? 917. marjoribanks - 10/8/2002 8:09:34 PM Having read all of Twain's report of his journey around the world on lecture tour (especially paying attention to the bit that includes the Orient), I feel confident in saying the following: 918. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 10:44:54 PM Marj, 919. joezan - 10/8/2002 10:46:27 PM Twain, iirc, was agnostic. 920. joezan - 10/8/2002 10:48:05 PM ..certainly not religious, by any stretch. 921. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 11:04:31 PM This comparison of the Israel religious right with a supposed Arab religious right presupposes that there is any kind of democracy in the Arab countries. There is none, and there is, therefore, no 'right' - or left for that matter. The various Arab regimes are either secular or semi-religious or religious. The masses are increasingly militant and religious. The goverments face the danger of revolution if they disregard the masses' emotional state too blatantly. There is, however, no coalition that could be fractured by this or that decision or pronouncement, and there is no free press or electorate to fear. 922. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 11:04:58 PM >>> 923. RustlerPike - 10/8/2002 11:10:54 PM Joe: 924. TabouliJones - 10/9/2002 8:53:49 AM Thanks Pike and all others who responded to my original question. 925. marjoribanks - 10/9/2002 9:14:54 AM Spike, 926. marjoribanks - 10/9/2002 9:22:58 AM My grandfather had the following passage memorized, and I always read it fondly: 927. RustlerPike - 10/9/2002 11:46:19 AM Marj: 928. RustlerPike - 10/9/2002 12:13:46 PM I hate myself and want to die. 929. marjoribanks - 10/9/2002 12:27:33 PM Oh geez, Spike. 930. Andonly - 10/9/2002 1:38:53 PM "What a fucking pussy!" 931. Andonly - 10/9/2002 1:51:24 PM Wombat: "FYI, my marriage (reform Jewish) would not be recognized in Israel." 932. Andonly - 10/9/2002 1:54:33 PM 933. JJBiener - 10/9/2002 1:56:57 PM I think the fundies need to read their history a little more. The Jews haven't survived 4000 years in the face of numerous attempts at genocide by being some group's third act. The Jews will still be here when Christianity takes its well deserved place on the scrap heap of history. 934. Andonly - 10/9/2002 3:59:20 PM "The Jews will still be here when Christianity takes its well deserved place on the scrap heap of history." 935. Andonly - 10/9/2002 4:01:11 PM Who recognize "Krishna" as one of the unspeakable names of God. 936. pseudoerasmus - 10/9/2002 4:29:52 PM Actually, since the letter Sin will be undotted, it will be 937. concerned - 10/9/2002 4:34:02 PM Re. 930 - 938. joezan - 10/9/2002 4:46:10 PM I think the fundies need to read their history a little more. The Jews haven't survived 4000 years in the face of numerous attempts at genocide by being some group's third act. The Jews will still be here when Christianity takes its well deserved place on the scrap heap of history. 939. Wombat - 10/9/2002 4:48:04 PM Concerned: 940. Andonly - 10/9/2002 4:56:15 PM "which, through the well known process of orthographic interference, will get misread in a century for K(a)RS(o)N" 941. Andonly - 10/9/2002 4:57:35 PM Actually, the name of God is "K(e)N," the Hebrew word for "yes," and also Barbie's boyfriend. 942. concerned - 10/9/2002 4:58:13 PM Wombat - 943. Wombat - 10/9/2002 5:05:23 PM As I recall, things got a bit heated. 944. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:07:28 PM Re. 943 - 945. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:10:56 PM You must be conflating that subject with a few posts I made regarding my beliefs regarding gay marriage when I started posting in the Fray. There was some initial give and take on that, but, wrt homosexuality, that was the only topic where I became engaged in any dialogue or difference of opinion. 946. Wombat - 10/9/2002 5:13:05 PM Goodness, you are getting testy. Proving my point, too. But hey, being told that one's religion is illegitimate because it fails to recognize the "truth" of salvation through Christ (or Allah), and that you should seek salvation by embracing Christ (or Allah) doesn't bother you. 947. JJBiener - 10/9/2002 5:14:26 PM Joe - Sorry. Fallwell and his ilk make my skin crawl. When people like them pat you on the back, it is wise to check to see if he has left a knife behind. 948. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:14:44 PM I now have no objection to gay marriage per se, of course. Of course having said that, it should be pointed out that marriage as an institution really exists to benefit future generations. 949. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:16:12 PM Re. 946 - 950. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:19:26 PM What 'point' of yours do you imagine I'm proving? That you deserve special consideration when you press your mistakes on other people? 951. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:22:52 PM Re. 946 - 952. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:27:34 PM Besides, I have no emotional problem knowing that most people don't have the same religious precepts I do, and I can talk to them about it without heat. Which is why I'm a little dismayed when people look down their snoots at this or that faith simply because they may harmlessly proselytize. 953. Wombat - 10/9/2002 5:29:10 PM The point, my obtuse friend, is that you cannot understand why Jews would get upset over a little proselytization. 954. Wombat - 10/9/2002 5:32:29 PM Perhaps, based on recent--and ongoing--experience, some Jews do not find proselytization to be "harmless." 955. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:33:47 PM Oh, I can understand it, alright. I just don't think any reasonably philosophical, objective person would let it bother them. If you don't like somebody pushing literature at you, whether it's religious or advertising, walk away. That's what I do. 956. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:44:59 PM I should take that 'reasonable and objective' statement back, partially. I realize that Jews have a hell of a lot of social history tied up with their religious beliefs, and I don't want to say anything which might infringe on their feelings of identity, so I can accept that many of them would disapprove of aggressive Christian fundamentalists without drawing any conclusions about their philosophical worldviews. But, I don't think everybody should necessarily adopt that particular attitude toward the run of Xtian evangelists, except for the fakers and clowns. 957. concerned - 10/9/2002 5:47:30 PM Actually, I tend to get a little irritated at Christian fundamentalists on occasion, to tell the truth. But, all religion is more or less a compromise with irrationality. 958. transient1a - 10/9/2002 6:06:49 PM Andonly, 959. transient1a - 10/9/2002 6:08:06 PM Ouch: 960. pseudoerasmus - 10/9/2002 7:37:46 PM What Jesus might have looked like, according to a physical anthropologist who used to reconstruct a face based on a Palestinian skull from 2000 years ago: 961. transient1a - 10/9/2002 8:42:49 PM Andonly, 962. joezan - 10/9/2002 9:40:39 PM Beiner: 963. pseudoerasmus - 10/9/2002 9:50:27 PM Ooo, a Yahudi-Nasrani cock fight. 964. Andonly - 10/9/2002 10:43:23 PM Did someone say cock? 965. Andonly - 10/9/2002 10:45:00 PM "If your monkeying around with his moniker can be in any way construed as a translation, then Krishna is instantly transmogrified to a common noun..." 966. Andonly - 10/9/2002 10:47:31 PM "Looks a bit like Daniel Pipes if you asked me..." 967. Andonly - 10/9/2002 10:49:41 PM Pipes, I mean. I've never met Jesus, despite the sincere efforts of a number of devout thumpers. 968. Andonly - 10/9/2002 10:51:39 PM Lord KRSN, please ensure that my flu shot takes. I don't want to have endured this for nothing. 969. joezan - 10/9/2002 11:21:21 PM Waste of time (and pain), flu shots. 970. RustlerPike - 10/10/2002 1:23:02 AM Pe: 971. RustlerPike - 10/10/2002 1:34:17 AM Marj: 972. stostosto - 10/10/2002 4:11:27 AM Rustler, Message # 928 973. RustlerPike - 10/10/2002 5:44:27 AM (Is 'verve' a verve or a noune?) 974. RustlerPike - 10/10/2002 5:50:22 AM sto: 975. RustlerPike - 10/10/2002 5:53:18 AM Could have something to do with me projecting vulnerabilty as opposed to coming into the saloon with both six-shooters blazing. 976. Andonly - 10/10/2002 4:38:46 PM "Waste of time (and pain), flu shots." 977. joezan - 10/10/2002 4:51:21 PM Well, I'm kinda talking out my ass, because I've never gotten one. But of the 9 or 10 people I know who have, at least 3 have ended up with flu anyway. And a lady I work with who's gotten it says that she'd much prefer her usual flu symptoms to the pain she experienced in her arm for half a week. 978. sakonige - 10/10/2002 4:56:12 PM Sounds like you and your co-workers are a bunch of selfish assholes who don't care if they spread diseases to other people. 979. joezan - 10/10/2002 5:06:12 PM And speaking of diseases.... 980. RustlerPike - 10/11/2002 1:38:25 AM Vanzetti down, Sakko to go. 981. RustlerPike - 10/11/2002 1:54:48 AM OK, I've been flooded with e-mails from people recommending me to Slate. Thanks, I have enough. 982. RustlerPike - 10/11/2002 1:56:21 AM A guy churns out thousands of posts for years on end and what does he have to show for it? Nada. Zilch. The big siffr. Zip. Efes. 983. transient1a - 10/11/2002 10:35:33 AM Pakistani Fundamentalists Do Well in Election 984. stostosto - 10/11/2002 12:02:41 PM Rustler, 985. RustlerPike - 10/11/2002 1:11:21 PM sto: 986. concerned - 10/11/2002 7:38:42 PM Re. 976 - 987. RustlerPike - 10/14/2002 2:02:34 AM Russian immigrant security man at cafe foils terror attack in Tel Aviv: 988. PelleNilsson - 10/15/2002 3:45:58 AM Sharon in the Knesset: 989. TabouliJones - 10/15/2002 12:19:36 PM I finished Michael B. Oren's Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East. 990. TabouliJones - 10/15/2002 12:19:45 PM Those are my quick thoughts; sorry if they seem rambling. I highly recommend Six Days of War. It is a solid, and I think generally fair, source that was useful to me in building greater understanding of the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. 991. Wombat - 10/15/2002 2:00:31 PM "Near" ineptitude? Try total ineptitude. Of course, Israel based its armored doctrine on the results of that ineptitude, which cost them heavily in 1973. 992. TabouliJones - 10/15/2002 2:22:12 PM Actually, I meant to write "near total ineptitude". Nasser and, especially, the head of the Egytian army, Field Marshall 'Amer were no doubt guilty of total, mind boggling, ineptitude, as were most of the senior officers, who were generally 'Amer cronies appointed to their position based on loyalty rather than military merit or skill. The convoluted command structure designed by 'Amer to entrench his own power and harass Nasser was the biggest impediment to an effective military resposne by Egyptian forces; although, the odd Egyptian commander was able to rouse the occasional spirited response by Israeli advances on the ground (hence, "near total"). 993. TabouliJones - 10/15/2002 2:22:59 PM make that "response TO" 994. Andonly - 10/15/2002 2:31:55 PM Very accurate review of 6 Days, IMO, Tabouli. 995. TabouliJones - 10/15/2002 2:45:54 PM Thanks Andonly. It is an excellent book. 996. marjoribanks - 10/16/2002 12:41:54 PM Memo to Israel's supporters: Just because there are anti-Semites who blame Israel for everything that is wrong does not mean that whatever Israel does is right, or in its self-interest, or just. The settlement policy Israel has been pursuing is going to lead to the demise of the Jewish state. No, settlements are not the reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to think they do not exacerbate it, and are not locking Israel into a permanent occupation, is also dishonest. 997. Andonly - 10/16/2002 1:15:30 PM Well, Spanky, Friedman is as usual correct. May we assume you now understand that "No, settlements are not the reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"? 998. marjoribanks - 10/16/2002 1:18:19 PM Bit wound up today, Loon? 999. Wombat - 10/16/2002 2:05:46 PM Had Sharon not won the last election, how much of what he is now dealing with would have happened? 1000. Andonly - 10/16/2002 2:25:00 PM "Had Sharon not won the last election, how much of what he is now dealing with would have happened?" 1001. Andonly - 10/16/2002 2:26:23 PM "Bit wound up today, Loon?" 1002. Wombat - 10/16/2002 2:43:54 PM Andonly: 1003. marjoribanks - 10/16/2002 2:55:18 PM No... 1004. Andonly - 10/16/2002 4:51:25 PM "I am sure that Hamas would have continued." 1005. Andonly - 10/16/2002 5:05:45 PM "Chole simply means garbanzo beans, chickpeas. There are 800 million different ways to--" 1006. Andonly - 10/16/2002 5:07:22 PM "Narrow down your desired outcome and I may be able to help you." 1007. wonkers2 - 10/16/2002 6:51:37 PM It appears to me that Israel's settlement policy is one of several causes of the conflict and the Palestinians' principal valid grievance. Moreover, as Friedman said, it's pretty clear that the settlement policy is short-sighted and contrary to Israel's own interest. 1008. TabouliJones - 10/17/2002 8:56:40 AM Breaking news in the ongoing education of TabouliJones: 1009. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 9:55:25 AM Message # 1195 in thread 150 (JJBiener): "Most of the Palestinian "refugees" who left Israel in 1948 and 1967 did so not because they were expelled by Israel, but because they did not want to live in a Jewish state....Had they stayed in Israel, the majority of them would be living middle-class lives next door to their Jewish neighbors and enjoying the fruits of their labor like the other Palestinians who chose to stay." 1010. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 10:00:28 AM It's plausible to argue that Israel practises democracy today only because, at the end of the 1948 war, demographics assured the Jews dominance, and continue to assure them for the time being. 1011. transient1a - 10/17/2002 11:57:16 AM pseudoeramus, 1012. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 12:08:05 PM What does the religiosity of Palestinian Arabs have to do with what I said in Message # 110? Transient1a's remarks, interesting though they may be in their own right, are a total nonsequitur. 1013. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 12:08:34 PM (And you started the argument about proper nouns, not me.) 1014. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 12:10:35 PM rather, what I said in Message # 1010, not 110. 1015. Fielding - 10/17/2002 12:51:44 PM 1016. Fielding - 10/17/2002 12:52:20 PM Tom Friedman continued 1017. Andonly - 10/17/2002 1:27:39 PM Fielding, 1018. Andonly - 10/17/2002 1:51:01 PM Pseudoerasmus, 1019. Andonly - 10/17/2002 1:52:23 PM ...proficient at translating Slater... 1020. Andonly - 10/17/2002 1:53:10 PM failure to unbold 1021. RustlerPike - 10/17/2002 1:59:58 PM Pe: 1022. PelleNilsson - 10/17/2002 2:35:57 PM Rustler 1023. stostosto - 10/17/2002 3:05:15 PM "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest. " 1024. stostosto - 10/17/2002 3:11:39 PM The journalism point, of course, goes to demonstrate the fundamentally democratic nature of Israeli society in stark contrast to that of its neighbours. 1025. RustlerPike - 10/17/2002 3:29:26 PM Pelle: 1026. RustlerPike - 10/17/2002 3:32:25 PM Why isn't anyone writing me recommendations? 1027. PelleNilsson - 10/17/2002 4:12:04 PM A year ago I wouldn't have hesitated. As things stand now I cannot recommend you because of your nutty, obsessive anti-feminist campaign. 1028. stostosto - 10/17/2002 6:36:06 PM The disproportionate weight of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Western media can be gleaned by comparing it with the Algerian civil war that has been going on since 1990. More than 100,000 have died in this. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of a total of 70,000 over five decades and five (?) wars. The latest intifada has cost some 3,000 people their lives. 1029. stostosto - 10/17/2002 6:38:06 PM You also have had Chechnya, whose capital was flattened, and events like Rwanda where a million people were slaughtered. So why are we all so fixated on Israel? Because, Israel is us. 1030. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 9:00:24 PM Message # 1018: "...I believe his point to you above is that Israeli Jews from eastern Europe, at least, could indeed have been presumed to have leaned more toward liberal democracy than the French, English, or Netherlanders because they were largely secularists." 1031. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 9:11:06 PM Message # 1025: I don't know. But I know what would have happened if the Arabs had won. I found it nauseating that Pe has found a way of knocking us even for our democracy, saying it was made possible by expulsion (what about American democracy?). But why stop there? If we hadn't been able to expel the Arabs, and if they proved difficult to subjugate, we would have thrown them into gas chambers, right? Let's just cut to the chase: Jews are Nazis." 1032. transient1a - 10/17/2002 10:41:46 PM pseudoerasmus, 1033. transient1a - 10/17/2002 10:51:00 PM One side of the coin 1034. transient1a - 10/17/2002 10:51:46 PM >>>>>>>>>> 1035. pseudoerasmus - 10/17/2002 10:52:32 PM Is it taught among some that Jews were the pioneers of the Enlightenment? I always thought the pioneers were the British, the French and the Dutch. 1036. transient1a - 10/17/2002 10:52:50 PM The Other 1037. RustlerPike - 10/18/2002 12:41:08 PM Pelle: 1038. RustlerPike - 10/18/2002 12:42:35 PM sto: 1039. JJBiener - 10/18/2002 3:39:31 PM PE - Equating European Jews in Israel to the British, French and Dutch colonial powers is one of the more absurd ideas you have come up with yet. 1040. RustlerPike - 10/18/2002 4:23:32 PM This is what Pe is saying: 1041. stostosto - 10/18/2002 5:48:31 PM Rustler: 1042. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/2002 10:29:47 PM Message # 1039: "The British, French and Dutch had a long history of subjugating people around the world. The Jews coming from Europe were not a colonial power. They weren't looking to form a colony to enrich their home country. They were looking to build a homeland.... " 1043. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/2002 10:30:04 PM "Equating European Jews in Israel to the British, French and Dutch colonial powers is one of the more absurd ideas you have come up with yet." 1044. pseudoerasmus - 10/18/2002 10:32:59 PM Message # 1040: "This is what Pe is saying: OK, so you're a democracy. But if so-and-so had happened, you wouldn't have been a democracy. So it doesn't count." 1045. transient1a - 10/19/2002 10:50:43 AM pseudoerasmus, 1046. transient1a - 10/19/2002 11:39:25 AM pseudoerasmus, 1047. Andonly - 10/19/2002 12:09:31 PM Andonly: "(Incidentally, I'm not sure why you or he put the Dutch in the same category with the French and the English.)" 1048. Andonly - 10/19/2002 12:56:05 PM Some might find interesting this right-wing review of a book by Yoram Hazony, as it contains a harsh critique of the Zionist utopianism exemplified by Martin Buber, which ultimately became Israeli anti-Zionism. 1049. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:38:08 PM Message # 1047: "(Pike probably also remembers that you remain a student of the idiotic Toynbee on the subject of whether Jews prior to the establishment of Israel even had a common culture.)" 1050. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:41:39 PM Message # 1047: "...what he forgets is that it is routine for you to heavily discount cultural particulars as predictors of how groups will behave under certain circumstances." 1051. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:43:05 PM [continued] 1052. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:43:46 PM Those who moved to the "right" side were terribly bitter about having to uproot themselves. The bitterness was expressed in rioting and pogroms. 1053. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:46:25 PM In the past, Arabs and Muslims have welcomed Jewish refugees by the hundreds of thousands from Christian Europe, particularly Spain and Portugal. Jewish communities in Egypt, Morocco, and the Ottoman empire (including Greece and the Balkans) included a substantial population of refugees. But these Sephardic Jews were not greeted in these Muslim lands the same way the Zionists were greeted in Palestine. Why? The reason is obvious: the Zionists came to Palestine to make a state and, implicitly, to render some Arabs a minority within that new state. No one, or rather very few people, suddenly want suddenly to become a minority. 1054. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 1:59:40 PM Message # 1045: "From your argument in the above posts, I must assume that you have no knowledge of actual Jewish trivia -- such as Marx, Engles, Trotosky, etc. and the preoccupation of European Jews with social justice." 1055. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 2:55:49 PM One more note: 1056. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:21:49 PM Message # 11815 in thread 113: "Whether or not the Palestinians have the franchise in Israel is a red herring. Until recently, they were allowed to vote in the Palestinian terrorities...In short, they already have this privilege of statehood -- to vote as a single people in what is for all intents and purposes a state, something the French and Catalons can't do." 1057. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:22:33 PM Hawaiians, Québecois, Puerto Ricans, the Flemish in Belgium, the Catalans and Basques in Spain, the Corsicans in France, and others others fall into category (a). Not only that, the states of which these peoples are citizens have bent over backward to accomodate their numerous grievances, such as by protecting their distinct cultural rights, implementing affirmative action programmes to redress inequities, paying out compensation packages for past wrongs, etc. Such peoples have no grounds for turning to to armed resistance, let alone terrorism against civilians. 1058. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:23:54 PM And of course, Israeli Arabs do resist Israel -- but nonviolently. Israeli Arab politicians rhetorically support their brethren in the West Bank and Gaza, such as by calling the state of Israel "fascist" and "Nazi". They typically side with Arafat's Palestinian Authority over disputes with Israel. One Israeli Arab member of the Knesset, Azami Bishara, openly denied the right of Israel to exist. The majority of Israeli Arabs reject the appellation "Israeli Arab" and refer to themselves as Palestinians with Israeli citizenship. Apart from a handful who have been involved in attacks recently, Israeli Palestinians have not been engaged in terrorism and have never attempted to act like a fifth column during Israel's wars with Arab states. 1059. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:24:46 PM So I ask, which ethnic or sectarian groups seeking separation from a state, who are in a situation comparable with that of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza; and who have not resorted to terrorist violence? Is there any group which just lies in passivity as they are forced to live under a foreign military occupation and as their lands are confiscated? 1060. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:25:42 PM Message # 11816 in thread 113: "Yes, so did American blacks [also have a violent resistance movement] -- by way of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. So what. Palestine doesn't have a serious nonviolent movement to go alongside Hamas." 1061. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:26:28 PM Only in the early 1980s, with the emergence of the Likud government whose quest it was to absorb "Judaea", "Samaria" and Gaza into Israel, do you see serious anti-Israel violence among the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. Even then, the large-scale stone-throwing resistance didn't start until December 1987, when the first Intifadah erupted -- and at the time it was limited to stone-throwing. 1062. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:30:30 PM Message # 11817 in thread 113 1063. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:31:17 PM Firstly, given that Israel is faced with an extraordinary security situation, and it has currently a Likud-led government, it would not be surprising in the least if some curbs on freedoms particularly the press were legislated. After all, even the UK has in the past issued repressive measures in Northern Ireland. 1064. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 3:32:30 PM ....but the fact that the legislation was tabled at all with backing from the current standing government comes perilously close to actualising what you said in sarcasm: "A few legal changes and the least vestiges of civilized norms will slip away". 1065. Andonly - 10/19/2002 4:28:32 PM "I have never read Toynbee on the subject of Jews." 1066. Andonly - 10/19/2002 4:28:50 PM The liturgy in Judaism changes a little from region to region, but the central feature of religious observance is the incremental reading of the Torah over the course of every year, and the celebration of holidays which are predominantly event markers in the mytho-history of the people. Pesach: the people were led out of Egypt. Shavuous: the weeks leading up to when the people were given their recorded law and history. Chanuka: the commemoration of a sectarian victory. Purim: another victory for the people over a non-Jewish ruler's evil henchman. 1067. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 5:40:44 PM Message # 1065: Then you have studied [Toynbee's heirs] 1068. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 5:41:03 PM Message # 1066: "The majority of Jews alive prior to Israel's founding, and certainly the majority who established the state, were Ashkenazim, not Mizrahim. It's a little ridiculous to insist that Jews were not a people on the basis that Jews existed who were superficially dissimilar to the majority of Jews in the world." 1069. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 5:53:20 PM The vast majority of the peoples of the world who are reckoned by others to be a single Volk, are so defined according to language. 1070. marjoribanks - 10/19/2002 7:20:40 PM But violence in South Asia goes well beyond Hindus and Muslims. When Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguard in 1984, Hindus went on a rampage in Delhi killing thousands of Sikhs. Thousands. Hindu fundamentalists, thrown into a livid rage by Christian missionary activity, often launch attacks against missionaries and native Christians, particularly in the Northeast, where most of India's Christians live; and Christians have counterattacked the Hindu majority often enough that hyperbolic Hindus accuse them of genocide. 1071. marjoribanks - 10/19/2002 7:21:35 PM Fine polemic, Pseuder. 1072. RustlerPike - 10/19/2002 7:45:27 PM I'm too busy in rl to read Pe's polemic. But I am tiring of his perennial attempts tp give shitty reasons for all the good things about Israel, and great excuses for all the bad things about the Arabs, and to portray us as a mean, cold, cruel non-nation, when we are obviously quite the opposite (when viewed in the proper historical perspective). 1073. RustlerPike - 10/19/2002 7:47:31 PM Matter of fact, it could be seen as part of his (Ben Eliezer's) campaign for election (within Labor, then for PM). 1074. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 7:47:43 PM Message # 1070: "Christians and Hindus indulge in barely any actual violence at all against each other in India, even if you include violence against the fundie missionaries." 1075. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 7:53:43 PM "But I am tiring of his perennial attempts tp give shitty reasons for all the good things about Israel, and great excuses for all the bad things about the Arabs...." 1076. RustlerPike - 10/19/2002 7:54:14 PM Pelle has written a recommendation and I commend him for this and thank him heartily. 1077. Andonly - 10/19/2002 10:25:21 PM I said, "Had [the Arabs] not been [rejectionists] it really isn't that difficult to see how the idealism of the earliest Zionist pioneers might finally have prevailed over the brutally realpolitikal views of the Irgun and Lehi, which held a democratic Jewish homeland had to have a Jewish majority." 1078. Andonly - 10/19/2002 10:25:39 PM PE: "(2) Your conclusion is far more speculative than mine, requiring changes in two variables. My speculation is rather straightforward: it simply changes one variable (the Jews did not become a majority in Israel) and provides three possible outcomes, as outlined in Message # 1009." 1079. Andonly - 10/19/2002 10:43:18 PM "In my argument about what might have transpired if the Jews were not able to command a majority in the new state, I thought I was ... using cultural particulars as predictors of how groups will behave under certain circumstances. After all, I noted that even those European settlers who had come from countries with liberal political cultures did not want to live under majority, even as late as 1960-90. So I don't understand why European Jewish settlers of Palestine ought to have been any different." 1080. charleselliot - 10/19/2002 11:04:21 PM "How would the Israelis have behaved had they taken over a territory with a large population of Arabs?" seems like one of history's least mysterious hypothetical questions (since they did 20 years later). 1081. wonkers2 - 10/19/2002 11:07:28 PM Answer: abominably. 1082. wonkers2 - 10/19/2002 11:11:44 PM The concept of a modern state based on religion and ethnicity is repugnant and ill-conceived. 1083. Andonly - 10/19/2002 11:31:44 PM "Andonly has attributed violent Arab rejectionism of Zionism (prior to the foundation of the state of Israel) to a kind of xenophobia. But was this response an Arab cultural thing or is it something trans-cultural?" 1084. Andonly - 10/19/2002 11:32:02 PM The following is from a recent New Yorker article on the Hizballah: 1085. Andonly - 10/19/2002 11:41:58 PM "Many Arabs of Palestine objected to the founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine because it required that some of them were made into an ethnic minority on their own soil. But given the same situation, when do such anxieties not emerge in other contexts?" 1086. transient1a - 10/19/2002 11:46:35 PM pseudoeramus, 1087. transient1a - 10/19/2002 11:48:21 PM >>>>>>>>> 1088. Andonly - 10/19/2002 11:55:33 PM "In the past, Arabs and Muslims have welcomed Jewish refugees by the hundreds of thousands from Christian Europe, particularly Spain and Portugal." 1089. pseudoerasmus - 10/19/2002 11:56:46 PM Anybody who thinks Hitler was a practising Roman Catholic and the Third Reich was a theocracy doesn't know the first thing about the Nazi period. Read a book on the Third Reich instead of getting partisan-hack information from www.infidels.org, a site for atheists devoted to polemics against theists. 1090. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:01:52 AM "None of the above can be said of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who fall into category (b). Palestinians have been under military occupation; 19th-century-style colonial settlements are splattered across their country; and their civil rights are severely restricted." 1091. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:02:27 AM Message # 1080: "How would the Israelis have behaved had they taken over a territory with a large population of Arabs?" seems like one of history's least mysterious hypothetical questions (since they did 20 years later)." 1092. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:03:06 AM Message # 1077: "Sorry, I know too many people who were a part of that pioneering effort's later phase and who adopted the idealism absolutely... The idealism was part and parcel of early Israeli culture..." 1093. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:03:24 AM Message # 1078: Well, that's plausible, and you're right that there must have been a chain of causes that resulted in Arabs becoming a minority within Israel. But still your argument is now several orders of magnitude more speculative than anything I've said. You keep saying "would" but your "woulds" are controvertible and better written "might". 1094. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:03:44 AM Message # 1079: "....between 1960 and 1990 the fate of Jews living under an Arab majority was pretty easy to speculate!" 1095. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:05:01 AM "Andonly has ascribed the behaviour of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to culture. But how to account for the difference between the "civilised" behaviour of Israeli Palestinians and the "barbaric" behaviour of WB&G Palestinians?" 1096. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:09:03 AM Message # 1083: "Arab-Muslim xenophobia was directed in particular at Jews... because Muslims consider Jews and others their inferiors, and Europeans usurpers who have no right to live in "Arab" lands. Still, when Europeans from the Balkans were settled in Jordan, there was no fifty-year war, even though Circassians were placed in what's now Jordan, in large, disruptive numbers, by the ruling foreign power. The key is that the foreign rulers were Muslims and the Circassians were Muslims....But Arab Muslims could not accept Jews in Palestine because they were Jews." 1097. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:10:51 AM Message # 1088: Merchant Jews were welcomed by the absolute ruling powers, not necessarily by the locals. The locals took what they were given, didn't they? Jews were imported from place to place, as were all populations the authorities wished to use to consolidate power or shore up economic circumstances. Jews were welcome only so long as they were subordinate to Muslim power." 1098. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:12:41 AM Message # 1095: "[Israeli Palestinians] have adopted aspects of Israeli culture, including having assimilated to democracy." 1099. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:19:48 AM "As I've said in the past, your criterion for "common culture" is so loose as to make African-American Muslims, Indonesians, and Volga Tatars "one culture". " 1100. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:28:26 AM "I would agree that Arab Muslims could not abide the idea of being ruled by Jews and being made a minority within a Jewish state, but it flatly contradicts historical reality to suppose that the mere presence of Jews is what incited their hostility." 1101. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:30:17 AM Message # 1099: "If they are animated by one shared mythohistory and a beleief in one common future, and especially if they can put aside their differences to create a future for themselves, including resurrecting their common dead languge, then in some important respect they must be, quite evidently, one people." 1102. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:36:55 AM "I also have no reason to believe they did not share the European prejudices of the day, apart from a handful of utopian socialist daydreamers." 1103. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:37:21 AM Message # 1100: "Insaid the prospect of Jewish power incited their hostility." 1104. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:43:56 AM "Are you telling me all these people, mostly from Eastern Europe, were woolly-eyed hippies?" 1105. Andonly - 10/20/2002 12:48:37 AM "Well, that's [msg 1078] plausible, and you're right that there must have been a chain of causes that resulted in Arabs becoming a minority within Israel. But still your argument is now several orders of magnitude more speculative than anything I've said." 1106. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:29:24 AM "Neither the Ottomans nor the European powers settled Turkish or European colonists in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. In the two instances where colonial settlement took place -- Algeria and Libya -- the Arabs resisted violently." 1107. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:31:49 AM "The question is, did the presence of Jews prior to Zionism incite Muslim Arab hostility? No." 1108. Andonly - 10/20/2002 2:10:25 AM "Thus, when Jews bought lands (yes, from rich Arabs), the Arab tenant farmers working on them were evicted and made landless for the glory of socialism and for the sake of putting an end to the exploitation of man by man." 1109. Andonly - 10/20/2002 2:15:39 AM By the way, I would urge anyone who thinks Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is "illegal", or its defiance of UN resolutions is equivalent to Iraq's, to read this explanation in the Economist (of all places) for why neither truism is true. 1110. PincherMartin - 10/20/2002 2:17:11 AM PE -- #1062 1111. PincherMartin - 10/20/2002 2:17:45 AM 1112. Andonly - 10/20/2002 2:20:55 AM And I'm off to bed. 1113. PincherMartin - 10/20/2002 2:29:46 AM Again, given the conditions they face, Israelis act much like western Europeans would act in the same circumstances. 1114. PincherMartin - 10/20/2002 2:30:14 AM Andonly, 1115. transient1a - 10/20/2002 7:28:09 AM pseudoerasmus, 1116. transient1a - 10/20/2002 7:28:41 AM >>>>>>>>>>> 1117. transient1a - 10/20/2002 9:09:50 AM pseudoerasmus, 1118. transient1a - 10/20/2002 10:09:59 AM pseudoeramus, 1119. transient1a - 10/20/2002 10:23:23 AM Message # 1115 1120. Andonly - 10/20/2002 10:54:18 AM "[PE makes] what I think is an apt comparison of Israelis with minority European populations, which settled outside of Europe, but still originated from countries with liberal norms. [He notes] that just as those Europeans governed far less liberally with their majority native populations, so the Jews would have probably adjusted their own values if the Arabs were a majority in Jewish-governed areas. I agree. Andonly is right that Jews probably faced a more serious and immediate threat than did your examples of Western European settlers, but I don't think it would have mattered. The Jews did not found Israel to be ruled by Arabs." 1121. Andonly - 10/20/2002 11:01:20 AM Oh yes, PE wanted to know where in the Arab-Muslim empire Muslims had been made minorities by the influx of minorities. I can't look up the relevant details just now, but I believe in a number of places the Muslim population was simply not a majority, since other ethnics and religions outnumbered them when counted together. It was more accurate to say that Muslims were the largest minority group in most places--but that's not quite the same thing as being a majority, and the usual reference to Jews and Christians as "minorities" gives the impression that the peoples ruled by Muslims in Arab lands were everywhere altogether fewer than the Muslims. 1122. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:38:06 AM Okay, the Nazis were not strictly secular. They were just pagans. 1123. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:39:41 AM Message # 1106: The Ottomans settled Circassians and other European Muslim refugees in Jordan...." 1124. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:41:53 AM Message # 1108: "The evicted feudal Arabs...could have adjusted to other means of making a living--and surely did." 1125. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:42:11 AM Message # 1107: "I some cases it certainly did, PE. The "pogroms" were far less frequent than in Europe, but they were far from nonexistent, and I believe you are aware of this." 1126. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:43:02 AM Message # 1121: "...PE wanted to know where in the Arab-Muslim empire Muslims had been made minorities by the influx of minorities...I believe in a number of places the Muslim population was simply not a majority, since other ethnics and religions outnumbered them when counted together....." 1127. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 11:45:38 AM and also refuting your argument that the Arab response to Zionist immigration was founded on hostility to Jewish presence of any kind -- as opposed to a Jewish presence which was to result in making the Arabs a minority and incorporating them into a new, alien state. 1128. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:02:14 PM Message # 1110: "On several counts, your position seems to be that the Israeli population is generally similar to those found in Western European and Western European-settled countries." 1129. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:04:46 PM "In addition, European Jews, in general, tend to be more liberal and better-educated than their European counterparts from the same country (a French Jew is better-educated and more liberal than the average Frenchman; a Russian Jew is better-educated and more liberal than the average Russian, etc.)" 1130. PelleNilsson - 10/20/2002 12:05:13 PM ... in a number of places the Muslim population was simply not a majority, since other ethnics and religions outnumbered them when counted together. 1131. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:05:52 PM Message # 1111: "If you were to transport several million British citizens to someplace like Israel, and force upon them the same conditions that Israel has today, what sort of committment to democracy, equal rights uder the law, and nondiscriminatory behavior towards whatever indigenous people with which they cohabited, would those Brits have?" 1132. transient1a - 10/20/2002 12:32:27 PM pseudoerasmus, 1133. transient1a - 10/20/2002 12:34:36 PM Ouch: 1134. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:45:41 PM "And, it is also unfortunate that history is usually written by those with an agenda." 1135. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 12:50:16 PM errata Message # 1123: substitute "west of the river jordan" for "east of the Jordan river". 1136. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:02:34 PM PE, I'm not indulging in methamphetamines and therefore can't respond as I would like to your various anastomosing claims to certainty. Therefore I'll add the following, and will perhaps return sporadically to parts of the discussion much later. 1137. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:09:51 PM What I find problematic in your historical analysis of the Arab-Jewish conflict is your refusal to acknowledge the importance of Muslim intolerance in its reason for being. You prefer to focus narrowly on the "inevitable" reaction to foreign immigration and change. But my point remains that Muslims historically accepted foreign rule, foreign immigration, and foreign domination by elites, no matter how extortionary, as long as those elites were Muslims. Had the British been Muslims and the Jews been Muslims, the conflict between Palestinian Arabs and "Zionists" would have been over long ago, irrespective of whether the settlers were Europeans or Afghans or American indians. 1138. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:12:05 PM Further, not all people who naturally dislike being overrun by outsiders resort to brutally slaughtering them while a) the outsiders are still minorities, b) the possibility remains that they will never achieve statehood, and c) the possibility also emerges that the majority could have their own autonomous state for the first time in their history. In fact, where ruling authorities are either brutal enough to suppress such conflicts or else are considered legitimate by the native majority, half-century long fights over intruding minorities do not automatically occur. (E.g., and in answer to your hypothetical about Mexicans overwhelming Californians, the Americans in whatever western US state the alien Rajneesh cult settled in, in the 80s, submitted to having their town literally taken over, even at the government level, by very strange foreigners, and never raised a fuss until the Rajneeshis started poisoning their salad bars. Even then they did not run out and burn down the Rajnishis compound.) 1139. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:13:24 PM Why did Arabs not consider the Brits a legitimate authority? They weren't Muslims. Imagine, even, an Arab Christian supplantment of Ottoman rule in Palestine, with attendant Christian immigration. It wouldn't have flown, not even had it claimed the banner of Arab nationalism. 1140. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:22:32 PM "After the initial Arab Islamic conquests, of course the Muslim Arabs were a minority in most of the conquered lands, though a ruling minority. However, in all Arab-conquered lands except the Maghreb, Arab Muslims became the demographic majority well before modern times." 1141. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:24:12 PM (The foregoing was a bit of ironic humor; I don't want Wonkers or Spanks to suffer strokes on my account.) 1142. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:26:29 PM A: "And as you've pointed out yourself, the Arabs who became a minority in Israel adjusted pretty well, all things considered." 1143. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:32:19 PM "I am aware that life for Jews in Muslim lands was not utopia, but I am not aware that Jews in Arab lands, whether relatively late arrivals like the Sepharadim refugees from Iberia or the more ancient Mizrahim, experienced the sort of hostility that the European Zionists would encounter in Palestine." 1144. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:41:58 PM "The Jews won the war in 1948 did they not? That victory was not predicated on the demographic shift in the population of the areas held by the Jews. In other words, there was sufficient Jewish power." 1145. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:57:31 PM More on the subject of Arab dispossession in Palestine before 1948, which is relevant to the supposed reasonableness of Arab hatred of Jews before the state was established, following is an Amazon summary review of Aryeh Avneri's book, "Claim of Dispossession: Jewish Land Settlement and the Arabs, 1878-1948". 1146. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:58:13 PM Arab and Muslim immigrants also came from Algeria, Damascus, Yemen, Afghanistan, Persia, India, Tripoli, Morocco, Turkey and Iraq. The French conquest of Algeria, for example, led to the eventual rebellion and imprisonment of Abd el-Kadar el-Hassani, whose followers in 1856 fled to Syria and the Lower Galilee towns of Shara, Ulam, Ma'ader, Kafer-Sabet, Usha (near present-day Ramat-Yohanan), the Mount Atlas village of Qedesh and villages on Lake Hula and in the Upper Galilee, where they spoke Berber. In Ramle, immigrants spoke Qebili, a Mugrabi dialect. Circassian refugees from the Caucasus settled in Trans-Jordan and as far east as Caesarea. 1147. Andonly - 10/20/2002 1:58:30 PM The next census, in 1948, followed unprecedented economic growth, during which illegal Arab immigration continued. From April 1934 to November 1935, for example, 20,000 Haurani Arabs came to Palestine. These and thousands of other Arab immigrants worked on farms, construction projects (building roads, railroads and the Haifa port), and government and municipal jobs. Syrians and Lebanese Arabs were free to come with nothing but border passes, and they came along with immigrants from Somalia, Trans-Jordan, Persia, India, Ethiopia and the Hejaz. Mandatory government rules required the supervision of immigration, but Palestine's borders remained porous to all but Jews. In all, Avneri shows that 35,000 to 40,000 illegal Arab immigrants came from 1931 to 1947--on top of up to 20,000 other Arab immigrants who arrived from 1935 to 1945. 1148. Andonly - 10/20/2002 2:05:40 PM I'm sure it doesn't shatter the claim of dispossession post-'48, but the point is germane to this discussion of what transpired before the state was born. 1149. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 2:22:44 PM Message # 1136: "It is the intensity of the rejectionist Arab reaction (before the 1948 exodus) that seems out of proportion to the perceived threat." 1150. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 2:25:21 PM Message # 1137: What I find problematic in your historical analysis of the Arab-Jewish conflict is your refusal to acknowledge the importance of Muslim intolerance in its reason for being." 1151. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 2:26:39 PM ¨?weren't part of the "dominant group," they were serfs in an undeveloped swamp. They were as un-dominant as they could possibly be...." 1152. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 2:27:58 PM "The issue is, in no small part, Islam.' 1153. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 2:28:16 PM Message # 1140: "Muslims have not always been the majority where they ruled, and the minorities were in various cases actually the majority, if considered collectively." 1154. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 4:08:16 PM Message # 1108: "But the fact is, there were better paying opportunities out there than tenant farming, in part because of the Jews, and Arabs were surely aware of this fact because their standard of living rose as they took advantage of it. Between 1922 and 1947 the Arab population of Palestine increased more than it had done in the previous four hundred years." 1155. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 4:20:51 PM Some exerpts: 1156. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 4:23:17 PM "Under the British Mandate, with still better sanitary conditions, more hospitals, and further improvements in medical treatment, the Arab population continued to grow. 1157. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 4:23:40 PM "The coastal area had several main attractions for the Arab villagers. They found jobs in constructing, and later working in, the port of Haifa, the Iraq Petroleum Company refineries, the railway workshops, and the nascent Arab industries there. They also took part in the large-scale cultivation of the citrus groves between Haifa and Jaffa and found jobs connected with the shipment of citrus fruits from the Jaffa port. Contrary to what Mr. Pipes claims, all these developments had almost nothing to do with the growth of the Jewish National Home. The main foreign factor that brought them about was the Mandatory government. The Zionist settlers had a clearly stated policy against using Arab labor or investing in Arab industries. At the same time, the natural increase in the Palestinian Arab population I referred to is made clear in the statistical abstracts and quarterly surveys published by the Mandatory government in the years following the census of 1931." 1158. transient1a - 10/20/2002 5:12:25 PM pseudoerasmus, 1159. transient1a - 10/20/2002 5:14:48 PM >>>>>>>>> 1160. transient1a - 10/20/2002 5:16:02 PM >>>>>>>>> 1161. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 5:20:07 PM "As with many of your scenarios, they are future scenarios. All that can be described is maybe's. And trust to simplistic rhetoric suggest that they are in some fashion, known only to you, uniquely true predictions." 1162. transient1a - 10/20/2002 5:31:51 PM But not in italics as required under strict Intergalactic Protocol. 1163. transient1a - 10/20/2002 5:37:37 PM pseudoerasmus, 1164. Andonly - 10/20/2002 5:42:37 PM "I said in Message # 1096: "I would agree that Arab Muslims could not abide the idea of being ruled by Jews". But I do not interpret this refusal as an intrinsic hostility to Jews." 1165. Andonly - 10/20/2002 5:45:06 PM "Out of proportion to what? It's not out of prorportion to historical experience, as I tried to indicate in Message # 1050 and subsequent posts." 1166. Andonly - 10/20/2002 6:08:20 PM "It IS a kind of intolerance to say that you don't want to be ruled by those who do not belong to your "tribe". In the USA, there is a phenomenon called "white flight", the exodus of white residents from the cities precipitated by the influex of blacks into those cities. That surely reflects intolerance, whites not wanting to live among blacks or in cities governed by black politicians." 1167. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 6:26:19 PM Message # 1164: "I do [interpret this refusal as an intrinsic hostility to Jews], and so do a handful of non-Jewish mideast scholars who have actually lived in the Arab mideast." 1168. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 6:29:27 PM Message # 1166: "You erroneously conflate two phenomena: not wanting to live in black neighborhoods and not wanting to be "ruled" by black politicians...The latter phenomenon has not been documented as "white flight"--as far as I'm aware, whites do not flee cities where blacks are elected....Whites do not typically flee cities when a black governor gets elected. " 1169. Andonly - 10/20/2002 8:48:58 PM "The resemblance [to white flight] is in the fear and anxiety caused in the prior inhabitants by an influx of alien peoples into their midst." 1170. Andonly - 10/20/2002 8:58:46 PM As for your disputation of the claims advanced by Joan Peters, whom I have not referenced at all nor ever read, it's a simple matter to reassert in similar fashion what is not merely an article of Zionist faith but a study of the available numbers. The following is from the Spring 2002 issue of the Harvard Israel Review. 1171. Andonly - 10/20/2002 8:59:24 PM A number of factors account for this dramatic underpopulation, one of which is environmental. Many people fled the area as early as the fourteenth century as a result of the Black Plague. Starting shortly thereafter, many areas became swamp-infested and malarial, especially in the northern valleys. There is much evidence to suggest that, by the mid-nineteenth century, the region had become nearly uninhabitable. 1172. Andonly - 10/20/2002 8:59:59 PM Soon afterward, during World War I, the Ottomans tried to muster troops from the region, prompting many of the upper classes to flee. It appears that the war prompted a massive flight, immediately followed by a huge influx. According to contemporary surveys, the Arab population declined by 35,000 during the years 1915 to 1919. 1173. Andonly - 10/20/2002 9:01:02 PM Approaching 1948: Economic Growth and the Population Burst 1174. Andonly - 10/20/2002 9:01:33 PM Another major reason for the population explosion was the revolution that took place in farming and thus in the ecosystem generally. With the increase in Jewish immigration during this period, Arab farmers began to pressure the British to stop the Jewish influx, arguing that the land could not sustain any more inhabitants. The result was the Passfield White Paper of 1930, which claimed: ``It can now be definitely stated that at the present time and with the present methods of Arab cultivation there remains no margin of land available for agricultural settlement by new immigrants, with the exception of such undeveloped land as the various Jewish agencies hold in reserve.`` 1175. Andonly - 10/20/2002 9:02:05 PM In 1927, the British passed a law preventing the transfer of land without first securing new land for the tenant farmer or making a cash settlement. Yet this had already been the policy of the Jewish Agency, which had explicitly sought to avoid controversy in its land purchases. The Shaw Commission reported: 1176. Andonly - 10/20/2002 9:02:20 PM Ironically, many of the strongest opponents of Jewish land purchases were also the people who profited most from them. A brief list of Arab leaders who sold land to Jews includes Fahmi el-Husayni, mayor of Gaza; Ragheb Nashashibi, mayor of Jerusalem and founder of the National Defense Party, Mussa el- Alami, government advocate of the Palestine Government and a member of the Arab Higher Committee; As`ad el-Shuqairi, father of Ahmed Shuqairi, the first chairman of the PLO; and Jamal el-Husayni, who is quoted at the beginning of this essay. 1177. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 10:34:25 PM Message # 1169: "...the anti-Jewish reaction of Arabs is... largely theological and stems not from a distaste for living near Jews...but an aversion to being governed by them that far, far overshadows the Arab aversion to being governed by Turks or Circassians in places of authority because Jews are supposed to be subservient....their extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread objection is not to other cultures per se (the Ottomans did so mess with Arab demographics--they did it constantly) but with Muslims being governed by non-Muslims. As you know, the very principle of rejecting governance by non-Msulims is enshrined in Islam. God says so, therefore it's right to demand supremacy over interlopers on our conquered lands...." 1178. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 10:36:57 PM It was the combination of being made a demographic minority in a land where they had earlier been the majority and of being incorporated into an alien ethno-state, that is the cause behind Arab hostility to Zionism. Your argument is illogical in view of the patterns throughout the Arab world and in view of the historical experiences outside the Middle East. 1179. pseudoerasmus - 10/20/2002 10:41:46 PM Re your quotation from the Harvard Israel Review from Message # 1170 to Message # 1176: 1180. RustlerPike - 10/21/2002 2:34:01 AM Most definitely a thread record for number of words posted on a single day. Keep it up, Ando, Pe and transient. 1181. RustlerPike - 10/21/2002 2:40:49 AM 98 posts on 10/20/2002!!! Virtually all on topic and informed/ative. 1182. RustlerPike - 10/21/2002 2:51:38 AM And long as shit, too. 1183. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:21:03 AM PE -- Message # 1128 1184. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:22:10 AM Here is a section from Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews on the east/west division and Herzl's relevation about it: 1185. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:22:42 AM As the section shows, Herzl was not an eastern Jew, and was not considered one by either himself or by eastern Jews. 1186. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:41:55 AM [ Forget French Jews for a moment. Most of them did not immigrate to Palestine.] 1187. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:45:43 AM Here's an interesting abstract of Alan Dowty's work, which supports my assumptions. It also shows why you will have a hard time explaining how most Jews who immigrated to Israel before 1948 were not "liberal", and yet the Jewish state still ended up with the democratic system that it did. You would expect Jews from repressive states to mirror the policies of the states they were from. You need to explain why they did not if they were not, as I claim they were, more consensual to begin with. 1188. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:46:15 AM Jews in the Soviet Union would of course have been receiving a completely secular education, but I reckon Soviet education was hardly a liberalising mechanism. 1189. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:50:28 AM Pincher: "Again, given the conditions they face, Israelis act much like western Europeans would act in the same circumstances." 1190. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 6:54:43 AM I would be neglectful not to point out that in my link in Message # 1187, there is another abstract that supports PE's point about Israel's mixed democratic tradition: 1191. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 7:02:43 AM Here's another interesting section from A History of the Jews on the situation in Palestine after WW1: 1192. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 9:58:51 AM Pincher's citation on Jewish political culture in the shtetl is quite cogent, but I've lost sight of what Pincher's larger argument is. Did Pincher cite Dowty in reference to the argument about what might have happened had Israel ended up with an Arab majority? I assume not, because Pincher had agreed with me on that, I thought. 1193. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 10:37:48 AM These follow-up posts were not a buildup to any greater point, but just responses to your specific comments. 1194. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 10:47:35 AM As I said earlier, PE, you don't want to agree with my assumption that European Jews were more liberal than their gentile counterparts from the same countries. But then you find yourself having to explain how mostly eastern European Jews with eastern European leaders could set up a working democracy (even if that democracy largely excluded Arabs), when they had never lived under such a state model. 1195. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 11:01:42 AM Message # 1194: "As I said earlier, PE, you don't want to agree with my assumption that European Jews were more liberal than their gentile counterparts from the same countries." 1196. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 11:03:59 AM addendum to my response to Message # 1194: "As I said earlier, PE, you don't want to agree with my assumption that European Jews were more liberal than their gentile counterparts from the same countries." 1197. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 11:14:38 AM I do remember now the (minor) bone of contention between me and Pincher. I claimed that Israel's liberal norms were more fragile than Great Britain's. Pincher disagreed, or disagreed that the difference was great. I'm not sure whether citing the political culture of the shtetl is to the point on this issue. 1198. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 11:16:07 AM "This helps explain the mystery of why mainly eastern European Jews with mainly eastern European Jewish leaders could choose a political model for their new state not far different than what was found in London." 1199. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 11:32:21 AM PE -- 1200. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 11:34:40 AM PE -- 1201. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 12:21:51 PM Message # 1199: "But I think we are in agreement that the most important reason for the difference between a Great Britain and Israel is not the religious foundation, but the security requirements of Isael and the fractious political system of Israel which hands potentially great power to some minority parties." 1202. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 12:24:12 PM Message # 1189: That's one possible analogy. Another one includes the basic line that both sides now claim to support: the foundation of two separate states." 1203. PincherMartin - 10/21/2002 12:46:48 PM PE -- Message # 1202 1204. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 1:00:47 PM "...doesn't make a convincing argument that Israel now needs to follow some common example created by those three in some other area. Is that, in fact, what you are arguing? I can't tell." 1205. RustlerPike - 10/21/2002 4:42:27 PM If I am not mistaken, the majority of Jews living in Eastern Europe in the inter-war period had still been educated in the religious schools. If this is wrong, I would like to know what percentage of Eastern European Jews had received or were receiving a secular education, as opposed to a religious one, in the inter-war period. 1206. stostosto - 10/21/2002 6:19:23 PM Ando, PE, PM, transient 1207. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 6:39:13 PM "Of course, to see whether this phenomenon was at work in Palestine, one would have to know the data on mortality development which I don't have to hand." 1208. pseudoerasmus - 10/21/2002 6:39:51 PM ...the fall in infant mortality rates... 1209. transient1a - 10/21/2002 7:39:41 PM Israeli Families Say Peace is Revenge October 17, 2002 1210. transient1a - 10/21/2002 7:40:05 PM >>>>>>>>>>>>>> 1213. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 2:48:42 AM Italics? 1214. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 2:49:04 AM Italians? 1215. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 2:52:04 AM Anyhow, this place looks promising: 1216. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 3:03:28 AM Ando, Pe, et al., do read this: 1217. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 3:25:19 AM And this. 1218. PelleNilsson - 10/22/2002 6:08:59 AM I found this site which presumably has no anti-Israel bias. Using the figures there one gets the following average annual population growth rates. It is not at all necessary to postulate massive immigration as the cause of Arab population growth. 1219. transient1a - 10/22/2002 9:07:33 AM RustlerPike, 1220. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 2:13:46 PM Trans: 1221. RustlerPike - 10/22/2002 2:23:12 PM They may have found Jesus' brother's coffin-thing. 1222. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/2002 8:49:29 PM Earlier, Andonly alluded to the Circassians and other Caucasians who were settled by the Ottomans in the Levant, her point being that their introduction did not ignite hostility among the Arab natives because they were Muslims also. The Arabs were hostile to the Zionist settlers because they were Jews, who are supposed to be contemptible, subservient dhimmis in Muslim eyes. I replied that the two situations were not comparable because the Caucasians settled by the Ottomans in Arab lands numbered a few thousand and never threatened to found a new, ethnically Circassian state on Arab land. 1223. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/2002 8:53:15 PM Andonly has also argued that Arabs accepted Ottoman rule because the Ottomans were Muslims. They would not accept the Zionist state because they would not accept being ruled by Jews, who were supposed to be contemptible subservient dhimmis. I replied that, for all their storied aversion to rule by non-Muslims, Muslims Arabs acquiesced to the rule of Europeans even though Christians are also supposed to be contemptible subservient dhimmis. 1224. pseudoerasmus - 10/22/2002 8:53:28 PM Much the same had been done by the Ottomans. The Arabs did not just invite the Turks to rule them. The Ottomans had to defeat the Arabs in war. 1225. Andonly - 10/22/2002 10:36:43 PM I have not meant to abandon this discussion, but I'm otherwise occupied for a while. 1226. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:12:11 AM Occupied, Ando? Surely you mean liberated. 1227. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:31:55 AM You've been discussing Arab religion and Jewish settlement as causes of Arab hatred of Israel, but I don't see you discussing the Arab/Muslim feelings of inferiority vis-a-vis the Judeo-Christian world, which is surely a key factor. The Circassians, etc., who settled in Arab lands did not threaten their self-image the way the Judeans do. The Judeans, with their creativity, positivity, maturity, patience, skill, genius and daring make the entire Arab world look like a great big ocean of fools. 1228. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:36:06 AM The totally worst thing about the Judeans, from an Arab perspective, is that they are not colonists, but quite patently and demonstrably of this region. The fact that we were scattered for well over 15 centuries and the Arabs still couldn't get their shit together and block us when we came back is surely something which, deep in the Arab psyche, says: you guys are finished. 1229. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:37:38 AM What a bunch of shitskies. 1230. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:39:55 AM I was held up in the roadblock for about three hours because of the latest attack. I was driving home, and then the police cars started racing by - over a dozen. And there was a large plume of black smoke up ahead, where young people were being burnt alive. 1231. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:40:43 AM The bombers purposely blew the car up next to the back of the bus, where the fuel tank is. 1232. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 3:16:24 AM 1233. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 8:18:06 AM Results of a recent survey held among Israeli Arabs. 1234. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 8:19:28 AM Is Kinsley still at Slate, anyone? 1235. transient1a - 10/23/2002 8:38:49 AM War, Death and Disaster 1236. transient1a - 10/23/2002 8:39:55 AM 2. Suez War, 1956 1237. transient1a - 10/23/2002 8:44:36 AM 4. Israeli-Egyptian War, 1969-70 1238. transient1a - 10/23/2002 8:45:50 AM 6. TOTAL for these wars: 1239. transient1a - 10/23/2002 8:46:05 AM + 1st Intifada: 1240. betty - 10/23/2002 9:52:33 AM My apologies, i don't know if this link is publicly accessible. a few brief comments at the end of this. 1241. betty - 10/23/2002 9:54:18 AM Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer of the Middle East Forum now run a website in the United States to denounce academics who are deemed to have shown "hatred of Israel". One of the eight professors already on this contemptible McCarthyite list -- it is grotesquely called "Campus Watch" -- committed the unpardonable sin of signing a petition in support of the Palestinian scholar Edward Said. Pipes wants students to inform on professors who are guilty of "campus anti-Semitism". 1242. betty - 10/23/2002 9:56:09 AM Ted Honderich, a Canadian-born philosopher who teaches at University College London, tells me that Oxfam has refused to accept £5,000 plus other royalties from his new book After the Terror following a campaign against him in the Toronto-based Globe and Mail. Now I happen to take issue with some of Professor Honderich's conclusions and I think his book -- praised by the American-Jewish scholar Noam Chomsky -- meanders. I especially don't like his assertion that Palestinians, in trying to free themselves from occupation, have a "moral right to terrorism". Blowing up children in pizzerias -- and Professor Honderich's book is not an endorsement of such atrocities -- is a crime against humanity. There is no moral right to do this. But what in God's name is Oxfam doing refusing Professor Honderich's money for its humanitarian work? Who was behind this? 1243. betty - 10/23/2002 9:57:15 AM And so it goes on. It is left, of course, to the likes of Uri Avneri in Israel to state that "the Sharon government is a giant laboratory for the growing of the anti-Semitism virus". He rightly says that by smearing those who detest the persecution of the Palestinians as anti-Semites, "the sting is taken out of this word, giving it something approaching respectability". But we can take comfort that 28 brave academics have signed a petition condemning President George Bush's build-up to war and Israel's support for it and warning that the Israeli government may be contemplating crimes against humanity on the Palestinians, including ethnic cleansing. 1244. betty - 10/23/2002 10:06:43 AM Our University President is being harassed for not signing the racist and inflamatory advertisement that appeared in the New York Times and spear headed by the President of Harvard. Intelligent, educated people are calling him and the Dean (very Jewish) to bitch about "growing anti-semitism on campus". what these Intelligent, educated people don't realize is that Arabs are semites too. Objections to a corrupt, war hungry government that has people in very high places advocating genocide, err "liquidation", does not make one anti-semitic. Hell even hating all jews does not make one anti-semitic because not all semitic people are jewish and not all jews are semitic. so there. that's my rant for the day. when you say anti-semitic, know what the word means. 1245. betty - 10/23/2002 10:07:40 AM Oh, ummm 1244 starts my comments. 1246. JJBiener - 10/23/2002 10:40:06 AM Betty - Yes, Arabs are Semites, but the word anti-semitism has come to mean a hatred of Jews. This isn't the first time a word's connotation has drifted from its original meaning. Even Merriam Webster defines it as 1247. JJBiener - 10/23/2002 10:40:17 AM There is not a person in Israel who has not lost a friend or a family member to a military or terrorist attack. They have spent their entire lives in fear of death at the hands of terrorists. Is it so surprising that some people (even those in government) are advocating extreme solutions? They are victims of an ongoing campaign of genocide. Why is this lost on you? 1248. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2002 12:01:42 PM betty 1249. RustlerPike - 10/23/2002 12:28:01 PM It's true, Pelle. They are self-hating Jews, scared of their own shadow, always having to be OK with everyone else - God forbid we anger the gentiles! It's a diaspora legacy we haven't shaken yet. 1250. betty - 10/23/2002 2:13:46 PM JJ, 1251. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2002 3:08:29 PM Rustler 1252. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2002 3:09:05 PM Betty 1253. JJBiener - 10/23/2002 3:31:37 PM Betty - You will excuse me if I don't give Fisk the slightest credence. I find his distortions offensive in the extreme. If you accept his version of reality without serious question, then it is your credibility that is at stake. 1254. JJBiener - 10/23/2002 3:31:52 PM It is not so simple as who has a government and who doesn't. That is ridiculous. The Palestinians aren't in their current dilemma because Israel just suddenly decided they didn't like Palestinians. Palestinians are in the position they are in because groups like Hezbollah, Hamas and others have waged a 50+ year campaign to destroy Israel and its people. They had an offer for their own independent state and they rejected it. They will accept nothing less than the destruction of Israel. 1255. betty - 10/23/2002 4:13:37 PM Pelle, 1256. PelleNilsson - 10/23/2002 4:16:43 PM betty 1257. JJBiener - 10/23/2002 4:44:20 PM Betty - It obviously makes no difference to you that Palestinians are bent on the genocide of Israelis. That is their officials stated position, but that doesn't seem to raise the slightest glimmer of outrage in you. Maybe you see Palestinians as this poor little oppressed minority. 1258. betty - 10/23/2002 4:51:24 PM JJ, you ignorant slut, 1259. Andonly - 10/23/2002 5:35:22 PM "I was just pointing out that white South Africans had nowhere to go (like the Jews of Israel, and unlike the almost 2 million Europeans in Algeria, who absconded en masse to France), and greatly feared various calamities, ranging from mere chaos to outright massacre, should they give up minority rule. But they gave it up anyway. I wonder if Zimbabwe is now causing them to regret the decision." 1260. Andonly - 10/23/2002 5:59:06 PM Oh yeah, and the crime. 1261. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:15:35 PM "But let me emphasise that I did not mean to say, once the European rulers showed up at their doorsteps, the Arabs lay on their stomach in submission with their limbs splayed à la chinoise. The Arabs did resist European rule at first. In Iraq, there was an uprising against the British in 1920, which the British duly crushed." 1262. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:30:13 PM The excerpt in Pincher's Message # 1190 describing Israel's mixed political culture strikes me as a very convincing description of the contemporary situation, especially considering the power attained over time by the Orthodox and Russian immigrants, but less so the pre-state period. 1263. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:48:51 PM PE: "None of the three cases of refugee settlement in Arab lands -- Sephardic Jewish refugees from Iberia, Muslim Caucasian deportees, and Christian Assyrian & Armenian deportees -- engendered [to use Andonly's words] the "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread" hostility that the Arabs of Palestine showed toward Zionist immigrants in Palestine. This was so because in none of the three cases were the Arabs threatened with demographic "minoritisation" and incorporation into a new alien state." 1264. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:49:37 PM Again, the "objection" you mention came not just from Palestinians but, at a thunderous pitch, from outside Palestine. What had Iraqis and Syrians and Egyptians to do with "minoritization" by Zionists? Nothing, other than their Islamic and pan-Arabic ambitions and their shared contempt for Jews, whom they surely considered a pitiful non-civilization. 1265. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:49:55 PM "Likewise, the Bosnian Serbs had no intention of sitting idly by as the Muslim-instigated secession of Bosnia-Hercegovina from the Yugoslav federation turned them suddenly into a minority." 1266. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:56:02 PM "PE in 1050 et seq., "Andonly has attributed violent Arab rejectionism of Zionism (prior to the foundation of the state of Israel) to a kind of xenophobia. But was this response an Arab cultural thing or is it something trans-cultural?" 1267. Andonly - 10/23/2002 6:56:23 PM PE, both you and Ots have focused on Yehoshua Porath's explanation of lower infant mortality being behind the increase in the Arab population between the end of the 19th century and 1947. But this is implicit in the material I quoted: "After remaining nearly stagnant for centuries, the population exploded in modern times due to improved infrastructure, agriculture, and immigration, both Jewish and Arab. As a result, from 1890 to 1947, in less than sixty years, the population grew from 532,000 to 1,845,560." Infrastructure--sanitation, roads, hospitals--translates to lower infant mortality. But my excerpt also explicitly states that the British refused to hire Jews in construction and DID employ a substantial number of foreigners: "[T]he British preferred cheaper foreign labor, and in the period leading up to 1922 they employed 15,000 foreigners (mostly from Egypt and Syria) and only 500 Jews." I don't know why anyone here would assume they all went home. 1268. Andonly - 10/23/2002 7:01:53 PM Pincher brought up Hawaians at some point, and PE answered in part that Hawaiians did not reject American rule because they were made citizens and afforded full civil rights. How likely would that have been, do you think, had Hawaiians in conjunction with a half-dozen large Polynesian nations vowed to oppose US rule indefinitely and to sacrifice the vile American interlopers on the alter of Pele? 1269. JJBiener - 10/24/2002 8:58:47 AM Betty - I am adopting your attitude and not considering it a real threat unless it's an official position of the Palestinian Government. 1270. JJBiener - 10/24/2002 8:58:57 AM No matter how you try to look at it, the situations are not comparable. You have the Israelis who go to extraordinary measure to avoid killing Palestinian civilians on one side, and on the other you have Palestinians who target civilians. I don't know how any rational, moral individual can look at this situation and find anything remotely equivalent. 1271. Andonly - 10/24/2002 11:42:46 AM Who was it who was insisting some months ago that there's a great distinction be made between international terrorists like al Qaeda and local terrorists like Hizballah and Hamas? Was it PE? 1272. jexster - 10/24/2002 11:53:19 AM A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: 1273. jexster - 10/24/2002 11:54:54 AM "the Arabs lay on their stomach in submission with their limbs splayed à la chinoise" 1274. Andonly - 10/24/2002 11:55:20 AM Biener, little Betty is up past her bedtime every time she strays into this thread, and I agree with you that the Pals have largely brought their troubles on themselves. 1275. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:30:25 PM Message # 1261: "The Jews have been comparatively restrained from brutally crushing the Pals by their own moralistic self-image and the expectations of Israel's foreign supporters--upon whom the country has perpetually been dependent. If Europe disabused the Arabs of Christian dhimmitude, Israel has never accomplished this for Jews." 1276. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:33:59 PM Message # 1261: "....Syria, Iraq, and Iran, however, are not among them, and not one of these states has suffered "minoritization" at the hands of Jews... 1277. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:34:40 PM Message # 1263: "Or it was so becaue the immigrants remained subservient, taxed and ghettoized, or else were protected by an extremely powerful, potentially brutal, governing authority." 1278. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:37:38 PM Message # 1264: "These ideological matters do not fall into what I take to be your definition of "minoritization,"....But if the prospect for being governed by a minority rather than your own group is not objectively worse than what you've had before, isn't the fear of "minoritization" largely a form of xenophobia?" 1279. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:39:50 PM Message # 1265: "Well, ethnically the Serbs were already a minority in Bosnia, so I'm not sure what you're getting at." 1280. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:40:53 PM Message # 1265: "Your use of the term "minoritization" begins to puzzle me." 1281. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:42:30 PM Message # 1267: "Infrastructure--sanitation, roads, hospitals--translates to lower infant mortality." 1282. pseudoerasmus - 10/24/2002 12:45:10 PM Message # 1268:"PE answered in part that Hawaiians did not reject American rule because they were made citizens and afforded full civil rights." 1283. RustlerPike - 10/24/2002 12:59:51 PM Yeah, well, someone give me a good reason why we shouldn't expel all the Palestinians from the WB&G. No other country in the world would be expected to take this kind of torture from a non-entity it can pulverize in a day. 1284. sakonige - 10/24/2002 1:18:12 PM I have been studiously trying to avoid discussion of recent events, which never go anywhere and always turn acrimonious, and to stick largely to the discussion of historical topics. 1285. sakonige - 10/24/2002 1:22:19 PM I love to fight. I would love to respond to that last post from RustlerPuke right now. 1286. concerned - 10/24/2002 5:03:08 PM sakonige - 1287. concerned - 10/24/2002 5:04:10 PM I have been studiously trying to avoid discussion of recent events, which never go anywhere and always turn acrimonious, and to stick largely to the discussion of historical topics. 1288. RustlerPike - 10/25/2002 1:08:40 AM Pe: 1289. pseudoerasmus - 10/25/2002 8:32:50 AM Well, you had better tell them that. A poll conducted two years ago found that 70% of the Arabs with Israeli citizenship call themselves Palestinians (i.e., "Palestinian", "Arab Palestinian", "Palestinian Arab" or "Israeli Palestinian"). By contrast, only 11% of them called themselves "Israeli Arabs". 1290. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:22:33 PM PE: "(1) Israel did rout the armies of 5 Arab states in 1948, a disabusing of dhimmitude at least as great, surely, as the British suppression of the Iraqi revolt in 1920." 1291. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:23:15 PM If you look at religious exhortations from the pre-state period, they're of the same quality: hysterical. Even the irreligious Nasser alluded to these sentiments in his sabre rattling speeches prior the '67 war. If this is what you consider an ordinary by-product of "minoritization," then where was the initial religious hysteria of the Amerindians, the Hawaiians? You see some pretty visceral (and justified) anti-Christian accusations and insults levelled against Maronites by other Lebanese, but they never approach the sheer nuttiness of the loathing of Jews. It's simply in a category by itself--a fact you consistently deny, citing your own conveniently unfalsifiable impressions of the vitriol from other sectarian conflicts. Well, you say, Arab hysteria only seems unusual because it is magnified by media coverage. Except, it really isn't. It has been there all along, and only now, post 9-11, is the US media covering the subject. Occasionally. 1292. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:26:48 PM "(2) The Arabs in Syria and Iraq (where there was serious initial resistance against European rule) and the Arabs in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (where the resistance against European rule was much less serious) acquiesced to European rule. By contrast, the resistance in Algeria and Libya could not be stamped out at all no matter how brutally the Europeans behaved, the reason being that the Europeans were settling colonists in Algeria and Libya." 1293. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:27:36 PM I think, for instance, that the difference between the examples you cite of Arab rejection of foreign dominance--colonial vs. remotely imperial--could simply be owed in some cases to the different mechanics of dominance in the two models, or to recent histories of sectarian conflict having reached a temporary lull. 1294. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:28:26 PM My argument has been that Arabs held a special contempt for Jews, considering them fundamentally unworthy adversaries; if the colonists were Jews, then as colonists seeking refuge from persecution in a hostile world they should have been particularly vulnerable to vicious, hysterical, unending assault--and their attackers knew it, so were encouraged. Why shouldn't they have been? Jews came to Palestine as European empire's victims, weaklings under British protection. Jews, the whole world knows, were history's rump. Jews, according to Islam, were to be subservient, and nothing in 2000 years had shown them to be otherwise. Was Israel's Lebanese excursion brutal? Yes, but the Party of God prevailed and threw out the infidels, didn't it. Jews, Hamas has said outright, love life, and are afraid to die for their cause. 1295. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:29:04 PM "At some point the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine became internationalised as an ethnic conflict." 1296. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:29:49 PM "Zionism helped create Arab nationalism to begin with." 1297. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:32:24 PM "This [non-belligerance of Arabs whenever the dhimmis among them were subjugated or protected] was true of the Sephardic Jews with their dhimmi status and Ottoman protection, but not of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians who settled in Syria upon their deportation from Ottoman Anatolia. The latter are not ghettoised and they remained in Syria after the French left." 1298. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:33:04 PM Again: I do not deny that Palestinians' fear of partition and transfer animated Arab reaction against Jews in the pre-state period. I certainly do not deny that Palestinians objected to an alien state in their midst. I do deny that that was all there was to it, or that that was enough to account for the specific nature of the anti-Jewish reaction that developed. 1299. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:36:14 PM "By the way, I never denied xenophobia. The question has only been whether this xenophobia is generic, or something very distinctive to Arab Muslims." 1300. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:38:10 PM "But how much of the infrastructure created by the Zionists did the Arabs actually benefit from, and how much from the British-created infrastructure? You have more assumptions than hard truths on this score. 1301. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:39:44 PM On another point you are fond of making, the stereotype of Arabs tossed off their farmland and denied agricultural opportunites taken over by Jews is undermined by this from Avneri, a proponent of the Arab immigration theory whose figures I have not yet found directly disputed by Porath or anyone else: "The most profitable branch in agriculture between the two World Wars was citriculture. The other branch of intensive agriculture in the expanding economy was the growing of vegetables. In 1922 Arab farmers cultivated 30,000 dunam [7,500 acres] and produced 20,000 tons of vegetables. In 1944/45 Arabs farmed 239,733 dunam [60,000 acres] and supplied 189,804 tons of vegetables to the market. In 1931 there were 339 factories owned by Arabs and in 1942, 1,558 factories. The rapid development of the Arab economy, with a concomitant rise in the standard of living, gave rise to demands for a higher quality of health and educational services. As a result, health facilities were expanded, and the scope and level of educational opportunities were also far beyond those prevailing in the neighboring Arab countries." 1302. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:40:09 PM As for Yehoshua Porath, even he, in an exchange with Daniel Pipes and Ronald Sanders over his debunking of "From Time Immemorial," concedes that Palestinian Arabs migrated in significant numbers from the hills of Palestine to the coastal areas of what would ultimately become Israel. These migrants may not have been immigrants from outside mandatory Palestine, but they sure hadn't lived in the port cities "forever" and then been "minoritized" by an influx of Jews: 1303. Andonly - 10/25/2002 2:43:39 PM There is of course room and reason to continue this argument indefinitely, and PE will surely oblige. But I'm going to have to continue to be pretty sporadic and unthorough about it, if I find the time at all. 1304. RustlerPike - 10/26/2002 2:40:57 PM Pe: 1305. RustlerPike - 10/27/2002 2:51:41 AM Not a bad piece about Israel in the NYT. 1306. RustlerPike - 10/28/2002 1:26:18 AM Labor is on its way out of the government. Will Lieberman's party save Sharon from early elections (and Likud primaries - in which Lieberman's old pal Bibi is the favorite)? 1307. RustlerPike - 10/28/2002 1:28:36 AM This is very fucked. If Sharon goes, my job with the PM's office goes. 1308. RustlerPike - 10/28/2002 1:37:48 AM There is one thing that can save Arik's butt though. Three letters, starts with W. 1309. jexster - 10/30/2002 1:14:06 PM JERUSALEM -- Labor Party ministers submitted their resignations today in a dispute over funding for Jewish settlements, breaking up Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's hardline government and paving the way for early elections. 1310. PelleNilsson - 10/30/2002 1:46:45 PM On the illegal settlements: 1311. jexster - 10/30/2002 1:57:55 PM Puts me in mind of Tom Ammiano's comment about me. 1312. jexster - 10/30/2002 2:01:00 PM But if the Jackboot fits, wear it! 1313. JJBiener - 10/30/2002 3:19:34 PM I hope Lieven is careful to protect his last two brain cells. He is one good rap in the head away from vegetablehood. 1314. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:21:44 PM There is one thing that can save Arik's butt though. Three letters, starts with W 1315. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:24:24 PM That was AWESOME Biener! 1316. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:42:32 PM To say Balts have mixed feelings about Anatol Lieven is something of an understatement. Among policy makers in the region and also among many Baltic emigrés, feelings about the British writer and historian tend to range wildly—from abiding respect and admiration to animosity and deep, deep annoyance. 1317. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:42:55 PM AL must have at least 3 brain cells. 1318. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:43:57 PM I'll put Biener down for "animosity and deep, deep annoyance." 1319. jexster - 10/30/2002 3:47:23 PM Opinion 1320. JJBiener - 10/30/2002 3:51:09 PM Jex - Lieven's writing about Israel is the result of either profound ignorance or unreasoning hatred. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. 1321. jexster - 10/30/2002 4:03:14 PM You might have some grounds (though I note you state none, zilch, nada, nil, zip) for making such a stupid comment were it not for the fact that scores of others, including RP above, have essentially proved him right. 1322. JJBiener - 10/30/2002 4:24:31 PM Jex - You obviously don't have a clue about my world view. Both you an Anatole are only able to see the world through the lens of your own hatreds and prejudices. I don't see any other explanation for need you both have to characterize those you disagree with in the most extreme terms. 1323. wonkers2 - 10/30/2002 4:29:45 PM Translation: It's amazing what an occasional blow job will do for my attitude toward a liberal Democrat. 1324. JJBiener - 10/30/2002 4:39:34 PM Wonk - That was beneath you. I consider you a friend, and you and I agree on almost nothing. Some of us don't need to turn a simple disagreement into hatred. 1325. Wombat - 10/30/2002 4:49:31 PM Lieven's piece reminds me of a New Yorker article written about Newt Gingrich's 1994 Republican Revolution and how it would change American society forever. I cannot say that I disagreed with the general tenor of the article, although it clearly took insufficient account of the power of hubris and nemesis, which had Gingrich and his supporters marginalized within two years. 1326. Wombat - 10/30/2002 4:56:56 PM Wonkers: 1327. pseudoerasmus - 10/30/2002 8:05:23 PM What is wrong with what Lieven said? His remark about "hardline Zionism" does not appear to be about Israel per se, but about the kind of militant settler types who steal Palestinian olive harvests. is that the sort of thing Biener is defending? 1328. Andonly - 10/30/2002 9:02:57 PM Speaking of Anatol Lieven, he had an interesting piece in the FT today about what the world ought to expect from the Russia-Chechnya situation. 1329. Andonly - 10/30/2002 9:05:47 PM "Andonly: I will answer your posts later. I've grown weary of our topic and I need a short break from it." 1330. Andonly - 10/30/2002 9:11:00 PM Message # 1312 1331. pseudoerasmus - 10/30/2002 9:14:53 PM Lieven is quite interesting. In his FT dispatches during the First Chechen War, and in his book on Chechnya (issued in 1998 I think), Lieven was very much pro-Chechen. An unbashed admirer of the Chechens, even. 1332. pseudoerasmus - 10/30/2002 9:19:36 PM unAbashed admirer, though he could have been an unBashed admirer too. 1333. pseudoerasmus - 10/30/2002 9:21:54 PM No need to post Lieven's article. It will be available at Johnson's Russia List by tomorrow no doubt. 1334. wonkers2 - 10/31/2002 6:17:50 AM JJ, it was a lame effort to inject a bit of humor. I have no hatred for anyone in this forum. 1335. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 6:45:34 AM Moufaz is apparently Sharon's candidate for Defense Minister. And Lieberman is being floated as Foreign Minister. 1336. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 6:46:05 AM Tee hee. 1337. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 8:24:08 AM "Mofaz from one side, [current army chief Moshe] Yaalon from the other side, Sharon above them ... imagine how the area is going to be," Arafat said in an interview with Associated Press Television News. 1338. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 8:52:51 AM PE - What is wrong with what Lieven said? His remark about "hardline Zionism" does not appear to be about Israel per se, but about the kind of militant settler types who steal Palestinian olive harvests. 1339. joezan - 10/31/2002 9:04:14 AM ...but I know enough about them to know that in this case they are motivated by religious beliefs. The Zionists are motivated by something a bit more basic: survival. 1340. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 9:11:27 AM Joe - What in the fuck is wrong with you? 1341. Wombat - 10/31/2002 9:33:11 AM JJ: 1342. joezan - 10/31/2002 9:48:03 AM JJ: 1343. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 10:09:34 AM Joe - Obviously I know more about the Christian Right than you. Their support for Israel has everything to do with their religious beliefs, but not as you assert any hatred for Islam. Evangelical Christians believe that the return of the Jews to Israel is prophesized in the Bible and it is a precondition for the Second Coming of Christ. That is the reason for their support. 1344. joezan - 10/31/2002 10:36:47 AM JJ: 1345. Andonly - 10/31/2002 10:52:33 AM Biener, I think Zan is right on this one. The Christians who support Israel because they anticipate the rapture any day now are a small minority whose importance has been overplayed lately (on 60 Minutes, for example). 1346. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 10:56:20 AM Joe: 1347. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 11:00:31 AM Joe - Fringe elements? Here is a 60 minutes piece from a couple of weeks ago that goes into some detail about the relationship between the Christian Right and Israel. 1348. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 11:05:25 AM Andonly - I don't see Falwell, Robertson and McAteer as representing a small minority. It seems to me they have large followings among the Christian Right that are generally representative of the whole. 1349. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 11:06:44 AM Ando: 1350. joezan - 10/31/2002 11:10:57 AM Pike: 1351. joezan - 10/31/2002 11:14:42 AM HAHAHAHA! 1352. Candice - 10/31/2002 11:17:35 AM joezan Excuse the newcomers query but could you explain to me what you mean when you say "they're like the Kennedy's retarded sister". 1353. joezan - 10/31/2002 11:28:41 AM I thought the previous sentence explained that, Candice -"No one even mentions them..." 1354. Candice - 10/31/2002 11:33:13 AM joezan Got it. 1355. PelleNilsson - 10/31/2002 12:50:24 PM You're right on the mark, joe. An uppity Jew-boy who thinks he understands something about Christianity deserves to have his ass whipped. 1356. joezan - 10/31/2002 1:02:35 PM See? 1357. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 1:29:58 PM Joe - Even the dumbass Swede agrees with me. 1358. Candice - 10/31/2002 1:39:38 PM JJBiener If it makes any difference I happen to agree with your interpretation of why Christians are pro-Israel. As I understand it, and correct me if I am wrong, the last event these Christians who support Israel believe is Israel will disappear as a sovereign state along with the Jews.What gets me is how can some think this love of Israel and the Jewish people coming from the Christian right is any thing but part of their own agenda with very little to do with the long term peace and prosperity for Israel. 1359. Candice - 10/31/2002 1:46:33 PM Excuse me for entering a conversation and ducking out. For personal reasons I do not have much time to post. Hopefully my life will settle down soon. Al D In a post you welcomed me and mentioned if I was a Liberal not to fear there were many friends to be found on theMote. So where are all these liberals? 1360. Andonly - 10/31/2002 1:51:57 PM "Most Jews voted for the right in the last election (for PM), and in the next elections, a lot more will. So don't speak on the Israeli majority's behalf." 1361. Andonly - 10/31/2002 1:55:56 PM "You know, people don't have to be religious for religion to shape their world view and actions. Mof, the most 'dangerous' kind of people are people who used to be religious. Because they have been empowered by being modernized, but still have religion in them on a subconscious level, shaping the way they see themselves and history." 1362. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 2:00:00 PM Candice - The "love" of Israel by the Christian Right is very much a part of their agenda, and the Israelis know it. They also know at some point the Christians are going to be disappointed and likely withdraw their support. For right now, though, that support is useful. 1363. joezan - 10/31/2002 2:00:01 PM Candice: 1364. Andonly - 10/31/2002 2:00:06 PM Welcome, Candice. The Mote at this point is fairly centrist in my experience. You will find liberal views here, but probably not a lot of leftists. 1365. joezan - 10/31/2002 2:03:12 PM JJ - ever the insufferable blowhard. 1366. JJBiener - 10/31/2002 2:06:08 PM Joe - Did something crawl up your ass and die? I wasn't talking to you, and if you think I was talking about you, you have even bigger problems. 1367. Candice - 10/31/2002 2:12:23 PM joezan I'm not sure what you mean. I just started on the Mote a few days ago. Maybe I need to get an "attitude". I am afraid you will find me some what soft spoken but with very strong ideas and ideals. 1368. RustlerPike - 10/31/2002 3:09:40 PM Candice: 1369. arkymalarky - 10/31/2002 5:12:52 PM We killed them. We didn't know you were coming. 1370. Trouble - 10/31/2002 5:16:34 PM THE FINAL SOLUTION: 1371. concerned - 10/31/2002 5:47:57 PM So where are all these liberals? 1372. concerned - 10/31/2002 5:49:27 PM And isn't Alistair Connor quite modishly liberal? Or do I have him wrong? 1373. concerned - 10/31/2002 5:56:17 PM Re. 1331 - 1374. concerned - 10/31/2002 5:59:30 PM Re. 1338 - 1375. concerned - 10/31/2002 6:02:05 PM I have no problem with that sort of support, however transient it may be. 1376. concerned - 10/31/2002 6:05:32 PM Re. 1350 - 1377. concerned - 10/31/2002 6:17:25 PM I believe bubbaette, JAH, and thoughtful are somewhat liberal. Correct me if I'm wrong, girls. 1378. concerned - 10/31/2002 6:19:27 PM Here's my impression. I think many Jews more or less secretly regard CC's as retarded nieces and nephews. 1379. Trouble - 10/31/2002 6:19:38 PM Muslim Arab anti-Russian bigotry is drawing Russia closer to Israel and the West. I make reference to: 1380. Trouble - 10/31/2002 6:21:24 PM Muslim Arab anti-Russian bigotry is drawing Russia closer to Israel and the West. I make reference to: 1381. Trouble - 10/31/2002 6:21:54 PM Muslim Arab anti-Russian bigotry is drawing Russia closer to Israel and the West. I make reference to: 1382. Andonly - 10/31/2002 7:57:12 PM "I think joezan has the most credibility on the subject at hand wrt the marginalization of Robertson, etal among CC's in general. Try to be polite about swallowing your disappointment, JJB, Andonly, etc." 1383. Andonly - 10/31/2002 7:59:10 PM "I think joezan has the most credibility on the subject at hand wrt the marginalization of Robertson, etal among CC's in general. Try to be polite about swallowing your disappointment, JJB, Andonly, etc." 1384. Andonly - 10/31/2002 8:00:44 PM Ooh, that's some weird Halloween double-post action. 1385. pseudoerasmus - 10/31/2002 10:38:37 PM Biener: I don't know why you think Lieven is referring to Israelis as a whole. I've read Lieven's articles and his books and he's a pretty sober fellow. 1386. RustlerPike - 11/1/2002 2:27:17 AM Lieven called his wife aftre takeoff the other day: 1387. Ulgine Barrows - 11/1/2002 2:32:58 AM retching at the horriblemess of a joke Hi RP 1388. RustlerPike - 11/1/2002 9:32:46 AM Hey Ulg, sorry. 1389. concerned - 11/1/2002 6:38:48 PM Re. 1388 - 1390. RustlerPike - 11/1/2002 7:43:33 PM The weird thing is, there's a link to a Kahane website there. And he doesn't even explain it. It's like there's an obvious connection between Jewish and Hindu extremists. 1391. Andonly - 11/1/2002 9:09:23 PM My cousin's husband, Yehuda, who grew up in a kibbutz and now lives in Kentucky (where he built his family's spectacular house from scratch) sent me this: 1392. Andonly - 11/1/2002 9:10:13 PM "The weird thing is, there's a link to a Kahane website there. And he doesn't even explain it. It's like there's an obvious connection between Jewish and Hindu extremists." 1393. RustlerPike - 11/2/2002 1:19:30 AM Ando: 1394. jexster - 11/3/2002 6:58:28 PM Bibi & Butthead Back Together Again - Government with no hope - Ha'aretz 1395. jexster - 11/3/2002 6:59:34 PM Good one Ando...mass e-mail missive material! 1396. jexster - 11/3/2002 9:26:07 PM Did someone mention or conspicuously FAIL to mention one of my all time heros? 1397. jexster - 11/3/2002 9:26:45 PM Join me Biener! 1398. Andonly - 11/4/2002 12:50:21 PM From Jexster's own link: 1399. Andonly - 11/4/2002 12:54:06 PM I won't say I'm not concerned about the latest developments in the Likud--Bibi agreeing to serve under Sharon, that is, with Mofaz at the IDF helm. 1400. stostosto - 11/4/2002 1:34:38 PM Inmates, asylum. When will this ever end? 1401. PelleNilsson - 11/4/2002 2:18:01 PM And another self-exploding Palestinian, this time near Tel Aviv. Two dead (+ the bomber), 30 wounded. 1402. transient1a - 11/4/2002 10:24:22 PM The Origins and Nature of Fundamentalism in Society 1403. transient1a - 11/4/2002 10:25:15 PM >>>>>>>>>> 1404. transient1a - 11/4/2002 10:27:28 PM >>>>>>>>>>>> 1405. transient1a - 11/4/2002 10:29:02 PM >>>>>>>>>>>> 1406. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 4:21:57 AM Sharon the man. New erections on February 4th. 1407. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 4:33:16 AM I posted this on a competing forum on October 20th: 1408. PelleNilsson - 11/5/2002 5:35:36 AM What are your predictions, Rustler? 1409. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 9:35:01 AM Pelle: 1410. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 9:36:07 AM Pelle: 1411. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 9:41:17 AM Sharon is the one who scuttled the possibility of a right-wing coalition, btw. He said yesterday that even after the erections, he would opt for a unity government with Labor. This angered Lieberman's party, which figured that at least then - after the right wing's expected victory - Sharon would let go of Labor and opt for a "national" government. But no - he's insisting on being responsible, living up to his commitments to the US, etc. 1412. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 9:47:16 AM Bibi is to be FM. Weird. 1413. stostosto - 11/5/2002 9:48:38 AM Sharonaldo vs. Mr. Beanyamin Netanyahu? 1415. stostosto - 11/5/2002 9:54:00 AM ?? 1416. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 10:33:23 AM But what about Labour? Isn't God going to intervene on their behalf? 1417. Andonly - 11/5/2002 11:29:14 AM If Bibi is to be FM, then he either dropped his other conditions besides early elections, or else... he didn't. 1418. wonkers2 - 11/5/2002 1:12:14 PM I heard on the radio this morning somebody quoting Sharon as saying something to the effect that after the U.S. takes care of Saddam Hussein they (we) will have to go after Iran! I wonder if he's given Bush his marching orders on that one yet? 1419. PelleNilsson - 11/5/2002 2:23:23 PM Rustler Message # 1410 1420. Andonly - 11/5/2002 2:39:32 PM His name at the other place is "Miltato". 1421. stostosto - 11/5/2002 3:11:10 PM Motherfucker Israeli Lunatic Toting A Terrible Outrage. 1422. PelleNilsson - 11/5/2002 3:31:21 PM That's a good one. 1423. stostosto - 11/5/2002 4:03:28 PM Pelle: See Int'l. 1424. RustlerPike - 11/5/2002 8:13:21 PM sto's brilliant*. 1425. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 12:34:27 AM Ando: 1426. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 12:35:05 AM Oops. 1427. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 12:36:25 AM Sharon simply the better, more responsible leader. Bibi is a dick. 1428. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 1:09:41 AM Likud primaries are to be held in about three weeks (Bibi wants four, Arik wants two). 1429. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 1:29:48 AM See, deep down inside him, Bibi knows he'll be better off as FM than as PM, too. Part of his problem appears to be that he lives in his brother's shadow. I can't believe I'm writing this effeminate psychobabble, but I am. 1430. Ulgine Barrows - 11/6/2002 6:58:56 AM "Ando - what is your moniker Over There? " 1431. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 9:48:42 AM Over there in Cal's forum, Ulg. 1432. Andonly - 11/6/2002 12:39:56 PM "Sharon simply the better, more responsible leader. Bibi is a dick." 1433. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 4:16:01 PM Ando: 1434. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 4:17:56 PM I think economy-wise, people who find a job working for the guvmint or defense-related firms are probably doing a smart thing. 1435. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 4:25:32 PM My last few posts can be summed up as: I don't know what the fuck is going to happen, but I do think it looks like Saddam won't live to see 2004. 1436. Andonly - 11/6/2002 4:40:12 PM "The proper Hebrew is mayim adumim: mayim is a plural form." 1437. Andonly - 11/6/2002 4:49:22 PM "I think economy-wise, people who find a job working for the guvmint or defense-related firms are probably doing a smart thing." 1438. RustlerPike - 11/6/2002 10:56:39 PM Ando: 1439. Andonly - 11/7/2002 2:36:19 PM "You see - we (Izzies) control you (diasporites). Not the other way around.' 1440. RustlerPike - 11/7/2002 3:06:06 PM Ando: 1441. Wombat - 11/7/2002 3:50:50 PM What didn't you like about being a "diaspora" Jew? 1442. Andonly - 11/7/2002 7:45:01 PM "I don't believe in the diaspora Jew existence." 1443. concerned - 11/7/2002 9:42:19 PM I think you would not have much trouble these days finding a place in the US to live where you did not feel like you were sheltering in someone else's territory among people unlike you. 1444. Andonly - 11/8/2002 10:04:43 AM "I'm just amused that we can manipulate things pretty easily to force you to get your butts (and dollars, and know-how) over here and help make this place better." 1445. Wombat - 11/8/2002 10:32:00 AM And if the American Jews and American politicians ever catch on to this, Israel's existence as anything approaching a viable state will be fatally threatened...and serve it right. Rustler will still have Masada to fall back on. 1446. stostosto - 11/8/2002 1:31:56 PM Ando's right, Rustler. You are a control freak. 1447. PelleNilsson - 11/8/2002 1:43:19 PM The only thing he can't and won't control is his compulsive farting. 1448. PelleNilsson - 11/8/2002 1:43:38 PM ... next ... 1449. stostosto - 11/8/2002 1:43:54 PM ... who doesn't have control. Which is why you're out of it. 1450. stostosto - 11/8/2002 1:45:20 PM Hey, Pelle, you separated two posts of mine! What heavy traffic! 1451. RustlerPike - 11/9/2002 12:53:38 AM sto: 1452. RustlerPike - 11/9/2002 12:58:13 AM Ando: 1453. RustlerPike - 11/9/2002 1:00:39 AM You lived in one part in the US, for a short time, as a kid. Well, things vary from location to location, you're a grownup now, and times have changed. I think you would not have much trouble these days finding a place in the US to live where you did not feel like you were sheltering in someone else's territory among people unlike you. 1454. jexster - 11/9/2002 12:58:15 PM 1455. jexster - 11/9/2002 9:49:46 PM 1456. RustlerPike - 11/13/2002 1:38:14 PM Well, Bibi has apparently lost to Sharon in the Likud merkaz convention. When he finished speaking, the crowd sang Arik, melekh yisrael - 'Arik, king of Israel', and not haydeh Bibi - 'go Bibi'. 1457. PelleNilsson - 11/13/2002 2:11:40 PM Rustler 1458. Wombat - 11/13/2002 2:27:33 PM His father is an academic of some repute; his brother Jonathan commanded the forces on the ground during the Entebbe operation, and was the only Israeli soldier killed in the action. By most accounts, Bibi is half the man his brother was. 1459. PelleNilsson - 11/13/2002 2:41:56 PM Thanks, Wombat. Offered a choice between pest and cholera I choose Arik who at least has some integrity. Bibi is a spineless bag of wind. 1460. RustlerPike - 11/14/2002 4:00:53 AM I agree with you, Pelle. First time in a long time. 1461. RustlerPike - 11/14/2002 5:41:34 AM Some speculation in the Israeli press that Syria's UN vote is a sign that Assad is sensing where things are going and wants to distance himself from Iraq. Apparently the Iraqi press was angered by Syria's vote. 1462. Wombat - 11/14/2002 8:25:33 AM Syria and Iraq each believe that they are the true representative of the Baathist ideology. I am sure that helped (as it did with Syria's participation in 1463. RustlerPike - 11/14/2002 9:00:43 AM Perhaps. But the guy speculating is aware of that, as he is a leading Arabist here. He is also mouse-eared and mean, as I know because we served together in IDF Radio. And he leans to the left - or used to. 1464. PelleNilsson - 11/14/2002 11:33:01 AM In the SC, Syria is not only Syria. It also represents the Arab states. I'm quite sure that the 'yes' vote means that Egypt and, probably, Saudi supports the resolution (this was confirmed by the recent Arab League meeting). Without that support Syria would have abstained. 1465. RustlerPike - 11/14/2002 12:38:55 PM 1466. robertjayb - 11/15/2002 2:06:47 PM Naefe, Naifeh? Sirhan Sirhan? Now that rings a bell... 1467. robertjayb - 11/15/2002 3:52:30 PM HEBRON, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian gunmen fired at Jewish settlers on their way to Sabbath eve prayers in the West Bank city of Hebron Friday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15, Israeli security sources said. 1468. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 10:50:40 PM 12 killed, including a Colonel who was Hebron's commander, the highest ranking officer killed in this war to date. 1469. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:02:14 PM Eh, The Perfect World is mostly a girlie forum. I don't know if I want to post there anymore. 1470. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:08:17 PM Wombat: 1471. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:09:39 PM "Hebron parts" (#1469) should read "parts of Hebron". 1472. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:12:26 PM We had some fight knocked into us by the Holocaust. The early Zionists had gumption. But at 54, this country has no fight in it. The Jews are back to their shtetlar habits of self-blame and ballbusting. 1473. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:19:44 PM Dr. Ron Breiman, a right winger, says (in Ynet) that the new Israeli political landscape is composed of three blocs: left (including Labor), center (Likud) and right. This is pretty true. Sharon has become a centrist. 1474. RustlerPike - 11/15/2002 11:36:59 PM Maybe the erections will change everything. Sharon will be able to establish a stable coalition without the Oslo crowd. 1475. RustlerPike - 11/16/2002 12:27:31 AM Ha'aretz: 1476. RustlerPike - 11/16/2002 1:16:04 AM Well, here I am in Harish, with a lot of Arab neighbors, including a crime family that was moved here more or less intact from its previous abode in Ramleh, where a feud with another clan had gone out of control. 1477. RustlerPike - 11/16/2002 6:41:38 AM This would be a true whopper: 1478. Wombat - 11/16/2002 11:59:47 AM Rustler: 1479. robertjayb - 11/16/2002 12:51:26 PM Wombat, 1480. RustlerPike - 11/16/2002 3:37:43 PM Wom: 1481. RustlerPike - 11/17/2002 3:25:15 AM 1482. robertjayb - 11/17/2002 12:30:00 PM Nov. 17 1483. Wombat - 11/17/2002 10:04:52 PM RJB: 1484. RustlerPike - 11/17/2002 11:31:16 PM Wombat: 1485. wonkers2 - 11/19/2002 8:42:47 AM On the West Bank by Ian Buruma 1486. jexster - 11/22/2002 12:30:55 PM Intro: This is a song, that uh, theres alot of Xmas songs out there, but not too many about Hanukkah, so I wrote a song for all those nice little Jewish kids who dont get to hear any Hanukkah songs--here we go... 1487. concerned - 11/26/2002 11:44:01 AM 1488. concerned - 11/26/2002 11:44:57 AM Toys, jexster, you dumbfuck. 1489. JJBiener - 11/26/2002 1:35:03 PM RJB - Please pardon a naive question from a rural southern goy, but how does the observation, "I didn't know you were Jewish," hint of anti-Semitism? 1490. robertjayb - 11/26/2002 2:51:36 PM Okay, JJB. Now I get it... 1491. robertjayb - 11/26/2002 2:53:02 PM get it. 1492. robertjayb - 11/26/2002 2:56:45 PM Stop! 1493. RustlerPike - 11/26/2002 3:54:52 PM rjb: 1494. robertjayb - 11/26/2002 4:55:37 PM I was struggling to put away jexster's toys. Sigh... 1495. wonkers2 - 11/26/2002 6:02:55 PM Israeli soldiers shot and killed another eight-year-old rock thrower yesterday. Ho hum. 1496. RustlerPike - 11/27/2002 8:08:09 AM I donno about the Patriots. I guess someone is getting nervous about whether Israel truly is safe from scuds and other airborne WMDs. 1497. RustlerPike - 11/27/2002 8:14:47 AM NYT: 1498. jexster - 11/28/2002 11:01:08 AM Israel Asks Bush for $4 Billion Military Aid Increase; $8 Billion Loan Guarantees 1499. arkymalarky - 11/28/2002 11:31:56 AM I hope you and yours are all ok, RP. 1500. RustlerPike - 11/28/2002 2:48:13 PM I'm OK, malarka. Happy holidays. 1501. jexster - 11/29/2002 4:57:28 PM I'm sure they didn't really think when they penned this headline in the NyT Today 1502. Andonly - 12/2/2002 11:21:06 AM Dear Rustler and my fellow yids, 1503. Jenerator - 12/6/2002 9:34:04 AM Hey Rustler, 1504. jexster - 12/6/2002 11:29:59 AM 1505. marjoribanks - 12/10/2002 10:33:45 AM Since 1973, Israel has cost the United States about $1.6 trillion. If divided by today's population, that is more than $5,700 per person. 1506. marjoribanks - 12/10/2002 10:34:33 AM The text in the above post should be in quotes, it's from the CSMonitor story. 1507. marjoribanks - 12/10/2002 10:38:11 AM Notice how consensus has swung decisively to the two-state solution in the last year. 1508. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 11:05:44 AM Banks - The implication in CSM story is that somehow Israel is to blame for the fact that it has been surrounded by enemies who want to destroy it. This is a curious position for liberals to take considering they are the first ones to rail against "blaming the victim." I guess when Israel is the victim, they are willing to look the other way. 1509. marjoribanks - 12/10/2002 11:15:38 AM Biener, 1510. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 11:29:20 AM Banks - I see you are still giving your typical responses. If you don't want to discuss your opinions, why bother posting here? 1511. PelleNilsson - 12/10/2002 12:17:16 PM JJ 1512. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 2:01:15 PM Pelle - Yes, I agree with the vision of a two-state solution. I also agree with Bush's and Sharon's assessment that a two-state solution is impossible with the current Palestinian leadership. At best Arafat gives lip service to peace while members of his own regime promote terror. In addition to Arafat's group, there is Hamas, Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad (among others) which do not follow Arafat's leadership and who have stated unequivocally they have no interest in peace. 1513. PelleNilsson - 12/10/2002 2:25:50 PM And you do realise that a two-state solution will entail giving up most of the settlements? 1514. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 2:29:16 PM Pelle - Why would a two-state solution require giving up the settlements? Palestinians live and work in Israel. Why can't Israelis live and work in Palestine? Unless you are willing to advocate the confiscation of Palestinian property in Israel, you can't honestly advocate for the dismantling of the Israeli settlements. 1515. PelleNilsson - 12/10/2002 2:32:59 PM Well, I just wanted you to expose your hypocrisy and I succeeded. 1516. jexster - 12/10/2002 3:02:03 PM Gen. Election 1517. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 3:08:40 PM Pelle - How is my position hypocritical? How would Israelis living in Palestine be any different from Palestinians living in Israel? It would be hypocritical to say that Palestinians could stay in Israel, but Israelis could not stay in Palestine. 1518. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 3:11:00 PM Pelle - Just to be clear, I am not advocating that the settlements would remain a part of Israel. I am saying that the Israelis could stay, but the settlements will be a part of Palestine. 1519. Trouble - 12/10/2002 3:16:42 PM JJ is right. Jews should be allowed to live and work in Palestine. 1520. Wombat - 12/10/2002 5:23:03 PM In armed camps as Israeli citizens--who happen not to be living in Israel, or subject to the laws of Palestine? 1521. JJBiener - 12/10/2002 11:16:46 PM Wombat - Whether they become Palestinian citizens or Israeli nationals in Palestine, they would be subject to Palestinian laws just as Palestinians in Israel are subject to Israeli law. 1522. Wombat - 12/11/2002 7:22:42 AM JJ. 1523. RustlerPike - 12/11/2002 9:19:11 AM Hey Jen! 1524. magoseph - 12/11/2002 9:42:50 AM I just note that Labor has put forward a list exclusively made up of doves to go to the people with, in the up-coming election. Likud, of course, will stay with their right-wing ensemble 1525. Wombat - 12/11/2002 9:53:14 AM I am not sure how Magoseph arrived at that conclusion, based on what the Israeli papers have to say. 1526. magoseph - 12/11/2002 9:58:46 AM Wombat, 1527. JJBiener - 12/11/2002 10:08:57 AM Wombat - I cannot imagine which would be more repugnant to the parties involved 1528. Wombat - 12/11/2002 10:14:43 AM Magoseph: 1529. magoseph - 12/11/2002 10:40:26 AM I read the papers too, Wombat, but the CNN trailers have quite often than not, forecast future events. 1530. RustlerPike - 12/11/2002 1:12:44 PM Actually some head doves' heads have rolled, most notably Beilin and Yael Dayan, who are joining Meretz. The victors were mostly of Ben Eliezer's camp. I heard Beilin's son on the radio comparing Ben Eliezer's vengefulness to that of Saddam Hussein, in an apparent slur on Ben Eliezer's Jewish Iraqi roots. 1531. RustlerPike - 12/11/2002 1:14:48 PM Until now, over the past two years, Sharon has gotten everything he wanted. So a unity government does seem pretty likely. 1532. RustlerPike - 12/11/2002 1:15:18 PM But maybe not. I know not. 1533. RustlerPike - 12/14/2002 1:50:41 AM Jenerator: 1534. PelleNilsson - 12/18/2002 4:10:36 PM Rustler 1535. JJBiener - 12/18/2002 4:35:45 PM Pelle - Lighten up. There are threads where no one has posted in a month. I don't see you threatening them. This remains an important topic and it continues to warrant its own thread. 1536. JJBiener - 12/18/2002 4:37:36 PM Pelle - BTW, you never responded to #1517 and #1518. Care to comment? 1537. PelleNilsson - 12/18/2002 4:44:29 PM I didn't comment because I thought Wombat's Message # 1522 effectively killed your position. 1538. RustlerPike - 12/19/2002 6:16:24 AM Does anyone remember roughly when it was that I told you guys Gissin had said the war would be in January or February? Wasn't it around 4-5 months ago at least? 1539. Al D - 12/20/2002 4:47:04 PM I have been reading a number of books about the Middle East-Bernard Lewis's Middle East, Raphael Patai's The Arab Mind, David Pryce-Jones's The Closed Circle, Amos Oz's In The Land of Israel-and I can see little hope for a peaceful solution of the Israli/Palistinian war. I do not believe other Arab countries would allow it. They seem so controlled by shame/honor that Israel existing on Arab land is unthinkable. 1540. Jenerator - 12/20/2002 4:57:01 PM Hi Al! Of all the books you've read lately, which one is the best? 1541. Al D - 12/20/2002 5:05:22 PM Hi Jen 1542. RustlerPike - 12/22/2002 1:25:40 AM Merry Christmas, Jen, and a happy New Year. 1543. jexster - 12/24/2002 8:19:49 AM 1544. jexster - 12/25/2002 12:28:52 PM Latin Patriarch: Leaders Who Cannot Make Peace Should Step Aside 1545. marjoribanks - 1/2/2003 10:43:13 AM Chana Tova. 1546. robertjayb - 1/5/2003 1:01:10 PM Where's our Rustler? 1547. Etom - 1/6/2003 3:24:26 PM "1544. jexster - 12/25/02 5:28:52 PM 1548. arkymalarky - 1/6/2003 5:59:21 PM Hey Etom! 1549. judithathome - 1/6/2003 6:00:39 PM I think he's in a perfect place. 1550. jexster - 1/9/2003 10:38:35 AM JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A corruption scandal embroiling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites) turned Israel's election campaign into an open race on Thursday after opinion polls showed support for his front-running Likud party plummeting. 1551. marjoribanks - 1/10/2003 9:37:42 AM I'd like Spike's take on the Sharon 1552. marjoribanks - 1/10/2003 9:39:45 AM If Sharon is right and Mitzna (a) has been responsible for this leak and (b) is guilty of similar transgressions and has been using this political opportunity nonetheless - then we all have to respect Mitzna far more than the evidence has previously suggested. He has both the balls and and the brazenness necessary to depose the Sharonists and make a difficult deal with the Palestinians. 1553. Wombat - 1/10/2003 10:23:54 AM Unfortunately, most of the Likud voters seem to be fleeing to smaller parties, with similar or more extreme versions of Likud's ideology. 1554. wonkers2 - 1/10/2003 10:25:10 AM Let's keep our fingers crossed that Butthead will get what he so richly deserves. 1555. marjoribanks - 1/10/2003 10:33:09 AM Wombat, 1556. joezan - 1/10/2003 10:46:12 AM 1557. wonkers2 - 1/10/2003 11:04:23 AM If Sharon is out where will Bush get his foreign policy marching orders? 1558. joezan - 1/10/2003 11:06:22 AM 1559. wonkers2 - 1/10/2003 11:20:14 AM Bush must find that reassuring. 1560. Wombat - 1/10/2003 12:56:24 PM I don't think the full effect of the scandal has been played out yet. 1561. vonKreedon - 1/10/2003 1:19:21 PM JJ - You asked several times about Palestinians having property, living in Isreal. Do you have a cite for this? I know that there are Isreali citizens who are Palestinians, but this is a different situation than what you are talking about vis-a-vis the Isreali settlements. 1562. joezan - 1/10/2003 11:06:38 PM 1563. vonKreedon - 1/11/2003 1:52:51 AM Are these Palestinian non-Isreali citizens living within the recognized borders of Isreal? 1564. jexster - 1/13/2003 12:19:14 PM CBS 60 Minutes ran a feature on Gen. Mitzna last night, coverage that money could never buy, that any politician would kill for. 1565. joezan - 1/13/2003 2:05:18 PM Not so fast, jasper: 1566. jexster - 1/13/2003 3:57:59 PM CLOSING THE GAP - Until a bribery scandal exploded in his face last week, Ariel Sharon was a shoo-in to be re-elected Israel’s prime minister. Now with less than two weeks to elections, challenger Amram Mitzna is breathing down his neck. Bob Simon reports. 1567. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:03:26 AM From The American Conservative: Make Amram Mitzna Your Next Mitzvah! 1568. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:05:05 AM He has said that ruling 3.5 million Palestinians against their will cannot work and will only serve to destroy Israel economically as well as morally. Again, hear, hear! 1569. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:24:54 AM Doesn't matter whether Mitzna wins...Likud's vote will be sharply down, his star rising as he changes the question in Israel... 1570. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:32:51 AM Better Book Your Tickets to Armageddon Zan 1571. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:33:24 AM Not so fast Jasper 1572. jexster - 1/14/2003 12:34:30 AM Paid for by United Torah Judaism - San Francisco...Backing Mitnza Since Summer '01. 1573. RustlerPike - 1/19/2003 10:52:10 PM Eh. Thanks for asking about me, folks. I was incarcerated for about, oh, 20 hours on 1/1/03 by the crazy femmunist judge in charge of my family court case. She freaked out because I made her a little Flash presentation about how femmunism was crashing down in the US, put it on a webpage and faxed her the url. I had my computers taken away and only got mine back today, sans the original hard drive. 1574. RustlerPike - 1/19/2003 11:00:15 PM >>> 1575. judithathome - 1/19/2003 11:00:31 PM Funny but you didn't seem unable to post over at TPW in all that time but maybe I was reading old stuff. 1576. RustlerPike - 1/19/2003 11:25:13 PM My current prediction for the post-erection scenario is a secular government - Likud, Labor and Shinui - and an ever stronger and more menacing right wing opposition. There are certain to be scuffles in the Knesset, especially between Baruch Marzel of Herut and Ahmed Tibi. 1577. RustlerPike - 1/19/2003 11:30:32 PM jah: 1578. arkymalarky - 1/20/2003 5:59:59 AM This place is what it is, and of course it's different strokes and all that, but you know we value your insights on Israel and I for one hope you will continue to offer them in here at least occasionally and keep us updated on how you are doing. 1579. RustlerPike - 1/20/2003 11:06:36 AM Well, I'll do my damnedest, arky. As long as they don't cut my telephone lines. I am finding some solace in reading about Churchill's troubles in the 1930s, when nobody - including the press - would give him the time of day and everyone believed in appeasement. He sank into financial shit as well, almost selling his estate at Chartwell, and guess who saved him with a loan? A group of Jewish financiers, who liked what he stood for. 1580. PelleNilsson - 1/20/2003 11:54:15 AM I remember. To use a rustlerism: Am I good, or am I good? Of course I didn't mean a strongman or a messianic type but someone who can offer some hope, some vision, but that, obviously, is not in the cards. Tired old men, tired old ideas. I think Friedman is right when he sees more fragmentation in the near term. And both sides to the conflict have broken the basic rule that when in a hole, stop digging. 1581. jexster - 1/20/2003 12:04:08 PM 1582. arkymalarky - 1/20/2003 12:08:21 PM Budget? Budgets are for wimps. Real men use plastic. 1583. Etom - 1/20/2003 5:22:49 PM Remember, remember: 1584. Andonly - 1/20/2003 6:21:24 PM Pike, 1585. RustlerPike - 1/21/2003 3:15:09 AM Ando: 1586. PelleNilsson - 1/21/2003 5:03:23 AM Two questions. 1587. RustlerPike - 1/23/2003 2:05:07 AM What do you mean by 'galutism'? 1588. RustlerPike - 1/23/2003 2:05:35 AM >>> 1589. RustlerPike - 1/23/2003 2:06:55 AM ['anti-old religion' dropped out of there by mistake.] 1590. joezan - 1/26/2003 8:55:32 AM 1591. Trouble - 1/26/2003 9:53:40 AM The Pal terrorists just used a donkey carrying explosives to try to destroy an Israeli bus. 1592. marjoribanks - 1/28/2003 11:13:34 AM It's nearly 6 PM in Israel and the report is that a highly unimpressive 45% of the electorate has turned out to the polls. One must gather that the Sharonists will win something like a decisive majority based on this percentage despite the contradictory poll data that emerged before the election. 1593. joezan - 1/28/2003 1:25:57 PM OOOhhhhh - must be voter suppression! 1594. RustlerPike - 1/28/2003 4:31:09 PM Mitzna is the surprise victor. 1595. RustlerPike - 1/28/2003 4:32:18 PM Jasper and marj were right, as usual. You're out of sync with the times, joe. These are heady times for the left, the world over. 1596. robertjayb - 1/28/2003 4:43:08 PM JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud party swept to victory in Israel's general election on Tuesday and dealt a crushing defeat to the leftist parties that pursued peace deals with the Palestinians. 1597. RustlerPike - 1/29/2003 10:49:07 AM My guess: he'll opt for a Likud + Shinui + Sharansky + Am Ehad + NRP gov't, with Lieberman supporting from the outside, and they'll wait for Labor to crumble and for some Laborites from Ben Eliezer's camp to defect. 1598. alistairConnor - 1/29/2003 10:57:09 AM So you think Shinui are full of shit and will join a government with the religious parties, Russ? 1599. joezan - 1/29/2003 11:18:23 AM ...ahem: 1600. seguineandonly - 1/29/2003 6:39:32 PM Hmm. Sarid has resigned from Meretz. 1601. alistairConnor - 1/30/2003 6:55:25 AM Sounds like he's a bit too full of himself. 1602. RustlerPike - 1/30/2003 10:21:24 AM So you think Shinui are full of shit and will join a government with the religious parties, Russ? 1603. RustlerPike - 1/30/2003 10:22:21 AM This is not a good time for predictions. Everyone's lying now, and the haggling is only beginning. 1604. RustlerPike - 1/30/2003 10:27:50 AM You see: there is no reason why Shinui and the NRP can't sit together. The NRP is saying it won't join if Shas won't - but that doesn't sound like a position that can't be changed. Lapid of Shinui is a right winger and responsible person at heart. He will be willing to make some compromises on religion to help the NRP save face. Sharon will have to offer Eitam something good, drag out negotiations until everyone wants a seat in the government and a few days before the war is launched, they'll strike a deal. 1605. jexster - 1/31/2003 3:38:42 PM What was this - a victory party???? 1606. Trouble - 2/7/2003 8:18:43 AM The poor old Gray Lady has gone from being the big dog of journalism to Howell Raines' pet poodle. 1607. Trouble - 2/9/2003 8:23:34 AM Israel will throw Yasser Arafat out of Yesha if he refuses to appoint a Prime Minister with full authority to run the PA. So decided Prime Minister Sharon and U.S. President George Bush recently, according to a report in Yediot Acharonot. A senior Israeli official is quoted as saying that the White House sees Arafat and Saddam Hussein as equally repugnant. 1608. alistairconnor - 2/13/2003 1:36:01 PM Looks like Rustler's been busy... 1609. arkymalarky - 2/13/2003 6:42:54 PM That's neat. I've been wondering what he's been up to. 1610. RustlerPike - 2/15/2003 3:20:44 AM That and more: 1611. arkymalarky - 2/15/2003 11:25:37 AM Well? Wot's it say? 1612. PelleNilsson - 2/15/2003 12:07:13 PM Rustler is peddling some anti-feminist tract (as is his present habit). 1613. RustlerPike - 2/22/2003 9:24:31 AM The caption asks "are men fair game?", but the Hebrew phrase is less ambiguous than the English. Basically, it asks if it's OK to kill men. 1614. PelleNilsson - 2/22/2003 11:52:03 AM Rustler 1615. jexster - 2/22/2003 2:52:50 PM 1616. wabbit - 3/3/2003 1:47:20 PM Israeli troops have captured a founder member of the Islamic militant group Hamas during an incursion into the Gaza Strip. Sheikh Mohammed Taha is reported to be the first senior Hamas political leader to be arrested since the Palestinian uprising began in September 2000. 1617. wabbit - 3/3/2003 1:48:43 PM Seven French nationals have filed a lawsuit against the President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, accusing him of crimes against humanity and genocide. The seven - all relatives of Jewish victims killed during the current Palestinian uprising, or intifada - said Mr Arafat was responsible for the crimes. 1618. LadyChaos - 3/6/2003 11:42:32 PM What's clear to me is that 9/11 has its roots in the fact that the world for too long has given the Palestinians a free pass on terror, and other Islamists took that as a signal to declare open season on the rest of this. 1619. alistairConnor - 3/7/2003 10:17:35 AM Either that, or they got the idea from the Irish. Or the Italians. Or the freakin' Japanese. Give me a break. 1620. alistairConnor - 3/7/2003 10:21:57 AM 1621. LadyChaos - 3/7/2003 9:11:25 PM I don't think that progress will be ultimately possible until the Palestinian mentality changes. Polls still indicate that a majority of Palestinians see the establishment of a Palestinian state as merely a way station toward destroying Israel. 1622. LadyChaos - 3/7/2003 9:14:57 PM Message # 1617 1623. Al D - 3/7/2003 10:28:50 PM Peace in Palistine depends on more than just the Palistinians, IMO. One of the reasons Sadat was killed was he made peace with Israel, blackening the face of Arabs. King Abdullah of Jordan, who was favoring a peace with Israel was murdered in Jerusalem, several attempts on King Hussein's life were made because he made peace with Israel. The Arab (Iran also) world must give up their dream of all of Palistine for the Palistinians for peace to exist. 1624. arkymalarky - 3/8/2003 10:38:31 AM Who was it that killed Begin again? 1625. wabbit - 3/8/2003 11:09:35 AM Father Time. Menachem Begin 1626. wabbit - 3/8/2003 11:12:22 AM Arky, were you thinking of Yitzhak Rabin? 1627. arkymalarky - 3/8/2003 11:43:23 AM Duh. Yes, I was. I didn't think that sounded right, but I was on my way out when I posted it. 1628. PelleNilsson - 3/8/2003 1:04:26 PM Begin was a leader of Irgun, a Jewish terrorist group which in 1948 murdered Count Bernadotte, a Swede appointed by the UN as a mediator in the conflict. 1629. LadyChaos - 3/8/2003 2:34:55 PM Pelle: 1630. concerned - 3/8/2003 2:45:14 PM re. 1620 - 1631. vanTHEman - 3/15/2003 12:04:21 PM Israeli couple in Church of the Nativity threatening to blow themselves up, witnesses say. 1632. judithathome - 3/15/2003 12:19:52 PM Church of Nativity Standoff Ends 1633. concerned - 3/16/2003 4:15:50 PM From ABCNews: 1634. vanTHEman - 3/16/2003 4:23:43 PM She wanted to be a headliner. Reminds me of that Rolling Stones' tune STUPID GIRL. 1635. PelleNilsson - 3/16/2003 4:25:08 PM That's insensitive and vulgar. 1636. vanTHEman - 3/16/2003 7:47:01 PM Maybe. But it's stupid to fight an earth-moving SUV. 1637. vanTHEman - 3/16/2003 7:49:48 PM She sorta dug her own grave, so to speak. And her days of pimping for the terrorists are really over. 1638. vanTHEman - 3/16/2003 8:24:54 PM Here's a peace protestor's dilemma for you: 1639. concerned - 3/16/2003 9:38:22 PM Poor Rachel Corrie - one moment she's saving the world - the next moment, her whole day is ruined. 1640. vanTHEman - 3/16/2003 11:14:03 PM Hopefully it will teach other terrorist-loving demonstrators that they aren't in the USofA. 1641. vanTHEman - 3/17/2003 7:38:00 AM It's all about gravity... 1642. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 3/17/2003 9:11:31 AM Rosie, I'd like just five minutes with you in an alley. 1644. Wombat - 3/17/2003 1:47:00 PM Van: 1645. PelleNilsson - 3/17/2003 2:31:05 PM And then you didn't see #1643 which I deleted because if its grossness. 1646. PelleNilsson - 3/17/2003 2:31:29 PM ... of ... 1647. Edmund Dantes - 3/28/2003 6:12:55 PM Palestinian boy with suicide suitcase targeted orphanage 1648. vanTHEman - 3/28/2003 9:05:14 PM Maybe the PAL "teenage" terrorist should be run over by a IDF bulldozer. 1649. vanTHEman - 3/29/2003 12:58:12 PM Hundreds of Palestinians living in Lebanon have been sent to Iraq to carry out suicide attacks against American and British soldiers. Colonel Munir Maqdah, one of the top commanders of the Fatah movement in Lebanon, said his men were already in Baghdad, prepared to launch suicide attacks. Another group of Fatah suicide bombers are due in Iraq shortly, he added. Fatah, the largest faction of the PLO, has several thousand militiamen in Lebanon's Palestinian refugee camps. The group's leader is Yasser Arafat, who also holds the title of Chairman of the Palestinian Authority 1650. vanTHEman - 3/30/2003 11:21:59 AM "Iraq and the Lessons of Lebanon: 'Don't Forget to Leave'" 1651. PelleNilsson - 6/17/2003 3:42:02 PM This thread is back, because it turned out to be impractical to have parallel discussions in the former Iraq thread. 1652. alistairconnor - 6/17/2003 4:20:03 PM I've been wondering what went wrong since the optimistic talk of the other day. It looks like the Egyptians couldn't persuade Hamas etc to sign up to a truce; but it certainly looks like Sharon upped the ante in between times, retreating from his position that they would abandon assassinations other than "ticking bombs". Israel and the Palestinians 3
Field Howitzer 77B is included in the divisional artillery battalions. The gun is a development of Field Howitzer 77A and was commissioned into the Army at the beginning of the 1990’s. The difference between this gun and the 77A is that it is equipped with a screw mechanism instead of a wedge mechanism, plus a longer barrel with a plate brake. Field Howitzer 77B is one of the few automatically loaded artillery pieces with cartridge charges. Each gun is is equipped with the POS 2 system for positioning and direction of the gun.
All types of 155 mm ammunition, among others conventional HE ammunition and base-bleed ammunition, can be fired from this gun. Range with a conventional HE shell is in excess of 17 km, and with a base-bleed shell in excess of 27 km. Rate of fire is 3 rounds within 12 seconds.
A Portrait of PellePickelhaube As A Young Man 
Now this is what I mean when I say your talents are wasted here, jex.
See - one thing you're forgetting is that all 10 of us Moties remember GWI and its aftermath very well. And any one of us could, without even trying, find a shitload of news stories such as this, this, this, this, or this, to prove what a pathetic liar you are.
Stamina will only get you so far here, dude.
You need to find a place where they'll be dazzled by your bullshit.
I'll get the quote from none other than Richard Bulter himself which will free at least a synapse or two from the Big Bagboogey Man....
Not Saddam, that other clown, The Krusty One!
CNN - 1997: Iraqi authorities reportedly told the three U.S. weapons inspectors politely but firmly that they could not enter the country after they had flown from Bahrain aboard a U.N. plane to an air base, 125 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. The Iraqi leadership said on Wednesday it would no longer cooperate with Americans in U.N. inspection teams checking Iraq's compliance with Gulf War resolutions.
CNN - 2002: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein denies his government is developing weapons of mass destruction, but it expelled international weapons inspectors in 1998.
PBS: And, in December 1998, Iraq expelled all UNSCOM weapons inspectors charging that UNSCOM has become a spy agency.
(Not that it's not amusing to see a lefty make an ass of himself - but with you, it's gettin' mighty old).
The New York Times
November 12, 1998, Thursday, Late Edition - Final
U.N. Orders Inspectors and Relief Staff Out of Iraq
BYLINE: By BARBARA CROSSETTE
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS, Nov. 11
After a warning from the United States that a military strike on Baghdad may be imminent, the United Nations abruptly evacuated more than 230 foreign staff members from Iraq today, including all weapons inspectors. Another 41 people from various agencies will depart on Thursday, leaving only essential staff members behind.
Russia, angry that there had been no consultation with all Security Council members before a decision was made to withdraw the arms inspectors, called a meeting of the Council today to demand an explanation from the chief inspector, Richard Butler.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency were also withdrawn, leaving the Baghdad monitoring center "dead," an official said here today. The inspectors -- 92 from Unscom and 11 from the I.A.E.A. -- flew to Bahrain today.
You have posted about 6,000 words and 10 pictures in three hours, and are obviously taxing your mental strength dangerously. I am cutting down your daily post quota to 10. That leaves you one more for today. Use it wisely.
Actually, the story seems pretty bona fide to me. And Schiff is as respectable as they come (for lefties).
This is more interesting, of course:
Mohammed Atta, the leader of the Qaida group that conducted the Sept. 11 airplane suicide attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, flying the first plane into the towers, visited Syria twice or three times. The Syrians did not give that information to the Americans on their own volition.
Osama bin Laden's son, Omar, left Syria together with his mother Nagwa, three weeks before the attack on the Twin Towers, after receiving anonymous instructions to do so. The son returned to Syria after 9-11, and has since visited twice more. Bin Laden's wife and son lived in the Alawite stronghold in Latakiya in an arrangement that gave refuge to bin Laden's close relatives. The two are not now in Syria.
Intelligence services have also managed to find detailed information about contacts between one of the leading Hezbollah military figures, Imad Mourghniyeh, and a Qaida operative in Sudan. There is no evidence yet of that relationship developing into continuing ties, but there is no doubt the meeting could not have taken place without Syrian intelligence knowing of it.
Btw, this crazed anti-femmie friend of mine is unfazed by your claim of using the urinals at SU daily. He says to ask you about the so-called 'Girl Taxis' which ferry Swedish women at 50% the normal fare. Is there any truth to this at all? Where is he getting this story from, do you think?
Think about a situation in which a group of inspectors from Japan are searching for plutonium in 1944 USA, and you'll start to get the picture.
But I believe that the Truth will set you free. I am a Man of Faith.
Take care though, I am not speaking of small "t" truth. The fact that Iraq did not expell the UN inspectors, the UN ordered them withdrawn in anticipation of bombs over Baghdad. That is a little truth. I'd be more than happy to exceed the daily IP limit by flooding the thread with the kazillion articles (LOVE YA LEXIS!) that establish this small "t" type truth. Hell I know that First Sargent pile would PT me til I puke buttermilk, probably gouge out my eyeballs and skull fuck me. But screw Pike, I'd do it for ya a New York minute..
But you'd never get free. You never get to the Truth. You'd still be lost in corn pon con and Fear-filled Frenzy. The questions to which the Butler correction was but minor preface were to set you on the path to Truth....
I realize now that you are having some difficulty so I will give you the answer...so what is the REALLY about?
The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism." The Truth from Richard Perle
When you're free JoeZ you'll love it. Why you'll be able to tell the difference between fart and fragrance again.
Z BE FREE!
Not jex's - jex thinks we left because Scott Ritter single-handedly destroyed Saddam's war-making machine, pissed on his old man's grave, then called in an airstrike on Baghdad just for shitz-n-gigglez.
As I said in another thread, Iraq is just for starters.
You seem to have stumped him, Joe.
It would be a disaster for Lebanon if al Qaida got entrenched there.
It will be interesting to see if Schiff's report gets replayed at all in the American press.
One US war aim that's been publicized is the possibility of blowing up the calndestinely opened oil pipeline between Iraq and Syria. Unless I miss my guess, that would have an unpleasant effect on the Syrian economy, not just on Saddam's coffers.
Where have you been? My loins have been uncomfortably unstirred lately.
Moms are superfluous.
Dads rule.
Well, OK. I've been called worse.
So Pelle, have you ever heard of anything remotely like this 'girl taxi'?
And then yesterday I get a call around 12:30 from the wife's lawyer, asking me why I wasn't in court, because the session had been scheduled for 11:30. He also said something about there being a new report from the social worker, but apparently he was lying or bluffing, hoping to freak me out, I don't know. So anyway, I duly freaked out and figured this was something the judge had concocted because she had it in for me, she had been shown the letter I wrote to the police about her, something like that, and she was going to fuck me over.
I'm still not totally sure this isn't the case but the surprise jolt factor has worn off a bit, and I'm starting to think maybe she just wants to adjust the visitation arrangement a bit, which I don't mind because this half and half arrangement does have some serious drawbacks for me too.
As for the surprise factor: I had notofied the court that I was dismissing my lawyer and representing myself, but this was never done formally. The court sems to have sent the summons to the session to this lawyer, who apparently purposely didn't inform me of the session. So he's a bastard, but at least it's not a court-engineered ambush like I had thought. And again - I think the wife's lawyer had a part in misleading me about that matter, too, hoping perhaps I would freak out and beat up the judge or something. He did have a smile at the corner of his mouth when he saw me show up at the courthouse, all riled up.
Gareth Smyth is probably the world's worst reporter after Phil Reeves, so I have no better sense of the truth or falsity of the Haaretz piece after reading him.
Pls move jex's posts to the Inferno. They are becoming increasingly tedious, repetitive, lunatic and content-free, and they will scare away visitors.
The true story about the so called Girls' Taxis is as follows. Some years ago there was the recurrent scare-mongering in the press about how unsafe the Stockholm subway system is at night, in particular for women. At the same time, the taxi system was being deregulated. One of the start-up taxi companies saw a market opportunity and offered a discount, 10-20% I think, to women after 22.00. Well, the scare subsided and presumably the discount went with it. I haven't seen it advertised for a long time.
These urban myths are amazing, only surpassed by the morons who believe them. Best regards to your "friend".
You're not even allowed to have "ladies nights" in clubs here, let alone discounts based solely on gender.
***
My folks just got back from Israel where, they tell me, one of my cousins is busy gathering signatures for Mitznah.
Also they complained about the yeshiva buchers making a nuiscance of themselves everywhere, yelling ostentatiously at airport clerks, driving around in cars loaded up to the windows with boxes of gefilte fish, carelessly knocking down women in crowds, wearing hats on top of their kippoht, and generally looking unwashed and unkempt, with especially filthy shoes.
Whatever PC-ness we have here is imported from the US, and as usual the Swedes are slow on the uptake.
Andonly.
Onan. But for some reason I doubt Rustler would like to use that parable at present.
I don't spill my seed on the ground. I have a pink towel that I use when I am making Dove to myself. It helps create the fleeting illusion of being under a feminine skirt of sorts. Then I forget about it, as I start clicking on pics of shiny African women with wonderful butts and wide-open vulvae doing lovely things to each other and to an occasional man.
Then everything goes 'kaboom' and I am quite pleased.
I'm worried about Joe's sudden interest in the subject of feminism. He never used to comment on the subject. What is your take? Is Mr. Cool in danger of deteriorating into a Pikean stupor?)
Dear Rep. Pelosi:
In recent weeks, several prominent Republicans, among them Brent Scowcroft, your colleague Dick Armey, Lawrence Eagleburger, and James Baker have boldly and decisively spoken out against Bush plans to invade Iraq. Over that same period, prominent Democrats have remained embarrasingly silent. As a Democrat and constituent I am ashamed, and I am angry.
Over the next days and weeks, you will be meeting the President and leading House deliberations. I urge you in the strongest terms to speak out; to put Bush his proof, and to examine justifications that have thus far amount to nothing more than deceptiive pretexts for a gravely immoral adventurism.
The consequences for the US and the world should Bush's schemes remain unchecked are grave indeed. Perhaps you read Immanuel Wallerstein's OpEd in Los Angeles Times last April. His opening parapaph has, in the event, turned out to be eerily prophetic:
"George Bush is a geopolitical incompetent. He has allowed a clique of hawks to induce him to take a position on invading Iraq from which he cannot extract himself, one that will have nothing but negative consequences for the United States - and the rest of the world. He will find himself badly hurt politically, perhaps fatally. And he will rapidly diminish the already declining power of the US in the world."
No citizen, no representative can anything to do with any unprovoked, preemptive invasion of a sovereign nation unless the following criteria met. In no case, has the Bush admistration advanced a justification for war that comes close to satisfying a single one.
The criteria are for just war are:
- the damage must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- the prospects of success must be significant;
- the use of arms must not produce evils graver than the evil to be eliminated, and
- the decision for war must be made by legitimate authority, in this case, both the United States Congress and the Security Council of the United Nations.
Please note that Bush's promise to "consult" with the UN and Congress is insufficient. You must not be a party to any consultation without a sure and certain committment that the Administration will seek not only congressional approval but Security Council sanction for any Bush schemes to enforce UN resolutions.
As the decision for war is yours, so too the responsibity for its consequences.
Thank you very much.
John C. McC
San Francisco, CA
cc: Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club
Or just an imbecile?
7:13 GMT, 16 December 1998
BAGHDAD, Dec 16 (AFP) -UN humanitarian staff and weapons experts were being evacuated from Baghdad on Wednesday after UN arms chief Richard
Butler warned Iraq was failing to cooperate with his inspectors, UN sources said.
"We are in the process of evacuating" by
plane to Bahrain, a source with the UN
Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge
of disarming Iraq told AFP, declining to
give more details.
The UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in
charge of disarming Iraq began
evacuating its staff from Baghdad on
Wednesday, a day after Butler reported
to the UN Security Council that Iraq had
failed to cooperate fully with his
inspectors.
Witnesses said humanitarian staff left
the UN headquarters at the Canal Hotel
with their baggage. "All the staff are
being evacuated," said a witness at the
building.
Butler, the UNSCOM chairman, reported
Tuesday that Iraq had not only failed to
provide full cooperation with arms
inspectors but had introduced new
restrictions on their work.
Don't you think it's time to start your own blog?
I mean, please?
>>>
I was deeply insulted by the fact that the birthday party was held without me, but I spoke to my wife yesterday and it was the first time we've had a semi-normal conversation since she left home. We may actually be able to reach agreement on the subject of visitation and alimony (thus avoiding the dreaded session with the judge, who does after all appear to want to screw me over badly all of a sudden). And I'm thinking - somehow, through this struggle, Anna suddenly has Israeli friends. The femmunists may have their own reasons for joining forces with her, but at least they respect her and have accepted her into their fold. Which goes a long way towards solving the original problem - my wife's feeling that she is not good enough, will never fit in, etc. Which seems to be making her much more normal and less belligerent.
In other words - the common cause makes the femmies see my wife as a person, and not just a kushit. Once she has been accepted into their social circle, though, she seems to be becoming less belligerent towards me.
Who knows, in the end the local femmies may even wind up learning stuff from her. God knows there's a lot they need to learn about how to be women.
This make any sense to anyone?
That's priceless.
P-"Onan. But for some reason I doubt Rustler would like to use that parable at present."
Oh, I don't know. Onan was made to marry someone he didn't like--his brother's widow, was it? I can't remember--and to keep from siring her children he jerked off instead. Naturally, the Lord smote him.
Note that Onan's sin was wasting sperm which had a female Jew-making apparatus ready and willing to receive them.
Pike is in a different position. He had a wife but then she left him. Now he's got no field to plow, as it were, no warm cave with beckoning ova into which to send his wrigglers. Thus Yaweh can't really begrudge him his pink towel.
A while ago I tried to persuade Rustler to extend the scope of this hread to include Iraq, but he was reluctant. Then, as the Bush administrations Iraq policy disintegrated I changed my mind and concluded that for now it is a domestic policy issue (as amply demonstrated by your posts)
I really shouldn't mess around with Rustler's thread but I am reasonably sure that I act as per the intention of our Beloved Leader when I move your latest outbursts to Politics.
You can run you freaskish fundie twit, but you damn sure can't hide!
Agence France Presse
December 16, 1998 17:40 GMT
Butler rapped for ordering UN evacuation after Iraq report
BODY:
By Anne Penketh
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 16 (AFP) - The UN Security Council met in emergency session Wednesday as China, France and Russia protested a decision to evacuate UN arms inspectors from Baghdad ahead of possible airstrikes.
US and British diplomats suggested that the council meeting would not affect the decision-making process in London and Washington regarding possible military strikes against Baghdad.
They reiterated that their capitals believed they had the council's authorization to stage military strikes against Baghdad if necessary, under existing UN resolutions. Iraq narrowly avoided airstrikes last month by promising full and unconditional cooperation to the UN inspectors on November 14.
Russia and France demanded the urgent closed-door session after a negative report to the council from UN Special Commission chairman Richard Butler on Tuesday, followed by his evacuation of all 140 UN arms monitors from Baghdad overnight.
"Butler should resign immediately," a Russian diplomat told AFP before the session. The diplomat predicted that the meeting would be "very violent."
But it was not known whether Russian Ambassador Sergei Lavrov would in fact demand Butler's resignation during the session which was attended by the UNSCOM chairman and UN chief Kofi Annan.
Butler, an Australian diplomat, explained to reporters Wednesday that he ordered the evacuation after reporting to the council that the experts could no longer carry out their disarmament mandate because of Iraqi obstruction.
"It made logical sense therefore to pull our people out," Butler said.
Goofy gas masks, coon skin hats, muskets and all
From Associated Press
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- President Hamid Karzai survived an assassination attempt today when an Afghan security guard fired at his car as it was leaving the governor's mansion here, witnesses said.
Karzai's condition was not known, but there was no indication that he was hit. The Kandahar governor, Gul Agha Sherzai, was wounded in the attack and witnesses saw him bleeding from the neck.
Jexs is strangely silent.
You seem to have stumped him, Joe.
Thursday, September 5, 2002
Blast Rips Kabul Market
UPDATE: Car bomb rocks the center of Kabul, killing and wounding scores in the bloodiest attack in the Afghan capital since the fall of the Taliban. (Reuters)
HANOVER, Germany, Sept. 1 — Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, believes that the Bush administration is making a terrible mistake in planning a war against Iraq, and he is not afraid to say so.
A new war in the Middle East, he says bluntly, would put at risk all that has been gained so far in the unfinished battle against Al Qaeda
Now that remark prompted a disgustingly nativist anti-german tirade of gringo fundamentalism from the LegionZan over in the Politics thread.
Not a peep though when former Bush national security advisor and retired USAF General Brent Scowcroft said the exact thing.
Zan is one malignant little fuck.
Well let him rail and scoff til he pukes in his gas mask and chokes on his bile. 
'How can you exert pressure on someone by saying to them: Even if you accede to our demands, we will destroy you?...
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, the president's special envoy to the Mideast, made some of his strongest comments to date opposing war on Iraq. Speaking to the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee, Zinni said a war to bring down Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein would have numerous undesirable side effects and should be low on the nation's list of foreign policy objectives.
``I can give you many more [priorities] before I get to that,'' Zinni said when asked if the United States should move to remove Saddam.
Zinni said the country should instead concentrate on negotiating a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians, and on eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan and the al-Qaida terrorist network that launched the Sept. 11 terror attacks
I adjure you by God, do not torment me
"What is your name?" He replied, "My name is Legion; for we are many."
"Send us to the swine, let us enter them."
. And the unclean spirits came out, and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and were drowned in the sea.
And people saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.
Copyright 1998 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Deutsche Presse-Agentur
December 16, 1998, Wednesday, BC Cycle
17:07 Central European Time
SECTION: International News
LENGTH: 831 words
HEADLINE: CORRECTION LEADALL: U.N. experts leave Iraq in new weapons crisis Ed: UNSCOM inspectors withdrawn, not expelled
DATELINE: Baghdad/New York
BODY:
United Nations Security Council gathered for an urgent meeting on Iraq Wednesday after disarmament experts were withdrawn from the country and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein warned compatriots of new "aggression" against them.
The experts were withdrawn by UNSCOM after chief weapons inspector Richard Butler released a critical report late Tuesday detailing Iraq's lack of cooperation with the arms inspectors.
"The staff of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) have been ordered to leave Baghdad today," a U.N. statement issued in Baghdad said.
Guess Zan stumped ole jexs eh Sgt Shultzie
"ya vol her Kommandant"
UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in 1998 in the face of an imminent US and British missile attack on Baghdad, and have since been barred from returning despite insistent UN demands.
You called me a pathetic liar for stating that Richard Bulter not Iraq ordered inspectors withdrawn
Now you want to change the subject?
Go play with your gas masks...freak
and the herd, numbering about 2000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea
Watch that last step imbecile
I have chosen this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace for all time... The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. John F. Kennedy
Yeah, jex - real dumb.
What about 4 years ago, when the inspectors were kicked out?
190. joezan -9/3/02 1:54:01 AM
They weren't "keicked (sic) out". Richard Butler ordered them out because of the bombing.
Now this is what I mean when I say your talents are wasted here, jex.
See - one thing you're forgetting is that all 10 of us Moties remember GWI and its aftermath very well. And any one of us could, without even trying, find a shitload of news stories such as this, this, this, this, or this, to prove what a pathetic liar you are.
Stamina will only get you so far here, dude.
You need to find a place where they'll be dazzled by your bullshit.
What IS you're name, you little puke?
What IS your name?
My good man. You're not wrong, in fact I'm with you in part of your arguments. But you are flailing, in a frenzied, distracted and irritating fashion, and it is both difficult to read and a turn-off to have to wade through.
You are capable of focused argumentation. D'you think you could stick to that for a while? - don't flip your wig everytime sidelined-Zan says something everyone else ignores, about you or on any other topic. Stay on focus. If you don't, you're losing us.
Thank you in advance.
Ok Marj. I don't know what's come over me but I took your advice. I'm back on the meds and I even went and saw my priest.
I feel so much better now.
Bush Bombs in Kabul - TREMENDOUS DISSATISFACTION' - Let's Roll Zan
He made an impassioned plea for the international community to honor its pledges of aid to rebuild Afghanistan.
"The problem is that President Karzai is stuck between the gun and money," he said in a telephone interview. "Pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda are still there, yet the international community is not releasing the funds so that the government can start construction and put people to work.
"The last seven, eight, nine months have been ones of tremendous dissatisfaction and that's what's making the government unstable," he said.
Afghanistan's economic affairs director, Adib Farhadi, said last week that only $150 million had gone to reconstruction projects so far and that $750 million had been given for humanitarian aid and overhead costs.
Yet at a conference in Tokyo, foreign governments had promised $1.8 billion for reconstruction in 2002, he said.
Busy trying to catch and kill loose al Qaeda forces, the United States has said it does not oppose expanding the international peacekeeping force -- but is stridently opposed to committing any of its soldiers to that.
The answer is no.
I am going to wipe the fuckin floor with JoeZ until I see a picture of his family - gas masks and all...
I have had enough from that little shit - enough of his bigotry, enough of his freakist fundie garbage, enuf of RP's little "goy toy"
I am focused on Zan until he apologizes for calling me a "pathetic liar" Zan's sorry ass is MINE!
We're online here, jex.
Get a grip.
Anyway, I'm thinking it's about time for an Iraq thread. Gonna be a great fall - I can tell already...Yanks in the series...and just about the time they're done sweeping up the confetti on 34th St. ---- BOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!
See you over in Suggestions - bring your broom if you'd like.
Sincerely
JZ
NOT NOW, NOT EVER....
You're too sensitive, jex.
But the fact is that the intention was for them to go back in once we were done kicking Saddam's ass again, and Iraq has steadfastly refused to let them back in for the past 4 years. So technically, semantically, you are correct: they were not expelled. They were refused entry.
Which distinction, if you'll excuse my curiosity, you will have to explain to me in regards to how, exactly, it mitigates one tiny bit the current impasse - which is precisely your reason for even bringing it up.
Because whether they were expelled or refused re-entry to complete their job, the fact is the Iraqi government is actively flaunting it's incalcitrance.
There's just no reasonable mitigation here, jex - none
RP -
What your problem is is breathing while being white. Technological and societal advancement among Caucasions often leads to terminal mass envy and hatred among tribalistic knuckle draggers.
It appears that Al Qaeda is attempting an anniversary special, and I would not be in the least surprised if they have something planned on Western terroritory in a week, give or take.
Depending on what it is and how it comes off, intensified activity may result from the US military and jexster's mouth.
The price of oil, now hovering near $30 a barrel, could soar above $50 in the event of hostilities. This would have a ripple effect throughout both the U.S. and global economies (with particularly devastating results for the oil- thirsty Japanese).
Then there's the matter of funding a potentially open-ended military engagement in the Middle East.
America's game of hide-and-seek with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan is estimated to be costing U.S. taxpayers about $30 million a day and has been cited by the White House as a key reason the U.S. budget deficit is once again ballooning.
War with Iraq, clearly, would push defense spending to stratospheric levels and probably result in staggering deficits not seen since the chilliest days of the Cold War.
"If oil prices go up and we burn a lot of money, it could be back to the oil shocks of the '70s," said Alan Auerbach, an economics professor at UC Berkeley. Into the Valley of Death Rides the King Moron
Don't you think it's time to start your own blog?
OOO OOO can I have one with a stardate on it?!?!??!
Maybe a neato pic too? 
Pefect. Just what I was thinking.
Good luck, and come visit us sometime and let us know how many hits you're getting.
That's because GWB is a feckless fuckwad for which we have only Israel to thank
Bibi and Butthead This Bud's for You!
Lunatic Fringe
I know you're out there
You're in hiding
And you hold your meetings
We can hear you coming
We know what you're after
We're wise to you this time
We won't let you kill the laughter
Lunatic Fringe
In the twilight's last gleaming
This is open season
But you won't get too far
We know you've got to blame someone
For your own confusion
But we're on guard this time
Against your final solution
We can hear you coming
(We can hear you coming)
No you're not going to win this time
We can hear the footsteps
(We can hear the footsteps)
Way out along the walkway
Lunatic Fringe
We know you're out there
But in these new dark ages
There will still be light
An eye for an eye
Well, before you go under
Can you feel the resistance
Can you feel the...thunder
2259 In the account of Abel's murder by his brother Cain,[57] Scripture reveals the presence of anger and envy in man, consequences of original sin, from the beginning of human history. Man has become the enemy of his fellow man. God declares the wickedness of this fratricide: "What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand."[58]
2260 The covenant between God and mankind is interwoven with reminders of God's gift of human life and man's murderous violence:
For your lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning.... Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.[59]
The Old Testament always considered blood a sacred sign of life.[60] This teaching remains necessary for all time.
"What is your name?"
"Can you feel the thunder?" 
Feel the Thunder of the
Shofar
Sorry.
I grant Pelle policeman status (though I see he has taken it on his own) and remind him that the thread policy is that jexster gets 10 posts per day, not one more.
The sort of wight who gets to be a host in these environs whilst the good doctor is pestered because of his unpopularity with Judy.
Dr. Xavier T. Coltrane, Conscious of the Mote
About 5 out of 6 inmates were Arabs. Their women have learned the trick. 
"Two elephants in the muzzle!"
This caricature is by Dudu Geva, one of Israel's finest. The line about elephants is a common one in military inspections: commanders look up their soldiers' gun muzzles to see if they have been thoroughly cleaned. If they see any grains of dirt inside they often say they see elephants in the muzzle, or a variation on that.
The inspection in the caricature is of shofars - ritual rams' horns trumpeted on Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, whatever.
Where will you be staying, if not in Katzir?
Shana tovah.
connie:
Not bad!
Joe:
Bread, white cheese, icky tomatoes, some peppers and onions, hard boiled eggs. A packet of bologna type sliced processed meat and bread for lunch. Not bad. I had a big Arab guy in the cell with me and he provided the coffee. He also had an electric kettle. I think they were being nice to me when they put me in his cell: the others were fuller and I believe he was getting special conditions.
We agreed that women are the scourge of the earth. He said there should be laws that make it possible for us to stick women in jail, instead of the other way around, and that would solve everything.
After the arraignment (if that's the right term) we were back in the cell with another young Arab. They listened to my story and he concluded I was weak and I should never have cut my wife any slack the way I did when we came out here. They summarized the discussion by saying that I should gather strength, go back to Africa and get me another Kenyan woman. If I failed again with that one - well, then I'm just a loser.
But they won't break our spirits and they won't stop our love.
Anyway, maybe you'd be better off with a nice Skandi girl - or maybe an Italian girl?
Couldn't hurt to try.
Well, apparently this is how long these things take.
However - if I make a good enough case on the first hearing, I could have the restriction on entering Katzir lifted. The judge was sympathetic, I believe, and I have tons of evidence.
Joe:
African-American culture and the entire American situation is different from my situation. My wife came from a completely different culture, and she is pretty helpless here without someone leading her and guiding her (which, right now at least, is the role her anti-Pikean friends have taken on). But iac, I don't see myself bringing another wife from Kenya.
Or from anywhere.
My fight is not with my wife. My fight is with the local femmies. This is quite clear to me now.
My wife never threw my kids birthday parties, unless I and my mother and sister arranged one. Now she throws a party with the help of the local femmie establishment, led by Tali Gaon (who brought both her daughters), and with the participation of Yasmin, daughter of Ayelet (raises three children on her own, right where the dirt path from the West Bank village of Barta'a leads into Katzir, believes the "Peace" sticker on her door will stop the terrorists), Sharon, daughter of Anna K. (recently converted to hardline femmunism, changing her hair color to fiery red and donning arrogant airs), Naomi, daughter of Nancy (the other, more worldly Kenyan of Katzir) and one or two others.
So the rats have come out of their holes. Which is a good thing in the long run, I believe.
In any case, erections are scheduled for sometime between 11/03 and 04/04, depending on whom you believe.
A wide window to plan around this rare event.
Where the hell is Arafat? Did he fall off the face of the earth?
Is he drooling on himself in the Al Aqsa Home for Retired Terrorists, or what?
Btw, a car packed with 300 or 400 kg. of explosives (that's a whopper. They took out Merkavas with 100 kg) was nabbed a few km. from here the other day. Probably planned a Rosh Hashana treat for us, the f-cks (I had to do that. This is my son's computer and it's got "Weblocker" installed. Powerful program, btw. I tried to get me some p-rn for j-rking off last night and couldn't get none).
Sounds good to me, Rustler. Stop reacting and make something happen. Hire a mean lawyer and move on.
/s/... world-class procrastinator...
I'd like a bit of space between where the posts end and where the tan bar begins.
Facts: I represent a partnership with a manager partner who is a Jew; my co-counsel is a Jew, the defendant I am about to sue is a Jew
Questions:
Am I in Hebe hell (Sheol)?
Should I buy a gas mask?
Will I meet Jesus in the air?
Have a Yummy Yom Kippur and Chappy Chanucka
Btw - can someone remind me what the color of pistachio is, and what the color of butterscotch is? In ice cream, that is.
Butterscotch is greenish, right? What flavor looks like the link bar?
I know no one will answer this. Nobody ever answers these kinds of questions when I ask them.
Butterscotch=Yellowish
But I still think there is something ice creamish about these colors.
Maybe a light kind of mocha. Or that Italian ice cream, whatever it's called. Gelata, gelada, enchilada.
Of course, at the rate I'm going, I'll be in jail next time you do this.
Jail sucked, let me tell you. And the public counsel guy was telling me I would probably be spending nine months in Kishon jail, waiting for my trial to be over. Yet the judge basically let me go.
I was preparing myself mentally for this experience. I asked one of the Arabs who spent the daytime hours with me in the courthouse lockup what the Kishon jailhouse was like. He said it was OK and I'd be OK, though I'd have to make myself an improvised blade from a sharpened toothbrush, like everyone else did, just to be safe.
Sheee-yit!
Did you ever say how you are charged. What are you alleged to have done that landed you in durance vile?
Heh. I asked just to write durance vile. George Will used it so it must be okay. Right?
The color of mocha or coffee the Beige Bar most resembles is café au lait...coffee with cream. Lots of cream.
Or maybe tea with milk.
Do you like sodomy, Russ? Being on the receiving end, I mean? Don't answer that.
Just stay out of jail. Please.
Like a broken record, I have been stating my belief that the Sharonites (and to some extent, the Bushbabies) have been playing a stupidly short-sighted game wrt the international community. As the Israelis put all their eggs, every last one, into a US basket, they risk reducing their own futures to fiat or whim by whatever US administration is in power. It's just dumb policy. The same wrt the combined nations attitude towards the UN. On the one hand, Israel has enshrined a UN resolution into law (creating the state), on the other it has made not even a pretense of respecting successive resolutions with regard to its occupation, not even lip service, nothing. In this, it has been abetted by the US, particularly the Bushites who have joined Israel in dropping even the pretext that UN Sec Council resoultions apply when it comes to that country.
And now Bush goes to shake a stick at the UN and comes up with this gem:
Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test ... and the United Nations, a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced ... or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding ... or will it be irrelevant?
How long do you think it will take for the rest of the world, including US allies to stand up and say.. wait a minute, what about the Sec Council resolutions wrt Israel? And how long do you think it will be before the US accepts that all the resolutions will have to be worked towards at the same time - including those wrt Israel? Soon, pretty damn soon.
Bushbabies.
Now is also a good opportunity fot Israeli and US UN-bashers to come to grips with reality. Those resolutions Bush talks about are not resolved and issued by the UN bureaucracy or by Kofi Annan and his advisers. These are Security Council resolutions. The UN as an organisation has no place and no vote in the Security Council. If none of the five permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia, US votes against a resolution it has passed and becomes binding on all member states.
So stop grumbling about the UN.
Israel's were imposed in response to actions it had taken as a direct result of numerous attacks from numerous countries with the express, stated purpose of annihilating it (Israel). Those threats still exist - only the most obvious hack would claim otherwise. And don't forget - Israel has come within inches of compliance with the UN Security Counsel Resolution, but its offer was turned down.
Iraq's were imposed as a result of an unprovoked attack on it's neighbors.
You are not addressing the issue at hand. What marj said, and I agree with him, was that now when president Bush, of all people, has elevated repeated, protracted defiance of SC resolutions to the level of casus belli, the comparison with the conduct of Israel will take on a more urgent note. I don't think any amount of spin can prevent that.
Which other nations should Israel be courting? I didn't realize she had spurned a lot of offers of friendship and support.
In the Middle East there can be no peace for either side without freedom for both sides.
America stands committed to an independent and democratic Palestine, living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security. Like all other people, Palestinians deserve a government that serves their interests and listens to their voices. My nation will continue to encourage all parties to step up to their responsibilities as we seek a just and comprehensive settlement to the conflict.
"just and comprehensive settlement" is a phrase used by king Hussein of Jordan, and then by his son. I'm sure it is code for the nature of an agreement but I'm not sure what it means.
I thought he stated the situation rather well. Israel refuses to comply with UN resolutions because to do so would threaten its very existence. Israel has been attacked by its neighbors repeatedly without provocation. Withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza without appropriate security measures could ultimately result in the destruction of Israel.
This is a far different situation than Iraq's. Iraq has been the aggressor in its conflicts with the Kurds, Iran and Kuwait. It has no justification for ignoring UN mandates. Israel does have a justification. The world community cannot expect Israel to sacrifice its very existence and the lives of its people to satisfy the UN. When the UN steps up and provides Israel with real security, then it can have something to say about how Israel behaves with respect to its enemies.
That said, Bush is making a difficult point. If his sole justification for action against Iraq is its failure to comply with UN mandates, he needs to have some more arrows in his quiver.
Guy goes to the toy store to get his daughter a Barbie for her birthday.
They've got Beach Barbie, Soccer Barbie, Office Barbie...etc, all selling for $19.95.
Then, there's Divorced Barbie, which sells for $375.00
Flaberghasted, the guy asks the clerk, What the heck's the story here? - she looks exactly the same as all the other Barbies!
Replies the clerk - "Yeah - but this one comes with Ken's house, Ken's car, Ken's boat..."
Israel should not necessarily be "courting" any nation. It should, rather, play a more sophisticated, less short-sighted, game wrt the international community and its bodies.
Instead, emboldened by what it presumes will be undying and unwavering support from the world's sole superpower, it has consistently thumbed its nose at any multilateral body that has had anything to say about its affairs, whether the Geneva Convention signatories or the International Red Cross or the Security Council or the General Assembly of the UN. This behavior is foolish, and it can backfire.
If the Bushites press for war with Iraq based on that country's refusal to honor Security Council resolutions, you could see such a backfire immediately. At the least, the US will look hypocritical and Israel will be bracketed with Iraq (as a Sec Council flouter) more than it needs. But in fact the next few months could see much more than just that.
This is a far different situation than Iraq's. Iraq has been the aggressor in its conflicts with the Kurds, Iran and Kuwait. It has no justification for ignoring UN mandates. Israel does have a justification.
Blah blah blah. It is so tiresome to read these cookie-cutter, inane, arguments. The Sec Council resolutions wrt Israel do not in any way threaten the existence of Israel, even if carried out to the hilt. Israel's existence is guaranteed and enshrined in law by one such resolution, and the UN is beholden to ensure Israel's legal status now and forever.
There is no justification in international law for flouting Security Council resolutions. None whatsoever, the bloviated apologia are irrelevant and worthless.
I am sorry if you find facts inane. They are facts nonetheless.
The Sec Council resolutions wrt Israel do not in any way threaten the existence of Israel, even if carried out to the hilt.
The resolutions will not destroy Israel per se. They will just make impossible for Israel to defend itself. It amounts to the same thing.
Israel's existence is guaranteed and enshrined in law by one such resolution
I had to chuckle at this one. A UN resolution guarantees Israel's existence? Please explain how the UN resolution prevented the 1948 war, the 1956 war, the 1967 war, the 1973 war, and the 1000's of border skirmishes and suicide bombers who have wreaked havoc on Israel's civilian population. I can just picture Moshe Dayan in 1967 holding up a copy of that UN resolution and saying "We have the right to exist" as the surrounding forces invade and destroy his country.
the UN is beholden to ensure Israel's legal status now and forever
Really? They have a piss poor way of showing it. Every action the UN has taken since 1948 has made it seem like they consider the creation of Israel as a huge mistake they would just as soon wash their hands of.
There is no justification in international law for flouting Security Council resolutions.
You really have no imagination, have you?
I'm not going to whack you nearly as much as you deserve for your thick-headedness. I'm not in th mood.
Read my lips, Biener. Iraq and Israel both have a series of pending Security Council resolutions levelled at them. They both have refused to honour them, in fact the case can be made that Iraq has been more co-operative than Israel in this regard. Your boy, Bush, has now gone to the UN and said that it has to act, for global security and for the future of the organization, to punish one country, Iraq, for not honoring Security Council Resolutions.
In all of this, it wall take a miximum of 48 hours before the UN and the international community comes back, resoundingly, with.... and what about Israel's occupation, which we know is as much or greater a threat to global security as Saddam's Iraq?
The Bush tactic, thus, was dumb. I repeat what I said in another thread, it'd have been better (particularly for Israel)if he'd have kept his trap shut and just acted unilaterally.
It is remarks like this which make a reasonable discussion of the issue impossible. Here is a map of the Middle East and North Africa. You can barely even see Israel let alone the West Bank and Gaza. Despite this we are expected to believe that its occupation of a tiny scrap of land crucial to its own defense is as great a threat as Iraq which has repeatedly attacked and occupied its neighbors and has used chemical weapons on its own people.
Israel is a threat to no one. Yet its destruction has been the goal of its neighbors ever since its creation. Iraq is a demonstrated threat. Yet we hear one apologist after another claim otherwise.
How can you expect to carry on a converstaion when you are unwilling to recognize the situation with any sense of proportion.
Israel is a threat to no one.
If left at peace from its Arab neighbors, I agree. Israel can handle its Arab neighbors, until they get atomic weapons. When and it that happens, Isrtael will be faced with some very tough choices.
If as you say Israel is not a threat if left alone, then Israel is not a threat. It is not the fault of Israel, if it has to go to extreme lengths to defend itself.
I've holed up in my old kibbutz for the weekend and Yom Kippur. Old friends of the family put me up in an office that they use sometimes for when their kids come to sleep over.
(#340)
Is it time you asked someone else to host this thread?
Odds are, some shrink somewhere has diagnosed you with "Oppositional Defiant Disorder" and "Major Depression," and now you're living up to the labels by getting yourself into one kettle of trouble after another.
Calculatedly losing self control is so conveniently Arab, by which I mean adolescent, that one begins to see why you moved to Israel in the first place. It's no comfort that you line up so easily with the current leadership.
This thread has become about your personal drama, which has fuck all to do with anything that affects Israelis in general, Palestinians, or the rest of us. I'm not interested in serving as the audience for your elaborately spun personal duel with authority.
Why don't you keep on topic here or else hand the thread over to someone who is more dedicated to its subject matter than to plumping for approval of his latest neurotic antics.
If you look at the thread's subheader and the list of subjects in the mocha bar, you will find that I am not off-topic at all.
The funniest things come out in moments of truth like these: ac, who I thought hated me (and on certain levels perhaps does), gave me some extremely important advice when I was confused and needed it.
Andonly, who I thought was "with me" somehow, is trying to pounce on the opportunity to get rid of me.
Am I imagining this or is the prospect of what is about to go down in the Middle East - and its implications for you as a Jewish person in the US - making you exceedingly hostile towards me and what I stand for? You feel an existential need to distance yourself from Sharon and the people who voted him in (and still support him overwhelmingly over any other candidate in the polls), don't you, Ando?
Well, it's going to get worse, Ando.
I am charged with threatening my wife on two occasions, one in June and the other about 10 days ago.
On the first occasion, which I described here at the time, I was home for 90 minutes in the middle of a reserve stint, and had my gun with me. My wife lodged a complaint with the police saying I threatened her, saying "I will do anything to prevent my children being taken away from me" (I said something similar to that but I did not threaten her, and the judge also seems to feel that way or he would not have released me).
On the second, I kicked the door to my wife's house repeatedly. She says I also threatened her, saying I would kill her (I said no such thing. I was just trying to kick the fucking door open. It was steel-coated, though, I believe).
I was fed up with being harrassed, spat on, beaten up and intimidated by my wife, her son and her friends, with the active support of our Council Head (who gives her money and other forms of bureaucratic help, like arranging a good job for her son in the army, in return for her fucking me over). The last straw was a birthday she held for my daughter with the help of the local femmie gang, which I was not informed of in advance and which I was not allowed to participate in.
It appears the prosecution's tactic (all women, to the best of my knowledge) is to wait until a guy has two charges against him and then try to get him locked up before he is tried, and for the duration of the trial, thus effectively annihilating him. Luckily, the judge (a man) didn't seem to think that saying what my wife claims I said constituted a threat, even if I did have a gun slung on my neck when I said it.
There are bushbabies in Kenya and they have the darndest screams, at night.
"because the bush baby's call sounds like the shouts of an exited (sic) child, British explorers thus named (sic) it its English name".
It doesn't sound like an excited child. It sounds like a deranged child.
Wa. Waaaa. Waaaaaa. Waaaaa. WAAAAAAAA!!!!
A bit scary if you don't know what it is. 
The view from my window.
I am in Kibbutz Netiv Halamed Heh, east and south of Jerusalem.
You really need to improve the quality of your graphic images.
Yes, I'm not sure but I think maybe my camera's quality has deteriorated.
Is that possible, do you think? Do cameras get glaucoma?
#2 first appeared on the Iraq thread. 
What opportunity? I'm just sick of your ridiculous justifications for fighting with your wife. You're out of control--out of your own control--and it's as if the only personal liberation you can dream up is to lose it, and everything you value, completely.
No one can call you back from the brink, man. You like the fucking drama too much. And who wants to watch a man self destruct? Not I.
Lately you don't stand for anything rational, Pike. And yes, you are imagining things--rationalizing the worst things you can dream up, from your personal life to Israel's political necessities.
It's true that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. But your entire world view boils down to Imminent Victim Who Must Strike Fear Into the Heart of His Vile Persecutor, or Perish. The worthless unoriginality of this outlook totally sells out your intellect.
"You feel an existential need to distance yourself from Sharon and the people who voted him in (and still support him overwhelmingly over any other candidate in the polls), don't you, Ando?"
Huh? Sharon was the right man for the job--until he did his job. Now Israel needs a PM who will push the Pals, and gather Israelis, toward a political settlement. You can keep Sharon in charge of the IDF, as long as it sits down and subordinates itself to a moderate leadership capable of negotiating as well as busting heads. But this business of being in thrall to the settler contingent won't play forever.
Have you got it into your head that your life parallels the larger conflict? How odd is it that you segue from accusing me of wanting to "get rid" of you, to speculating on my "existential need" to distance myself from Ariel Sharon, to whom I've only ever been close in the imaginations of loons like Jexster and Spanks?
I've said again and again that I'd never have voted for Sharon. I've conceded his utility as PM. Now I believe it has nearly reached its end.
I only hate you politically, Russ, and I think you're capable of improving on that front (if you live long enough). From a human point of view, I like you, and I'll do anything I can to help you.
Now that I know you're listening :
Your life is not a Greek tragedy. There is no reason for you to go through hell in your personal life, just because your country is in deep shit. And the cold, calculated violence perpetrated by the Pals, and by your own government, is no excuse for your violent or threatening behaviour. It's up to you to be a human being in the face of adversity.
Whatever has happened between you and your wife, and whatever conspiracies you have become victim to, here's my guess as to why, in the final analysis, your wife left you.
She stopped loving you.
It hurts. It's unfair. It happens.
She didn't stop loving you because of Arafat. She didn't stop loving you because of the femmies. She didn't stop loving you because of the council head. She stopped loving you because of you and her. And Sharon is not going to get her back for you.
SANAA - A Yemeni man divorced his first wife because she was loud and argumentative and picked a deaf and mute woman as his new bride, a local newspaper said today.
Al-Thawra daily said a 40-year-old man named as Yahya from the southern Dhamar province so tired of his wife's "screaming and endless disputes" that he left her after 15 years to remarry.
"He chose one deprived of hearing and speech and who is quiet and mild-mannered," it said.
RP -
An improvement in sharpness. However, the overriding problem with your images is that the blacks are shifted markedly toward a much lighter gray. Try boosting your contrast by shifting your black threshold up with a decent graphics editor like Photoshop.
I don't think I've ever tried to say that my family problems are the direct result of the political or military situation here.
It's true everything connects, but not in the crude way you seem to be implying.
Femmunism has got a hold of this country, definitely. A strong one. But I think a sufficiently horrific blow from Saddam Hussein / Yassir Arafat Horror Productions will help us shake ourselves free of it. Yes, my family situation has become connected with local village politics. But it's not like I'm saying the amount I have to pay in alimony will be decided by Condoleeza Rice, or like I'm negotiating visitation with Kofi Annan.
My wife is apparently not a good person for me to share my life with. I hope this move to Harish will wind up helping me start over and finding someone new.
Ando: I still don't get what you're saying. Are you worried about me? Scared? Truly disgusted?
I don't want to self-destruct. I'm not enjoying the drama. I'm a powerful, positive person in a world run by rats, snakes and poison toads. So I attract a lot of fire. I get clawed a lot, I absorb more than my share of venom, and it's not because I asked for it - it's because I'm me. I fight back. If you can't stand to watch, switch channels. If you're just worried about me - thanks. But don't be. I always look like I've lost before I make a big step forward. And remember - we don't always control the course our life takes. But I find that for me, in the last decade or so at least, it eventually goes in a good direction, and the best developments are the ones that I never planned for.
Regarding the former hypothesis that the Hebrews might originally have been Egyptians.... It's extremely unlikely that the original Hebrews were Egyptians, since such a hypothesis would be completely inconsistent with the evidence from historical linguistics.
Hebrew -- along with Phoenician, Ugaritic, Moabite, Amorite and Eblaite -- is classified in the Caananite subbranch of the Semitic family of languages, itself a subbranch of the Afro-Asiatic macrofamily of languages (which also includes Berber, Chadic and Coptic). But Phoenician or Punic was most likely the closest linguistic relative of Hebrew. According to the linguist Robert Hetzron, Phoenician and pre-Biblical Hebrew were probably just dialects of each other. And we also know that the Phoenician homeland was what is now Lebanon and northern Israel. Therefore it's hard to believe the ancient Hebrews were Egyptians in origin.
Of course the proto-Semitic homeland was probably Arabia.
I expect you'll find August's messages under "Israel and the Palestinians, Pt.1", top of the beige strip on the right of your screen.
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Rustler,
In spite of your curious opinion that Saddam Hussein is less a threat to Israel than "femmunism," I will be interested in what you have to say about Harish.
Incidentally, some Indian on another board has been insisting that there's little or no public debate in Israel any more about policy re the Pals. I suspect he's simply unhappy with the disenfranchisement of the Left post-intifada, like a friend of mine who (on the other hand) thinks Israelis are politically disunified at the moment. But I'd be interested to know what you think about the current climate of political opinion.
We were getting database glitches because of the sheer volume of posts that had to be re-loaded each time someone accessed a page. Wabbit archived posts from the really big threads ----anything over 10,000 posts. It seems to have done the trick. All those posts can be accessed through a link in the side-bar. The one for this thread is called Israel and the Palestinians pt. 1
Thanks for that information. The origins of Hebrew just happens to be something I've been wondering about lately.
Linguistic data alone is insufficient to determine who the Hebrews were (or weren't). There are good reasons to believe that whatever their distant ethnic origins, the people who eventually wrote the Pentateuch did have their collective cultural beginnings--those which led to them becoming Jews--in Egypt. However, had they originally been Phoenicians, the biblical account of Abraham's descendents resettling in Egypt because of drought would certainly seem plausible.
The subsequent development of the religion may have taken its monotheism from Egypt (it is even remotely possible that Akhenaten's high priest, Osarseph, was Moses) and developed its various proscriptions and ritual cleansing routines as a means of attempting to deal with disease. Certain Hebrew concepts of God, and the name El, are Syriac, but I think that connection dates from after the putative Exodus, not before it, and so is thought to have been incorporated into the Hebrew religion during the mythohistorical period of "wandering in the desert". (If you learn otherwise, let me know.)
Then again, certain aspects of the separation business, esp. some of the dietary proscriptions, simply may have been a reaction to the predominance of Egyptian culture throughout the region.
I would say the linguistic evidence is primary. Other evidences must be reconciled with the linguistic evidence -- unless of course you have some reason to believe that a certain group of Egyptians adopted the language of a completely unrelated people living near the Phoenicians, and the latter largely disappeared while the new, Hebrew-speaking Egyptians remained.
I know you would.
"Other evidences must be reconciled with the linguistic evidence --unless of course you have some reason to believe that a certain group of Egyptians adopted the language of a completely unrelated people living near the Phoenicians, and the latter largely disappeared while the new, Hebrew-speaking Egyptians remained."
Evidently you did not finish reading or considering my Message # 279, since if you had you would not have set up the straw argument in your 381.
It's not just me. Archaeologists and population geneticists who investigate the origins of ethnolinguistic groups typically constrain their interpretations according to the reconstruction of historical linguists.
Dwelling on this further...
I don't know to what extent Egyptian loaned words to Hebrew (and by the way, where would Aramaic fit in the array of linguistic provenances you mentioned?), but my understanding is that the names Mosheh and Yosef (both biblical characters central to the Exodus story, who supposedly lived in Egypt) are Egyptian in origin. There are probably others I don't know about.
My own assumption is that some collection of Hebrew- or pre-Hebrew-speaking Levantines or Canaanites or what have you did migrate to Egypt, did work there (Ronski: hapiru/habiru="laborer" or possibly "brickmaker"), and then left. On the way out, and while overrunning Canaanite cities, they lived near and certainly acquired members of other ethnic groups, as well as a syncretic theology later disguised or denied.
If a variant of this scenario occurred, I'm not sure there's any particular reason biblical Hebrew should have been very much influenced by the Egyptian language, if that's what you're getting at.
But the problem for anyone attempting to defend my supposition on a linguistic basis is that Egyptian influence was not confined to Egypt but extended into Canaan and beyond, at least into the post-Davidic era. For instance, the Judaean king Hezekiah had an ankh and other Egyptian symbols imprinted on the coins of his realm--and this apparently wasn't unusual. Such symbols were used at the time by everybody in the region to indicate royalty, in the same way moderns use the image of a crown to denote "king".
In any case, I don't think anyone, least of all me, has suggested that Hebrew originated in Egypt. So I don't really understand why you say, PE, that the relationship of Hebrew to Phoenician casts doubt on an Israelite cultural origin in Egypt.
What I was considering in that case was the possibility that the priestly class of Amarna, having been ousted from power at the end of Akhnaten's reign, found followers among poor, dispossessed, oppressed, or diseased Egyptians. Some event led to the departure from Egypt of a core group from this contingent, which later joined up with a much larger contingent of Levantines, possibly in the course of aggravating Egypt militarily. Over time, the latter group or groups took over the historical narrative, and its language and gods prevailed until sometime after about 1000 BCE.
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As for Moses: I believe it is pretty commonly accepted that this is related to the Egyptian name-ending -mses, as in Thutmose(s), Raamses, etc.
This does nothing at all to prove Egyptian ethnicity: Henry Kissinger's first name is blatantly Anglo-Saxon, yet his roots are far from England and Saxony. Why, I'd even gander a guess that you, Ando, are not called Rivka or Leah or Avigail, but something like Joanne or Patricia or Tina. The first thing people do in a foreign country is name their kids with local-sounding names.
I do believe that Moses grew up in the Egyptian court: it makes sense to me that a Jew who grew up without a slave identity would become a proud national leader, just as British educated people like Kenyatta and Gandhi became leaders of their own people's liberation movements, and just as modern-day Herzl, a Viennese journalist, became leader of the Eastern European Jews, and just as I, Rustler Pike, raised in the proud, superpowerful USA, refuse to subscribe to the local Jewish custom of behaving like a minority in our own land and apologizing for our existence in the Middle East (though we have yet to see if I will wind up a leader of Herzlian proportions or just another heavy farter begging for his Prozac in some prison cell).
But we all subscribe to the theories that fit our weltanschauung. Ando does not seem to want a theory that places Jews as the rightful, proud owners of the land where I'm living. She apparently likes theories that show us as Egyptian bricklayers. This fits in well with her diaspora bricklaying identity. I like theories that fit in with a prouder -though admittedly less well-paying - national identity.
I think #1 is impossible for linguistic reasons.
I have never said (a) anything about Egyptian loanwords in Hebrew; or (b) that the ancient Hebrew language was influenced by the Egyptian language. Both may or may not be true, but I did not say those things.
My rather limited point is that whatever may have been the various to's and fro's of the proto-Hebrews or the Hebrews, and whatever foreign influences there may have been on their culture, the fact that the Hebrew language is genetically of a piece with the Phoenician language suggests an ethnogenesis somewhere in present-day area of Israel and Lebanon.
As for loanwords, Hebrew has them by the tonne, from Akkadian, Aramaic, Greek, Egyptian, Arabic, etc. Please consult A History of the Hebrew Language by Angel Sáenz-Badillos for more details.
RP is there ever an end to your psychosis?
I'll become normal when the world does.
"Ivri" is certainly the way Hebrews say ayin-bet-resh today. How did the they say it in 1300 or 1400 BCE?
I know you're mad at me for failing to support you in your quest to dominate the femmunists, but I didn't say anything about whether researchers believe "hapiru" and "Hebrew" are related words. As it happens, some do, some don't, and I haven't the faintest idea who is more likely to be correct.
Now that's beyond the pale! Patricia indeed. I am a Jennifer Ruth.
I do not personally happen to prefer (for precisely the reasons you note) the hypothesis that Moses was an Egyptian, ethnically--that, if he existed at all, Moses or his family were not immigrants. But that notion has been proposed in a couple of books I read on the subject, so I thought I ought to oblige the original discussion (in Blue Ear Forum) by bringing it up as a possibility.
There is also no way at this point that it can be discounted or proven; not enough is known. It's like trying to guess where Kennewick Man's ancestors came from.
(The Indios themselves already know we don't all look just alike, but it would be nice to have scientific substantiation.) 
The divisions of Semitic have been simplified somewhat in order to avoid the anarchy and confusion of its many complicated ramifications into northwest semitic, south-central semitic, southeast semitic, etc.
No, I didn't mean that exactly. Look, there are a couple of things we may be failing to communicate to each other. When I say "origin of the Jews," I am referring not to an ethnolinguistic group "Jews" or "Hebrews" but to the point at which a coherent and distinct notion of religion-linked peoplehood emerged. If you've read the biblical account, you'll surely have noticed it did not really exist in Abraham's time.
The only theory relating to an Egyptian origin for the Jews that I find plausible is the one I related above--that a core of Egyptian priests from the Amarna period might've established a precursor to Israelite Judaism among some portion of Egyptians who were later swamped ethnically by others with whom they formed a community in exile. Other than that, Judaism (the people-cum-religion) could have arisen pretty much the way the book of Exodus says it did, with a collection of Hebrew/Levantine laborers, migrants, or even slaves getting the revelation from the One God via their leader Moses to take off out of Egypt for Canaan. (Stranger things have happened.) But the thing is, either way, the characteristics of coherence and distinction seem to have arisen in Egypt or at least under Egyptian religious influence. And as far as I've been able to discover, there's nothing particularly organized or civilizational about the Hebrew religion before the Exodus.
Yeah, but the DNA analysis hasn't, and perhaps won't, be done, for which I would like to shoot somebody.
Thanks for the book reference. Is Saenz-Badillos accessible?
Stop being such a fucking victim. Anyway, I think you've got cause and effect mixed up :
The Middle East will not find peace until you get your shit together.
I thought you'd up and left me.
(I mean Jenerator, not Jennifer-Ruth).
How does my shit have shit-all to do with the Middle East? You haven't bought into my I'm-the-center-of-the-world psychosis, have you?
Talk about the power of e-suggestion.
ALISTAIR... YOU ARE FEELING DROWSY...
YOU ARE GOING TO THE BANK...
YOU ARE MAKING A WIRE TRANSFER...
YOU ARE SENDING ME ALL YOUR MONEY... 
First Sgt. Moshe Hizkiyah was killed by a Palestinian human bomb yesterday.
I had just spoken to him - for the first and last time -two days earlier. He was on duty at the gate of the Wadi Ara police station. He knew who I was and gave me the feeling he liked what I stood for. He was an extremely nice guy and had an ultra-sweet, ultra-intelligent smile. He was shy but confident and he smiled a lot. The picture doesn't really do him justice.
He came out of the police mini-van to accost the bomber at the Umm el Fahm bus stop, where the bomber was waiting to board a bus. The bomber blew himself up.
Hook up with a crime family.
There's a real good one in Harish.
Where do the Bantu languages fit in to that tree, if at all?
The Kikuyu word for water is may. The Hebrew is mayim.
Tank shells took out the floor above his, covering him with dust, and the stairway leading down from his floor no longer exists.
I was laughing myself silly in the car this morning. 
Moshe Hizkiyah's mother at the funeral.
What small languages spoken in Kenya belong to the Cushitic branch? Maasai? Kalenjin?
He's reinstalled Arafat as a hero and martyr, just when he was finally, at long last, losing control of his people.
Last week, Arafat's new government was rejected by the Palestinian parliament. Not even the promise of elections could win them over : they'd had it with him and his corrupt cronies. Now, thanks to Sharon, they are obliged to close ranks behind him : back to business as usual.
I'm guessing they're waiting for Gulf War II to kick Hairy out of the WB&G for good (and bad).
An alternative explanation could be that Sharon and his cronies are not only opposed to Arafat's leadership of the PNA but to any leadership.
On the other hand, you are invited to read and comment on this article which suggests that Israel is giving Marwan Barghouti the Nelson Mandela treatment.
What are your circumstances in Harish?
The funny thing about this place is that people sit outside, on the sidewalk. They just pull a few plastic chairs and a table together and spend the afternoon and evening there. Some of these people would seem to be Arabs, others Caucasian Jews, and others - I don't know.
The Karaja crime family (arms, drugs) control the center of the main street. They sit on the sidewalks on both sides, but also on the grassy island between the two opposing lanes.
I've befriended them.
If that means a dozen or two Israeli victims per month, then that's a price he's prepared to pay.
Peace would make him look stupid and irrelevant.
The digs appear to be fine. Harish is 20 a km. drive from Katzir, though if there were a road directly connecting the two communities, it would be much shorter than that. Together, Katzir and Harish make up the Local Council of Katzir-Harish, which is the local level municipal unit here in Hebe-land. Harish's kids are bussed to Katzir's school, so my kids have school friends here and feel quite comfortable. The kids slept over tonight and I expect them to be coming here with the schoolbus directly from school and staying with me on 'my' days. Happily, it appears my wife is not trying to prevent them coming over or hamper our contact in any way, and is content with having driven me out of her immediate vicinity.
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The total population of Katzir-Harish is about 3300, 800 of whom live in Harish. Of these 800, about 200 are Arab families, all of whom live in rented apartments.
Katzir was created as a village-type community. Harish is defined as, and intended to become, a town, or city (though Israeli concepts of cities may be different from American ones). However, development of Harish has so far failed, largely due to the council head's total incompetence. Harish's Israeli-born population has left it, mostly, leaving a lot of Caucasian Jews who have nowhere better to go, and the Arabs. The well-publicized presence of the Karaja family is a big deterrent to potential homebuyers. There have been a lot of car thefts here and some burglaries, and the place has a reputation of a shithole.
However, places like this are dreamlands for rabble rousers like me, I'm starting to think.
The Karajas are nice people, I find. I'm not sure what they do for a living is worse, morally, than what my wife's divorce lawyer does for a living. Besides, they seem to do their business outside of Harish. This is where they live and park their BMWs, and occasionally remind everybody who the boss is, by threatening the grocery store owner because he didn't personally hand them a plastic bag, or beating an old guy up for telling them not to drive their motorbikes on the grass. They are in protracted negotiations with the government about moving out of Harish and into land that they bought nearby, but this is expected to take at least another year.
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...
However, places like this are dreamlands for rabble rousers like me, I'm starting to think.
Rut-ro.
Unlike the Arab incursion into Katzir, which involved the purchase of houses, intentional deception, various politically symbolic gestures and acts (like the sign I am accused of taking down, or the basketball game played during our Remembrance Day minutes of silence), inflammatory statements in the media and very highly publicized legal moves, and which I see as a politically motivated provocation, the Arabs who live in Harish are mostly just people who came here because they wanted to leave their villages for one reason or another (a feud, a divorce, etc.), not provocateurs. Plus, Harish is defined as a town/city, not as a village. Cities are by definition much more open and heterogenous than village communities.
So I have decided I am not against the Arabs living in Harish, though I do think the town should be divided into two neighborhoods - an Arab one and a Jewish one, for the sake of community identity and to lower friction. The trick will be to keep the two neighborhoods totally equal in terms of development and services, and to maintain friendly relations between the two neighborhoods.
Of course, this interpretation of things is quite handy for me on the survival level, as well: you guys realize that if I tried to continue to present my hard-right stands here in Harish, I would have found myself getting beaten up by the Arabs at a certain point. I am therefore quite deftly reconnecting with my humane, dare-I-say leftie side. But I think there is really no contradiction here.
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The disgusting thing about Harish is this: the Arabs' children, from what I understand, are not allowed into the council's educational system. The Arabs' toddlers are not accepted into the nursery, their kids are not accepted into the kindergarten and school. The schoolkids get bussed to Arab schools in nearby Jat, but the babies and toddlers have no daycare solution.
There is a computer room with a lot of old, donated computers that Harish's kids play in after school, but the Arab kids (so I was told by a Jewish kid) are not allowed in, because 'they started making a mess and breaking stuff'.
So you see, I find this disgusting and this is my plan:
I want to organize a day care center for the Arab kids and I want to organize a computer room for them. I want to organize an action group and take the council to court over the discrimination issue. I want to get funding for this from the same leftie American-Jewish fund which funded my anti police brutality organization in 1988. I want to get the Arabs rooting for me and I want the Karajas to provide security for any potential political gatherings, etc.
At the same time, I am not changing my stance one whit wrt Katzir (Arabs should not be there, basically) and wrt buying that house in Umm el Fahm. I think the Jews have their rights and the Arabs have theirs. The Jews have no right to prevent Arabs from living in Harish and being treated as human beings, and the Arabs have no right to make war on Katzir and challenge Jewish-Israeli sovereignty in Wadi Ara.
If I succeed in turning Harish into a power base, I will be worth something politically. Then we'll see how to parlay that into a job, come erection time.
In the meantime, if I can just convince that leftie fund to give me a grant and a salary, for being the Harish Arabs' savior...
I reiterated my views on Katzir to the Arabs I spoke with here, and there is no point trying to hide those views anyways - they are well known. The only stand I find myself changing is my stand on Harish, which was not a well-informed or fair one (and could have cost me some broken teeth, as well).
Our council head was always considered to be on the hard right side of the map, a guy who spews anti-Arab jokes. But when the war came he turned out to be a quisling. I had Arab friends and Arab students in my computer school but when push came to shove I stood up for Jewish rights, and it cost me business. Things aren't as simple as they may seem to polyamorous sex thread hostesses.
That works on the national level, too: we drive out the Pals, who refuse to accept our existence, but the Israeli Arabs (and the Pals who remain after the expulsion) get full equality.
Excerpts:
[…] Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who, I believe, has never had a plan for how to reach a stable accommodation with the Palestinians, is only interested in making the West Bank safe for Israeli settlers to stay, not to leave, and is going to lead Israel into a dead end - if he sticks to his present course - and will take America along for the ride.
[…] the Sharon response is not working. Months ago Sharon dismissed the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "irrelevant," smashed his security services and announced Israel's intention to assume responsibility for its own security in the West Bank. But when Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and Islamic Jihad then perpetrate more suicide bombings, Sharon attacks Arafat's headquarters as if Arafat sent the bombers himself.
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If Sharon believes that Arafat sent these bombers, then he should evict him. If he thinks Arafat is irrelevant, then he should ignore him. But what makes no sense is to treat Arafat as if he's totally irrelevant and totally responsible. Because all that does is get Palestinians to rally around the feckless Arafat and abort any possibility of Palestinians producing a new leadership that would be relevant to negotiations and to Israeli security.
One has to wonder whether Sharon really isn't out to undermine the whole Palestinian national movement in hopes that one day some quisling Palestinian Authority simply surrenders to the Israeli occupation. He sure doesn't seem interested in nurturing a more responsible Palestinian Authority to cede land to.
.
Always remember, the leading Hebrew biography of Sharon is titled "He Doesn't Stop at Red Lights."
I haven't read your link yet, Pelle, but I sure wish I could find my post from six months or a year ago where I suggested this is exactly what the Israelis were going to do with Barghouti. Pike insisted I was an insane skirt or something, but I have been holding my breath for quite a while now...
I don't think you wear skirts. Do you?
Pelle:
I read the article. My reaction is - ho-hum, pass the saltines.
Sharon and the entire Israeli defense establishment hate Bargouti's guts. He was too high-level for assassination, so he was put on trial. That's the whole story. The bit about risking soldiers' lives to arrest him instead of bombing from the air is pure crap. There was no special risk in the operation and I don't think a shot was even fired. The theory that Sharon doesn't really call the shots, and Ya'alon and Dichter are as powerful as he - that is really an amazingly stupid thing to write, even for an Al Ahram correspondent.
Excerpts:
The brutal curfews and closings remained unchanged. Indeed, during this period the Isreali Defense Forces killed 75 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including children. Even more tellingly, Sharon chose this particular moment to announce his designation of Effie Eitam, the most outspoken advocate of the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank, to take charge of Israel's settlements program. It is difficult to imagine a move better calculated to discredit Palestinians seeking to repudiate Hamas and Islamic Jihad and end the violence. No one has better captured Sharon's real intentions than Avi Primor, a former deputy director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and now a vice president of Tel Aviv University. In an essay in the Sept. 18 issue of Ha'aretz entitled "Sharon's South African Strategy," Primor notes that it serves Sharon's purposes to be accused of lacking an overall strategy. It provides him with a cover. Primor recalls that in the 1970s and 1980s, the top echelon of Israel's security establishment sympathized with efforts of the white South African regime to solve its demographic problem by creating Bantustans for the black majority, which they called "independent states."
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When in February of 1991 the then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, invited Rehavam Ze'evi, the head of Moledet, at the time the only Israeli political party advocating the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, to join his government, one member of the Israeli Parliament issued the following "J'accuse":
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"The transfer party's joining the government is a profound political, moral and social stain on Israel. Anyone who includes such a party in the coalition is in effect confirming UN resolutions that declare Zionism to be racism."
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The author was Benjamin Begin, the Likud "prince" and son of Menachem Begin. It is a measure of the political extremism and moral obtuseness that now afflicts so many Israelis and friends of Israel that this sentiment would today be dismissed as "Jewish self-hatred."
What this article shows -apart from its factual contents - is that the criticism levied at Israel from Europe, which Sharonistas love to call "anti-semitic" is in fact a reflection of similar opinions voiced by Israelis themselves.
The report is by the Israeli Civil Administration, which, I understand, is a branch of the IDF, and was leaked to Haaretz by MK Yossi Sarid of Meretz.
Hmmmm. Just as I said previously in this thread.
Siegman is not at all wrong in this critique of the Israeli right wing, but keep in mind nevertheless that he is not exactly a balanced voice, having for too long made strings of ridiculous excuses for Arafat. These always seem to be more assured in print; whenever he gets interviewed on Charlie Rose, who tends to challenge him directly, Siegman suddenly gets mealy-mouthed about what he thinks.
As for Yurpeon views of Israel being reflections of what Israelis themselves think... yeah, just like one New York black man calling another "nigger" is simply a reflection of what my white Mississippi grandfather meant when he used the term.
Most Jews, not to mention Israelis, are rightfully suspicious of Euros critical of Israel, since a very large proportion of those are also convinced that Zionism itself is equivalent to racism and/or malignant nationalism on a par with Naziism. Even the anti-American crowd in Europe does not go so far as to suggest handing California and Texas back to Mexico on the grounds that 'Americanism' is genocide, or whatever. But when we're talking Jews, there are always unspoken opinions informing the Euro left's prescriptions.
You know, Pelle, I sometimes wonder. I'm a little worried that George W. is more driven by religious conviction than is ordinarily supposed.
In a massive mideast conflict involving the US, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Israel, I wonder whether this administration would demand that Israel give up anything at all. I have a feeling that W. himself, not counting his VP and advisors, would be content to allow some version of biblical prophecy to prevail.
Shocking, I tell you.
"Not so long ago, Sharon demanded seven days of quiet before returning to a political process. Six weeks of Palestinian quiet - a period also marked by an unprecedented Palestinian debate about the immorality and political bankruptcy of Palestinian terrorism -elicited not a single Israeli move away from its reliance on overwhelming military suppression."
This is bullshit. In the first place, the "debate" among Pals about the immorality of suicide bombing was extremely short lived, having been quashed in the name of generating consensus among the majority (of the intellectuals) who could at least agree that terrorism was politically counterproductive. Second, there have been scores of attempts to kill Jews in the last 6 weeks. It so happens they have been averted by Israeli security and pretty harsh military action. So, one wonders why military pressure should be expected to ease up.
On the other hand, one does expect diplomatic efforts to develop an alternative to the status quo. I don't see that happening in the right wing parties at all, but you should know that Meretz and the left generally are again getting active, staging demos, organizing against the Israeli right (even in the US), and developing new bids for power. So it's not like "Israel" is doing nothing to encourage salutary developments among the Palestinians.
I will be chairman and be in charge of the computer room as well.
Naturally, there will be some financial remuneration involved.
I listen to myself and I can't help feeling I sound like marj.
Iac, I am a bastard son of a hooker if I don't take the council to court soon. They have been spending money like crazy but have yet to pass the budget for 2002. Two council members were sacked - one of them completely illegally - after they and other council members initiated a process that could have led to the dismissal of the council head. There is evidence of fraud and corruption on a large scale, and the Interior Ministry appears to be keeping mum because Shas has been given a foothold in the council (in the form of a department of religion headed by the local Shasnik).
My dilemma is this:
For this move to be effective, the (seven man) council has to continue to refuse to pass the budget. For the council to continue to refuse - and withstand pressure from the council head to pass the budget - I have to show that there is a credible option for change soon, and/or apply pressure of my own in the opposite direction.
This pressure can come from Harish, which has been oppressed by the council head since day one. Two of the four remaining opposition councillors are from Harish. I have to work them. A third is susceptible to pressure from Harish - intimidation, pressure, whatever you want to call it. The fourth is pretty much untouchable and can be counted on to resist the council head's temptations, I'm almost certain.
>>>
So either I take the council to court like, next week -or I start organizing Harish. The second option will give me time to perhaps get a good lawyer to present the case rather than me doing it on my own.
A lot depends on Sarid. Sarid helped me organize my police brutality group 15 years ago (15!!! I'm a geezer!), and in hindsight that group was highly effective, even if we did wind up fighting publicly in a pretty embarrassing way. If I can convince him that this is a good cause - and if he can accept me despite my right-wing stands on Katzir (the harder part) - he can recommend me to the right funds and we can get a budget for this.
What this could wind up being is a grassroots political organization which unites Jews and Arabs without being leftie-beftie. That would be revolutionary.
I imagine that, at a certain point, there will be pressure on the Arabs not to go along with this.
But I sense that Israeli Arabs are ripe for peace. I think they have been suffering tremendously - mostly economically, partly as a result of an undeclared Jewish boycott of their villages and services - from the aftermath of the October 2000 riots. I think they realize those riots were a mistake, a trap they were led into by their sucky leaders.
Otoh, those same leaders - most notably Sheikh Ra'ed Salakh of Um el-Fahm, head of the northern Islamic movement - and of course, the Arab MKs, are trying real hard to pull off a remake of those riots, come the second anniversary (sometime real soon). We'll see how that goes. If it fails to catch, as I believe it will, I'm in business.
But there will only be one rally, in Kafr Manda, and I believe it will go rather smoothly.
The anniversary is being marked in Beirut, too: 
She says she started feeling sorry for me when I was taken away by the police, and felt it had all gone too far.
They did the hakafot - the ritual 'rounds' with the bible scroll, performed annually on simkhat torah - this morning, roaring out songs about Yahweh lording it over all the nations and stuff.
Nice. 
I bet the Karajas found it entertaining.
A mother in Haifa went to a nightclub and left her baby in a cage: 
Wrt concerned's link. I agree that with the opening premise. I didn't have time to read the whole statment.
America supporting Isreal is a root of muslim anger toward us.
I don't support the settlers, but I do support Isreal's right to exist. To hell with the arab terrorists who think otherwise.
So it is "Sharon's forces" now, not "our forces" or "the IDF"? Interesting.
Nestorianism was largely extinguished in central and eastern Asia after the conquests and depredations of Tamurlane and today survive primarily in Iran, Iraq and Syria. Michael Yuhanna, more famous to the world as Saddam Hussein's foreign ministre & deputy PM Tariq Aziz, is a Nestorian Christian.
Although the Mongolians and the Manchurians did not become Nestorians for the most part, there are apparently quite a few Semitic loanwords in Mongolian and Manchurian. One you would appreciate is the word for "divine law" in both languages: doro, obviously cognate to "Torah".
Oh, stop. I liked the sound of 'Sharon's forces' all of a sudden. It was a lot more epic-sounding: like 'Ceasar's forces' or something.
So let me get this straight - you guys think I'm a whore because I've decided to try and help Harish's Arabs?
Haven't I always said that my idea was to be basically OK with the Israeli Arabs (except for the sound knock on the head which I think they deserve to get) but expel the Pals?
You think I always have to be against all Arabs and for all Jews, in any situation, in order to be consistent?
Who thinks this? Do speak up.
Why did you move jexter's post? It was just a link.
That, plus I didn't want my teeth knocked in.
I said I didn't want to see his posts anymore, after reading that peice about the children dying of thirst in their own vomit and urine.
Those children are screaming even now, as we post.
Very interesting stuff. That text looks very weeping willowish.
Uh-huh. Yes? Then what?
I agree with this...it has become chapter after chapter of As The Pike Squirms.
What does it mean?
And, what script do the Uighurs use now that they are Muslims?
I agree with this...it has become chapter after chapter of As The Pike Squirms.
Half of the world's population occasionally feels an irresistible need to have a pike squirming in it, from puberty onwards.
And, what script do the Uighurs use now that they are Muslims?
Uigghly script?
Read this:
"The leadership is acting in accordance with the general tone of the Arab public, which feels some sort of exhaustion and despair over the events of the past two years, that confrontation is not in its interest, and that they should play a different role in the Israel-Palestinian conflict," said Darawshe, a former director-general of the Democratic Arab Party.
I spoke to MK Sarid on Saturday. He was a bit cranky because I called during the siesta hours (I do that to people sometimes) but he told me to fax him the info and he'd help.
But his crankiness was probably also a reflection of the general despair the Israeli left is in. And Sarid also mentioned something about the fund that I wanted money from being in trouble.
If they're smart, they'll opt for a humane right-winger like me instead of sticking to their guns to the bitter end.
I'm thinking they simply seperate the three entities into their own category of worship. Do they have anything like that? I wonder?
In the 4th and 5th centuries the church was torn by doctrinal strife of the true nature of Christ. He was human but he was also divine. How can this be explained? There can obviously be many solution. Christ can be a man who is inspired by the divine to a unique extent. He can be a manifestation of God in human shape. But there are difficulties with these simple solutions. So the church went for the idea of a dual nature, but obviously this too is fraught with problems. Are the natures separate or intertwined and, if so, to what extent?
The Nestorians (named after Nestorius, (ca 381-451) went for the separate natures and proposed that Maria should be called Cristhotokos (the mother of Christ) rather that Theotokos (the mother of God) since she could not have begotten Christ's divine nature.
The Nestorians were condemned as heretics by a church meeting in Chalcedon in the mid 5th century.
Today I faxed a left-wing MK a request for help and spoke to an aide to another, right-wing MK. The aide said if I got a group of 25 Arabs to come to a meeting with the MK at my home or someone else's home, he'd come. She also said I could wind up running on that party's ticket for the municipal erections.
Another funny thing about these disputes is that they are quite Jewish in nature. Life of Brian is all about that - the way the Jews keep splitting up into factions of three, then two, then one. So maybe these splits were just a reflection of the fact that Christianity is a daughter of Judaism.
A: Two. One to attend, and one not to be caught dead attending.
The Arians held that Christ was entirely and completely human. Arianism was the official religious doctrine in Visigothic Spain and Vandal North Africa. Today it is extinct -- unless of course you consider Unitarianism a successor to Arianism, which Unitarians insist they are.
Finally, the Monophysites believed Christ was divine and divine only. Monophysitism is the official doctrine of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Syrian Orthodox Church . (The last should not to be confused with the Assyrian Orthodox Church, which is resolutely Nestorian.)
To sum up: The Arians were earthy Christians who believed Christ took a dump; the Monophysites, being a bit more ethereal, had a Christ who never ever took a dump and would not even dream of it. Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians believe Christ both eagerly defecated and refrained from defecating at the same time, while the Nestorians believe in a non-defecating Christ who nonetheless had a doppelgänger somewhere in Asia who took to heart the Gandhian dictum "the surest path to bliss is a proper bowel movement". The Jews think the Christians copied their squatting techniques, while the Muslims, for whom Christ is known as Isa bin Maryam and is the antepenultimate prophet of God, added that Christ was indeed human, but introduced the divinely inspired practise of always using the left hand for sanitary purposes.
When the Uighurs converted to Islam they of course adopted the Perso-Arabic script. This was abandoned in the 1930s in favour of two scripts --Latin and Cyrillic. But in the 1980s the Uighurs re-adopted the Arabic script with official Chinese approval. But this Arabic script was very different from the earlier one. The current version is a fully vocalised script.
The Wahabbis, irritated at the Sunni silence on the question of marriage before conception, added the innovation that betrothal contracts can be drawn up and signed even before conception, but marriage & consummation would have to wait until conception.
The Ismailis, followers of the Aga Khan, believe that by the very nature of their faith, they are already married to the Aga Khan and all the procreational activity amongst themselves, necessarily takes place in sin & betrayal.
When you ask a Shiite about the age of marriage in the Shia sect, he will explain that one may go to war at 5 but self-flagellation cannot start before 13.
The Druze keep all their practises a secret and their customs on the age of marriage are a mystery.
Although the Alawites, who presently rule in Syria, insist they are devout Muslims, this sect is considered heretical by most Muslims. Their beliefs make room for many Christian beliefs & practises, such as the Trinity and Easter. Their own syncretism has confused the Alawites, and consequently on the question of marriage they answer: Muhammed did not defecate before puberty, while Christ did marry a pre-pubescent Mary Magdalene.
"The Jews think the Christians copied their squatting techniques..."
You're crazy! Nowhere do the rabbis advise that Jews should turn the other cheek. We shit proudly with both at once, and unlike Muslims, may wipe them freely with either hand.
I think.
Wasn't Mohammed supposed to be the last prophet and Isa the penultimate prophet? If Jesus was the antepenultimate, who's considered the prophet in between him and Mo?
Meaning the vowels are written out?
(2) "vocalised" means that there are discrete letters for each and every vowel, a quality which is absent from the Arabic script (just as from the Hebrew script).
And this seemed sort of reasonable on some level, since vowel sounds could be considered closer in a way to musical notes than they are to consonants (which I guess are more analagous to percussion). But it struck me as an interesting peculiarity that both melodic notation and vowel notation should be relegated literally to the edges of Hebrew writing.
Naturally, I've always wondered whether Islamic chants are similarly notated--I can't imagine they aren't tropic.
Yes, I am aware of that. But vowel markers for learners don't count. Arabic has the same thing: vowel markers are used, but only in dictionaries and the Qur'an.
I believe even some consonants in Hebrew aren't "marked". For example, in the dictionary, a dot on the right side distinguishes the letter Shin from the letter Sin, which has got a dot on the left side. But in normal Hebrew writing the dot is simply left out of both letters.
It's cruel enough that you don't indicate vowels in most texts, but how much crueller it is not to indicate some consonants as well !!!
The article explains the various -- schisms and mistaken schisms -- in hilarious detail.
The tone of the article is best summed up by this:
... the fallacy "No one can bring forth a son older than herself."
ANYWAY
What I really wanted to comment on was Jung's attempt to sort out the meaning of the moon in Judaism. He suggested that the moon goddess was wife of the God. And that the moon goddess is the basis for the Christian Holy spirit.
Unfortunately, I could not find any reference to this on the Internet, but here is an interesting article:
Hebrew Goddesses and the Origin of Judaism
FINALLY
Pierre A Rinfret
I am 77 years of age;lived through the great depression,and WWII to say nothing of the cold war. Witnessed the evil of Hitler, Mussolini Stalin and all the petty despots and murderers in Africa and Asia (including the Vietnam holocaust)from my childhod until today. The middle east is a disaster and the killing will never stop.
Mankind is basically mad.
Who is Rinfret:
1990 New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Pierre Rinfret had some difficulty establishing voter name recognition. A New York Times informal survey of voters identified Pierre Rinfret as an artist, a perfume, a drug dealer, a movie star, a fashion designer, a chef, the French ambassador to the United States, and a goalie for the New York Rangers.
Also a Ph.D. in economics and advisor to US presidents. His site is messy but very worthwhile digging around in.
A classic site -- possibly one of the best on the Internet.
I guessed as much. However, I should say that the incidence of Hebrew vowels being used in common parlance may be greater than that of Arabic vowels--sometimes I see vowels used in newspaper ads--and if so is probably a result of the fact that Hebrew is not at this point in history a first language for lots of its speakers.
"I believe even some consonants in Hebrew aren't "marked". For example, in the dictionary, a dot on the right side distinguishes the letter Shin from the letter Sin, which has got a dot on the left side. But in normal Hebrew writing the dot is simply left out of both letters."
Yes, Shin/Sin is the most glaring example of this admitted cruelty. But then there's also the dots in the middle of consonants that harden sounds--F to P, V to B, Kh to K... and Ch to hard C. (I think the only distinction between the latter two pairs is that the K/Kh is a final letter, whereas the C/Ch can occur in the beginning or middle of a word--but Pike would know better than I.) What the seemingly superfluous dot in the middle of a mem does for it, I have no idea.
Most insidious perhaps is the vav that, if it's got a dot next to it, makes the oo sound as in "tool." Ordinarily the vav would be a fucking consonant (V). Sometimes the "oo" vav is dispensed with and the "incomplete" version of the word is written with a backward-leaning stack of three dots (the vowel notation for "oo) beneath the relevant consonant. But then these dots are dispensed with in common script, so I don't know how anyone knows what the hell is going on.
But it isn't really that bad, I'm sure, if one is fluent in the language. No worse, I guess, than the plethora of insane English homonyms and various worthlessly archaic spellings, for instance.
Ah, that explains everything.
The use of V / W as both a consonant and a vowel (O & U), and the use of Y as both a consonant and a vowel (long I), are distinguishing characteristics of Semitic languages.
But Hebrew and Arabic have it easy. In Urdu, the V letter can mean /v/, /w/, /o/, /u/, or /au/.
"Ch to hard C. (I think the only distinction between the latter two pairs is that the K/Kh is a final letter, whereas the C/Ch can occur in the beginning or middle of a word--but Pike would know better than I.)"
Don't you mean the letter tsadi can represent the /ch/ sound in addition to the normal /ts/ sound? There are three letters of this class:
tsadi = /ts/ or /ch/
zayin = /z/ or /j/
gimel = /g/ or /dz/
Malaysian flat bread and curry chicken. Laughing worked up my appitite.
That's a new one on me (which means little). Can you provide an example?
I am also unaware of gimel producing the sound "dz". I thought it was strictly a "g".
Now, see, that's just perverse.
zayin = /z/ or /j/
gimel = /g/ or /dz/"
I assume these are adaptations to accommodate foreign language pronunciation?
Religiously, it appears that the Hebrews were a bit more....catholic...than is commonly admitted:)
The stuff in the link posted by Transient mostly rings true, based on everything I've read about the Hebrews/Israelites--with the exception that its author scarcely mentions the central myth or event of Israelite history: the Exodus.
Either it occurred or it didn't. But I can't figure out what would have motivated a bunch of Canaanites to have insisted that it did, unless some contingent of them had had some sort of defining experience in, or in relation to, Egypt.
Personally, I'm interested in the connection between Persian or Babylonian and Canaanite royalty legends and Indian ones. But I haven't yet stumbled on a discourse comparing the two (particularly ca. 500-600 BCE). Which is surprising to me, since there's a perfect parallel between the stories of David and Saul and a homily told by the Buddha, ostensibly to quell a power struggle among his disciples. Both accounts may have been written down around the same time, so I don't know which preceded the other, or whether they derive independently from a third source.
Pe is talking about what happens to zayin, tzadi and gimel when an apostrophe is attached and yes, this is a modern way of coping with foreign language sounds.
When Ando wrote 'ch' she meant 'kh'. She meant 'ch' like in ach, Hans, not like in 'chihuaha'.
That guy's site you linked is cool.
I'm jealous that he has money. 
Sgt. Ari Weiss, 22, of Ra'anana, KIA in Shkhem.
Andonly,
The Exodus story has gone through yet another revision -- hopefully, the final one. (Prior to this one, the theory I remember was that the "Hebrews" conquered Egypt and were subsequently expelled.)
ANYWAY
This theory is summarized:
Scholars say Bible's version of Exodus probably isn't true
Today, the prevailing theory is that Israel probably emerged peacefully out of Canaan --modern-day Lebanon, southern Syria, Jordan and the West Bank of Israel -- whose people are portrayed in the Bible as wicked idolators. Under this theory, the Canaanites who took on a new identity as Israelites were perhaps joined or led by a small group of Semites from Egypt -- explaining a possible source of the Exodus story, scholars say.
...........
In a new book this year (2001), "The Bible Unearthed," Israeli archeologist Israel Finklestein of Tel Aviv University and archeological journalist Neil Asher Silberman raised similar doubts and offered a new theory about the roots of the Exodus story. The authors argue that the story was written during the time of King Josia of Judah in the seventh century B.C. -- 600 years after the Exodus supposedly occurred in 1250 B.C. -- as a political manifesto to unite Israelites against the rival Egyptian empire as both states sought to expand their territory. The young Israeli king's growing conflict with the newly crowned Pharaoh Necho, the book argues, was metaphorically portrayed through the momentous and probably mythical struggle between Moses and the pharaoh.
Dever argued that the Exodus story was produced for theological reasons: to give an origin and history to a people and distinguish them from others by claiming a divine destiny.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Here is an interesting view of Moses as being Akhenaten:
Moses
Note the origin of the word 'Amen':
The cult of the amorphous god Amun (meaning "hidden" or "unseen"(7) and source of the ending to Christian, Jewish and Muslim prayers - Amen)(8) was champion of the 17th Dynasty Pharaohs who drove out the Hyksos and reunited Egypt. Amun was established as the supreme state god and was gradually endowed with the natures of other important Egyptian deities.(9) By the beginning of the 18th Dynasty, traits of the solar god Ra (alternatively spelled Re) had also become assimilated.(10) Amun-re had become the unequaled "King of the Gods," and possessor of a temple complex with a staff of thousands.
That's interesting. I had allowed for a similar notion myself, and wondered whether anyone serious had worked out a real hypothesis along those lines.
I can buy that "Aten" and "adon" share some provenance, but this is probably insignificant as an indicator that the Jews came out of Egypt. Similarly, if the name Amun and the word amen are linguistically related, it's probably because the Egyptians (who worshipped Amun as a chief deity) were a dominant cultural and political power throughout the Levant. If the name Amun were uttered routinely by Egyptians to seal oaths, it could have become a common colloquialism for "so be it" among Canaanite peoples without them having any idea who Amun was.
The implication in the link you cited that Moses was Akhenaten is not supported by any evidence, nor taken seriously by anyone, as far as I know, although the idea apparently used to have some currency among fabulists.
More plausible, perhaps, is the possibility that Moses was, or was a figure based on, Akhenaten's high priest, Osarseph (who would have suddenly become unemployed after Akhenaten's death, whereupon Amarna was abandoned and the heretical monotheism Akhenaten established evidently purged). Who knows, perhaps Osarseph was also part of the inspiration for the biblical character Joseph.
A fascinating detail about Akhenaten is that he appears in most artistic representations physically deformed, with a bulging abdomen, a long cranium, and certain almost feminine features. It has been speculated that he suffered from a genetically inherited condition brought on by inbreeding, or possibly Marfan's, but the genetic work done on mummies of some of his relatives indicate he wasn't actually the product of inbreeding. His own mummy has never been located.
Maybe instead of an 'interesting' view. I should have said 'curious'.
The Net is full of curious theories with their authors being 'highly selective' in their choice of information.
IN ANY CASE
A book is due out on this topic shortly:
Moses and Akhenaten: The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus
by Ahmed Osman
First North American Edition of
Moses: Pharaoh of Egypt
ISBN 1-59143-004-6
Bear & Company
280 pages, 6 x 9
8-page b & w insert
Paper, $18.00 (CAN $28.95)
It will be interesting to see how it is reviewed.
AND
Here is the thesis that Moses was an Egyptian priest:
The Moses Mystery
Don't have the time or the inclination to try to follow up on this.
Iran has been supplying the [Hizbullah] guerrillas with thousands of missiles for an attack on Israel that apparently would be timed to disrupt a possible U.S. strike against Iraq, a senior Israeli official said Friday in Jerusalem.
We're in for a hell of winter, eh?
I'm thinking the relative quiet on the Pal front is probably just a reorganization and regrouping, in preparation for the One Big One.
You're a propagandist for a man who has a special jail for killing children. I will not have you posting in my thread. Not even short posts.
Didn't jasper recently reveal that he has a prof named Osman?
That, in fact, he - jasper - is this Osman guy's star pupil?
Osman is not an uncommon Muslim name. I think it's from the same word as Ottoman.
Osman is the Turkish variant of the Arabic Uthman, the name of the third Caliph. Turks can't lisp, so they said Usman or Osman. The English word Ottoman comes from an Italian corruption of the Arabic original. Like the Turks, the Italians can't lisp, but unlike the Turks the Italians interpret Th as T. Thus, Ottoman.
Arab Christians of all denominations -- Maronites, Catholics, Syrian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox --use the word Allah to say God.
I'm not sure whether Judaeo-Arabic speakers from Yemen, Morocco and Egypt also used the word "allah" in ordinary conversation (as opposed to religious ceremonies). But I do know that Iranian Jews and Bukharan Jews, whose language is Judaeo-Persian, refer to God in ordinary conversation as "Khuda", which is the Persian word for God / god. ( I know because I've asked them.)
I should add that in the case of the Syrian & Coptic Orthodox Christian Arabs, they say Allah in ordinary conversation, not in religious services which would be conducted in Aramaic and Coptic, respectively. Maronites and Arab Catholics hold services in Arabic, so they say Allah always.
pseudoerasmus,
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case. The noun lah simply means "god" and is cognate to the Hebrew el. Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god").
Others differ:
Who is Allah? The Institute of Islamic Information and Education
It is a known fact that every language has one or more terms that are used in reference to God and sometimes to lesser deities. This is not the case with Allah. Allah is the personal name of the One true God. Nothing else can be called Allah. The term has no plural or gender. This shows its uniqueness when compared with the word god which can be made plural, gods, or feminine, goddess. It is interesting to notice that Allah is the personal name of God in Aramaic, the language of Jesus and a sister language of Arabic.
ANYWAY
This comes via the stupid Saudi, so it must be wrong.
Well, maybe not:
Is the Word Allah Similar to Elohim?
The intent of this article is to examine the etymology of the word Elohim and Allah. Although some of the definitions may be repetitive, our aim is to document the meanings from various sources.
Allah is the name of the Supreme Being in the Arabic Language. The word Allah is never used for any other being or thing.
Well maybe you are simply wrong. Only Allah knows.
I said three things.
(1) The word "allah" simply means "the god" in Arabic. You can look up any Arabic dictionary and confirm that it is a combination of the definite article "al" and the common noun "lah". Even Transient's own citaiton from plim.org confirms this is so.
(2) I said the words "Allah" and "El" (or "Elohim") are etymologically cognate. Nobody disputes this point.
(3) Finally, I said that the word "Allah" is used to mean "God" by Arabic speakers of any religion, including Christians.
Khaval Alazman, whose family includes Judaeo-Arabic speakers from Yemen and Morocco, informs me that Arabic-speaking Jews also indeed say "Allah" for God in ordinary conversation.
This is equivalent to say God is the personal name of the one true God.
You stated:
Message # 547
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case.
But it is NOT the case -- or, at least, for Muslims.
The etymology of Allah has no bearing on its current meaning. That's the way language works.
Therefore your 'logic' is simply wrong.
AND
The people who "mistakenly suppose" are correct.
It is NOT not the case --
"Whilst it has become the custom of many translators of the Qur'an to leave the Arabic word allah untranslated, this practise is semantically ill-advised. In classical and scriptural Arabic, allah is the syncopated form of al'illah which can refer equally to the one God and to any one of the many gods of the pre-Islamic pantheon. Lexical distinctions between the true God and the false pagan gods were achieved in the use of the plural form or through apposition... "
[ W. M. Thackston, An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic ]
The Shahadah, the Muslim confession of faith, is usually translated into English as "there is no god but God and Muhammed is his prophet".
pseudoerasmus,
The "simple grammatical fact" is still a point of contention. [Please read the second reference ( Is the Word Allah Similar to Elohim? ) I gave carefully.] So what you claim is grammatical is, in fact, etymological.
If a group of individuals agrees and uses 'pseudoerasmus' to mean 'long-winded and illogical' then, to that group of individuals that is its meaning. And to argue otherwise is silly.
So your argument in:
Message # 547
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case.
is simply silly -- because Moslems claim otherwise.
No, the point is grammatical, not etymological. Please consult any Arabic grammar.
"The "simple grammatical fact" is still a point of contention. [Please read the second reference ( Is the Word Allah Similar to Elohim? ) I gave carefully.] "
Transient1a has always been undemanding about the quality of the sources he reads and cites, but why does he believe a website called plim.org (PLIM = "power latent in man") which among other things discusses "paranormal experiences", should be reckoned to trump the opinion of the esteemed Arabist, Semiticist and Iranist Professor W. M. Thackston?
"because Moslems claim otherwise."
Not at all. See, for example, http://99-names.com/Allah.shtml.
Weird. Encyclopedia Britannica does NOT use 'grammaticologically':
Encyclopedia Britannica Micropedia (Vol. 1; p. 250) states the following about Allah. "Etymologically, Allah is probably a contraction of the Arabic al-ilahh, "the God," although the Aramaic Alaha has also been proposed. The origin of the name can be traced to the earliest Semitic writings in which the word for god was Il or El, the latter bring in the Old Testament synonym for Yahweh. Know to Arabs even in pre-Islamic times, Allah is standard Arabic for God And is used by Arab Christians as well as Muslims."
MAYBE
Because you are simply wrong.
Sorry about that. But that is the way it is.
The second reference I gave contains the above quotes.
Sorry about that. But that is the way it is.
How juvenile can you get?
allah = al + lah <=> god = the + god
is simply standard Arabic grammar. Look up "definite article" in any Arabic reference grammar and you will see it is so.
Besides, on the main point of what "allah" means, Britannica seems to agree with me:
"Known to Arabs even in pre-Islamic times, Allah is standard Arabic for God And is used by Arab Christians as well as Muslims."
Tut. Tut. A trifle judgemental and adolescent.
How juvenile can you get?
MAYBE
Message # 555
Transient1a, you are a deeply stupid man...
ANYWAY
All I was doing was adding emphasis.
I assume that your have enough native intelligence to draw your own conclusions.
And note: no name calling.
BUT
Then maybe to you that is adult.
ANYWAY
Enough trivia for one day.
pseudoerasmus,
1
Sorry, but references on Arabic grammar and lexicography trump Britannica.
This is your opinion.
You would have to ask W. M. Thackston exactly how he would define the etymology of the word Allah.
Perhaps he would agree the Encyc. Brit. or not --- this is a matter of conjecture.
Even if he disagreed this would not make EB 'wrong'. This would only demonstrate that there is disagreement on the usage of the term etymology between two experts.
2
You stated:
Message # 555
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case.
What I have referenced demonstrates that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam. That is simply the way the word Allah is used.
It really does not matter if the best grammatical interpretation of Allah is "the god". Usage defines the word.
I guess I find it very frustrating that I cannot seem to communicate this point to you.
Message # 547
It only disagrees with me in saying that "al lah" means "the god" etymologically, as opposed to grammatically, semantically and mechanically.
The question of what "allah" means can be found in any Arabic-English dictionary. One need not actually ask Professor Thackston.
"Even if he disagreed this would not make EB 'wrong'. This would only demonstrate that there is disagreement on the usage of the term etymology between two experts."
Do you even read what you quote? There is no disagreement on usage between anybody, because Britannica does not discuss usage, except insofar as Britannica says "Allah" is standard Arabic for "God", which supports me and not you.
"What I have referenced demonstrates that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam. That is simply the way the word Allah is used. It really does not matter if the best grammatical interpretation of Allah is "the god". Usage defines the word."
Of course usage defines the word. And what is the Arab usage in referencing the Supreme Deity? To put a definite article ("the") in front of the word for "god" !!!
It seems it doesn't penetrate your abnormally dense cranium that when an Arab says "Allah" he is well aware that "lah" means "god", as in "false gods" or "pagan gods". Suppose then that a group of English speakers decided to call the supreme deity "The God". Our village idiot Transient1a would apparently observe that this phase "The God" is a name, a proper name, analogous with Yahweh or Vishnu or Zeus.
What an idiot.
Now be a mensch and admit you were wrong.
Allah is not the personal name of God in Islam in the sense that Yahweh or Zeus or Vishnu is.
Message # 570
Allah is not the personal name of God in Islam in the sense that Yahweh or Zeus or Vishnu is.
The information I posted from Islamic sites claimed that Allah is the name of God.
Here is information from yet another site, Allah, the unique name of God :
Contrary to popular belief, the word Allah is NOT a contraction of al-ilah (al meaning 'the', and ilah meaning 'god').
Had it been so, then the expression ya Allah ('O Allah!') would have been ungrammatical, because according to the Arabic language when you address someone by the vocative form ya followed by a title, the al ('the') must be dropped from the title. For example, you cannot say ya ar-rabb but must say ya rabb (for 'O Lord'). So if the word Allah was al-ilah ('the God'), we would not be able to say: ya Allah, which we do.
Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (which is based on classical Arabic dictionaries), says under the word Allah, while citing many linguistical authorities:
"Allah ... is a proper name applied to the Being Who exists necessarily, by Himself, comprising all the attributes of perfection, a proper name denoting the true god ... the al being inseparable from it, not derived..."
Allah is thus a proper name, not derived from anything, and the Al is inseparable from it. The word al-ilah (the god) is a different word.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The word Allah is unique among the names of God in all the languages of mankind, in that it was never applied to any being other than God. The pre-Islamic Arabs used it to refer to the Supreme Being, and never applied it to any of the other things they worshipped. Other names of God used by mankind, such as "lord", "god", "khuda", etc. have all also been used for beings other than God. They have meanings which refer to some particular attribute of God, but "Allah" is the name which refers to the Being Himself as His personal name.
The Holy Quran itself refers to the uniqueness of the name Allah when it says:
"Do you know anyone who can be named along with Him?" (19:65)
Arabic is the only language, and Islam is the only religion, that has given the personal name of God (as distinct from attributive names such as lord, god, the most high, etc.) There are clear prophecies in previous scriptures (the Bible, the Vedas etc.) about the man who will come and give the name of God, which in previous religions was regarded as a secret.
So Allah is the personal name of God.
And I guess you still think you are right? Allah has hardened your heart -- in old sense where it was thought to be the organ respsonsible for consciousness and logic.
.......THE AHMADIS, a Pakistani religious sect, considered heretical by Muslims, who recognises a prophet after Muhammed. The Ahmadis are to Islam what the Mormons are to Christianity. Would one consult the Mormons on the word for God in Greek? No, one would ask Greek Orthodox or Greek-speaking Christians.
So once again Transient displays his inimitable talent for blindly and ignorantly mining quack sites on the internet.
After all this time, the only person who has quoted from a serious source is yours truly. I quote again the following:
"Whilst it has become the custom of many translators of the Qur'an to leave the Arabic word allah untranslated, this practise is semantically ill-advised. In classical and scriptural Arabic, allah is the syncopated form of al'illah which can refer equally to the one God and to any one of the many gods of the pre-Islamic pantheon. Lexical distinctions between the true God and the false pagan gods were achieved in the use of the plural form or through apposition in the latter."
[ W. M. Thackston, An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic ]
"It is appropriate to use the word 'God' rather than the transliteration 'Allah'. For one thing it cannot be denied that Islam is an offshoot of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and for another the Christian Arabs of today have no word for 'God' than 'Allah'.
[ Cambridge History of Islam, volume 1a, pg. 32.]
I will also quote from the link I provided in Message # 557. The website is run by the Al Haramein Foundation, an Islamic scholarly organisation with official status in Saudi Arabia -- i.e., they are not Pakistani Ahmadis whom Transient prefers to quote, but Muslim Arabs: Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word "Allah". For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false, since "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God" - and there is only One God. Let there be no doubt - Muslims worship the God of Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus - peace be upon them all. However, it is certainly true that Jews, Christians and Muslims all have different concepts of Almighty God....
First of all, it is important to note that "Allah" is the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God. If you pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word "Allah" being used where "God" is used in English. (Click here to see some examples of the word "Allah" in the Arabic Bible.) This is because "Allah" is the only word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word "God" with a capital "G". Additionally, the word "Allah" cannot be made plural or given gender (i.e. masculine or feminine), which goes hand-in-hand with the Islamic concept of God. Because of this, and also because the Qur'an, which is the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language, some Muslims use the word "Allah" for "God", even when they are speaking other languages. This is not unique to the word "Allah", since many Muslims tend to use Arabic words when discussing Islamic issues, regardless of the language which they speak. This is because the universal teachings of Islam - even though they have been translated in every major language - have been preserved in the Arabic language...
More importantly, it should also be noted that the Arabic word "Allah" contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning and origin. This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta'Allaha (or alaha), which means "to be worshipped". Thus in Arabic, the word "Allah" means "The One who deserves all worship"....
There are some people out there, who are obviously not on the side of truth, that want to get people to believe that "Allah" is just some Arabian "God", and that Islam is completely "other" - meaning that it has no common roots with the other Abrahamic religions (i.e. Christianity and Judaism). To say that Muslims worship a different "God" because they say "Allah" is just as illogical as saying that French people worship another God because they use the word "Dieu", that Spanish-speaking people worship a different God because they say "Dios" or that the Hebrews worshipped a different God because they sometimes call Him "Yahweh".
The point about Dieu and Dios is actually quite cogent: "Allah" is to "God" as "Dieu" or "Dios" is to "God".
Frankly I don't understand how "Allah" could be a name like Zeus or Vishnu if Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews also use the word "Allah" to say "God". That would be like Roman Catholics worshipping Jupiter.
[MEMRI] Special Dispatch - Egypt/Arab-Israeli Conflict
October 3, 2002
No. 425
Egyptian Court Rules to Disband the Cairo Association for Peace
The Egyptian opposition weekly Al-Usbu' reported on an Egyptian administrative court's decision to disband a voluntary Egyptian organization that was founded to strengthen the peace process. The article's author, journalist Muhammad 'Abdallah, described the court's decision as "a new blow to the advocates of normalization." The following is a translation of the report.
"After four years of litigation in the administrative court, the report of the state attorneys on Case No. 1796, regarding the disbanding of the Cairo Association for Peace and the abolition of all decisions stemming from the decision [to establish it] has been published."
"The report, which is considered a mark of honor... for the Egyptian court, silenced the tongues that sought to sell out the reputation of the Egyptian legal [system] and to hint that pressure [was applied] on the administrative court so that it would not publish a decision in this suit, on the pretext that the political circumstances of the Arab homeland do not permit confrontation with Israel or its supporters."
"On September 17, 1998, a suit was filed in the administrative court by attorney and Ambassador Ibrahim Yusri, former director of the Foreign Ministry's Department of International Law and Agreements. The suit sought the disbanding of the Cairo Association for Peace, Registry No. 392, 1998, and the suspension of all its activity and the abolition of all decisions concerning it."
"This was because this association's activity is not subordinate to the clauses of the Law of Associations, and is even considered political party activity. Similarly, considerations of public interest require caution towards any activity that concerns Israel, out of fear for the well-being of the land and [for the sake of] state security. This matter makes the decision to [found] the association null and void..."
"The report states that conducting research, holding conferences and scientific conventions to disseminate the culture of peace in the full meaning of the term, and the exchange of visits with similar groups from Israel are not considered cultural, scientific, or religious services for which the association was established, in accordance with the sense set out by law."
"Similarly, none [of these activities] are included in the areas specified in the statutes of the Law of Associations and private institutions or those for which a ruling is issued by the Minister of Social Affairs..."
"The plaintiff attorney, Ibrahim Yusri, stresses that the ruling is not unusual in the Egyptian legal system… which does not surrender to pressure, and that the other party [the defendant] tried to hint that pressure was applied to prevent the publication of this report. He stressed that the political circumstances of the region, Israel's acts of aggression, the siege of the Palestinian president, and the slaughter of dozens of defenseless Egyptian [sic] people on the occupied land, all call for the non-recognition of anybody calling for normalization of relations or making contact with the Zionist enemy."
"Similarly, the so-called peace movement in Israel has made no concessions and has not called for such concessions as have been called for by the forces of submission in Egypt. Ambassador Ibrahim Yusri noted that public opinion polls in Israel show the absence of influence of these forces [for peace] in every decision made on the part of the State of Israel."
The Ball is in the Court of the Associations Opposed to Normalization
"Now that the committee of the state attorneys published its ruling [on] abolishing the Cairo Association for Peace, the ball is in the court of the associations opposed to normalization, who awaited a verdict of this kind so that they could focus public opinion in Egypt and in the Arab world on resistance to the associations of surrender, which apparently do not feel pain at the sight of the blood of Palestinians being shed by the oppressing occupation."
In popular usage, perhaps; etymologically, no. Perhaps your point ought to be that other deity names also may have begun as phrases that meant "the god," or "supreme god," or whatever.
"The word al-ilah (the god) is a different word."
That may be the case. The word is in use, and probably among Arabs. For what it's worth, a song by a popular group wose lead singers are Israelis of north African descent begins with the lyrics, "El norah alilah, el norah alilah," which Pike once translated (and my dictionary confirms) as "El, terrible god."
Interestingly, in Hebrew the word elil (aleph-lamed-lamed, as opposed to the aleph-lamed-lamed-hey of "alilah") means "idol."
Following your links
More importantly, it should also be noted that the Arabic word "Allah" contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning and origin. This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta'allaha (or alaha), which means "to be worshipped". Thus in Arabic, the word "Allah" means "The One who deserves all worship".
So much for no argument over etymology.
NOW
In Message # 576 you state:
This is because "Allah" is the only word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word "God" with a capital "G". Additionally, the word "Allah" cannot be made plural or given gender (i.e. masculine or feminine)
So you agree with me!
Unless, of course, you wish to state:
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that God is the the name the deity in English speaking countries, in analogy with Zeus or Yahwey or Vishnu.
To echo your:
Message # 555
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case.
I could go on and on -- but this is becoming ridiculous.
"So you agree with me!"
??? I don't follow you.
_____________________________
Yes. My position is unchanged: Allah is not the name of a deity in analogy with Zeus or Vishnu. Every source indicates that "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God"; and this is supported by the fact that Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians also use the word "Allah" to mean "God". If "Allah" was a personal name like "Zeus", why on earth would non-Muslims use that word?
??????????????????????????????
Is that really you!
If so, I am more than astonished.
And please try reading what I write in context.
Thanks.
I really do not know how I get into ridiculous arguments.
Well. Maybe I do. I should not try to correct obvious errors pseudoerasmus propagates.
The etymological derivation of "Allah" as a contraction of "al-ilah" is "popular" etymology and surely not historic. It would be rather strange that especially the "i" should have been disappeared due to neglect of the speakers, since the syllable "il" is the most important in "al-ilah": "il" or "el" is the semitic word for God since times immemorial.
Instead, the word "Allah", as a lot of other words, especially words of the religious sphere, was imported from the Syriac (Aramaic) language: "alaha" - with three long a-vowels -, is the Aramaic word for the (Christian) unique God. The last (long) "a" characterizes the status absolutus in the Aramaic language and was duly omitted by the Arabs like case endings in the Arabic vernacular, whereas the understanding of the first syllable of "alaha" as an article was a common misunderstanding for instance in "al-Iskandar" from Greek "Alexandros" etc. The doubling of the "l" is irrelevant, since the doubling sign is a very late invention of Arabic orthography, centuries after Muhammad.
Christoph Heger
"Some of the biggest misconceptions that many non-Muslims have about Islam have to do with the word "Allah". For various reasons, many people have come to believe that Muslims worship a different God than Christians and Jews. This is totally false, since "Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God" - and there is only One God....
First of all, it is important to note that "Allah" is the same word that Arabic-speaking Christians and Jews use for God. If you pick up an Arabic Bible, you will see the word "Allah" being used where "God" is used in English....
This is because "Allah" is the only word in the Arabic language equivalent to the English word "God" with a capital "G". Additionally, the word "Allah" cannot be made plural or given gender (i.e. masculine or feminine), which goes hand-in-hand with the Islamic concept of God. Because of this, and also because the Qur'an, which is the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language, some Muslims use the word "Allah" for "God", even when they are speaking other languages. This is not unique to the word "Allah", since many Muslims tend to use Arabic words when discussing Islamic issues, regardless of the language which they speak. This is because the universal teachings of Islam - even though they have been translated in every major language - have been preserved in the Arabic language...
In other words, "Allah" just means "God" and is not the personal name of a deity like Zeus or Vishnu.
Gee.
Now I get it.
God is not a deity.
How stupid of me.
I see you have changed your mind on etymology of Allah.
My dictionary (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary):
Deity
1 a) the rank or essential nature of god b) supreme being God
2 a god or goddess
3 one exalted or revered as supremely good or powerful
To me a deity is a deity. God is a deity. Allah is another name for God.
Other gods are also deities.
I am unsure what you trying to convey by 'personal name'.
I never said God is not a deity. You are hallucinating.
"I am unsure what you trying to convey by 'personal name".
A name cannot be translated, only transliterated. A word can be translated.
My point in a nutshell has been that in any translation of an Arabic text into English, the correct one for the Arabic noun "Allah" is "God", just as the correct translation for the French word Dieu into English is "God". Thus, God is to Allah as Dieu is to Allah.
God is to Allah as God is to Dieu.
If you fall out of a plane and land among hostile Arabs, ask their leader how many children he has and then say Allah yekhalihum.
Classes in Chomskyian linuistics were like that. Chasing after one's own tail, trying to define stuff, tripping on one's own definitions.
It all comes down to how forgiving and inclusive a non-Muslim is towards the Muslims, I believe. If he is forgiving (and believes in God himself), his tendency will be to say "the Muslims believe in God, but they call Him by a different name". If he isn't, his tendency will be to say "the Muslims don't believe in God. They believe in a fictional character called Allah".
It also comes down to a willingness on the part of the non-Muslim to imagine two dieties fighting it out, so to speak, which is what a lot of us do when we talk about the subject. I imagine that most religious monotheists would find that difficult. People who basically see God as a creation of man find that easier.
But like I said, it's all very Nestorianish. Some people would say you can't believe in God if you don't call Him by his right name and attribute the proper qualities to Him, and follow the proper book. Others would say you can.
I have to get T7 up and dressed for school. Ciao.
The question could be rephrased as:
When the Qur'an is translated into another language, should the word "Allah" be merely transliterated, or translated into the word for "God" in that language?
My answer:
Since Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians say "Allah" for "God", so the word "Allah" in the Qur'an and other Islamic contexts should be rendered "God" (or "Dieu" or "Gott" or "Dios") in translation.
In other news - The NYT interviews Col. Noam Tibon, governor of Nablus, but for some reason is prevented from mentioning his name.
Fear of an international tribunal, perhaps.
"The last (long) "a" characterizes the status absolutus in the Aramaic language and was duly omitted by the Arabs like case endings in the Arabic vernacular..."
This makes a bit more sense to me because I don't see, intuitively, how you get from El to a derivation lah, unless 1) there is simply no connection between the Syriac El and the Arabic la, and 2) Heger is wrong and "Allah" is not derived from the Aramaic import alalah at all, but is indeed an indigenous Arab term for "the God." (In which case his deconstruction of alilah makes no sense.)
But if "the understanding of the first syllable of "alaha" as an article was a common misunderstanding for instance in "al-Iskandar" from Greek "Alexandros" etc.," then it appears Allah, derived as it is from El, is indeed the proper name of God--or was, before the Arabs confused El with "the".
(Anyway, what sort of person is this Christoph Heger, who refers to "the (Christian) unique God"? Sounds a bit pre-mid-20th-century-theologian.)
If al-ilat or al-lat meant "the goddess," in such a way as to indicate that the goddess was unique, then surely the term would not have applied to more than one deity. Likewise allah, which some argue was originally a masculine Semitic moon deity, but one of many gods. (Also, allatu apparently was the Sumerian word for an attribute of the deity Ereshkigal, and meant "goddess". Perhaps -lah and/or -lat were Sumerian suffixes indicating gender? If -lat indicated the feminine and a -u siuffic was the possessive plural, as it is in Hebrew, the "allatu" would have meant "our goddess.")
If the name Allah derives from Arabs' polytheistic period, then I don't see why supposing a derivation of al- from El is not preferable to the notion that al in the word "Allah" means "the".
It is, "Hayah, haya." The prefix ha-means "the." And I'm guessing -yah comes from the same root as the -yeh in "yihyeh," which means "it will be." So I guess the Yah- in "Yehouah" indicates the fundamental is-ness of the Hebrew deity. What the reminaing vav-hey is for I can't imagine, unless the deity was originally female.
Which I guess, given all those old fertility figures found in Canaan, isn't out of the question.
Is Bundy a diety?
Was the original form alilbundy?
Help me out here.
Interestingly, I stumbled on the Hebrew for Elohim's enigmatic statement about his identity, "I am that I am."
It is, "Hayah, hayah." The prefix ha- means "the." And I'm guessing -yah comes from the same root as the -yeh in "yihyeh," which means "it will be." So I suppose that, assuming they are interchangeble, the Yah-/Yeh-in "Yehouah" indicates the fundamental is-ness of the Hebrew deity. What the reminaing vav-hey is for I can't imagine, unless the deity was originally female.
Which I guess, given all those old fertility figures found in Canaan, isn't out of the question.
I gave you guys a Yahweh tutorial once.
The root heh - vav (waw) - heh refers to being, or isness. YHWH looks like a future form of that root, if pronounced yehweh. If pronounced yahweh it doesn't look that much like a future form of a verb - more like a proper noun if anything. If pronounced yehovah then it does look a bit feminine.
The Hebrew for God's statement is not at all what you wrote. It is ehyeh asher ehyeh - 'I shall be what I shall be', or, in Popeye's words, 'I yam what I yam'.
A bush burning in the middle of the desert (go away, Technicolor Charlton Heston imagery!) and some guy telling Moses, ehyeh asher ehyeh.
A stele is dedicated to Qos-allah, 'Qos is Allah' or 'Qos the god', by Qosmilk (melech - king) is found at Petra (Glueck 516).
If the form Qos-allah meant "Qos the god," then why is it not paralleled in Qos's other apellation, Qosmilk (Qosmelekh)? Where's the definite article before "king"? Shouldn't we see Qosalmilk or Qoshamilk?
Qos is identifiable with Kaush (Qaush) the God of the older Edomites. The stele is horned and a seal from Edomite Tawilan near Petra [the famous ancient city in Jordan] identified with Kaush displays a star and crescent (Browning 28), both consistent with a moon deity. It is conceivable the latter could have resulted from trade with Harran (Bartlett 194). There is continuing debate about the nature of Qos (qaus - bow) who has been identified both with a hunting bow (hunting god) and a rainbow (weather god) although the crescent above is also a bow. There is no reference to Qos in the Old Testament, but Seir is one of the domains of Yahweh, suggesting a close relationship. His attributes in inscriptions include knowing, striking down, giving and light (Bartlett203). Attempts have been made to also explain the existence of this scarab in the light of trade with Harran for which evidence has been found in cuneiform tablets (Bartlett 194).
Don't Muslims at Ramadan go round a big, squarish black stone known as the Qaba'a or something? There's some business having to do with stones in the OT, too--characters made oaths on piles of stone, and parts of the Temple were to be constructed exclusively from chunks of rock that had not been hewn.
The Nabateans had two principal gods in their pantheon, and a whole range of djinns, personal gods and spirits similar to angels. These deities were Dhu Shara, or Duchares and al-Uzza. Duchares means Lord of Shera (Seir), a local mountain and thunder god who was worshipped at a rock high place as a block of stone frequently squared, just as Hermes was the four-square god. Suidas in the tenth century AD described it as a 'cubic' black stone of dimension 4x2x1 (Browning 44). All the deities male and female were represented as stones or god-blocks.
Yes. But I have now dropped that argument in light of Heger's persuasive derivation. So I now rely exclusively on my other argument: that the Bible in Arabic has "Allah" where there is "God" in English; and that Arabophone Jews and Christians say "Allah" where one would mean "God" in English. Heger notwithstanding, as Transient says, it is usage, not etymology, which gives a word its definition.
Because in Arabic the "al" in "allah" is treated grammatically like a definite article. For example, the preposition li- (to, for) is proclitic (attached directly to the front of the word) and causes the noun to be declined in the genetive case. Thus,
bint = girl
li-binti = to/for a girl
But when the noun has got a definite article, then the alif (aleph) in the definite article is dropped:
li + al + bint = lil-binti = to/for the girl
allah = God
li + allah = lil-lahi = to/for God
This last phrase, lil-lahi, occurs in the second line of the Qur'an. Another rule in Arabic is that when the definite nominative ending -u or the definite genitive ending -i is followed by the definite article al, the alif is dropped again. Thus:
al-mamlakat = the kingdom
al-arabiyyat = Arabia
al-mamlakatu-l-arabiyyatu-ssaudiyah = the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
khalq = mercy
allahi = of God, God's
al khalqu llahi = God's creation
ism = name
bi + ism = b'ismi = in the name
bi + ism + allah = b'ismi-llah = in the name of God
Now, in view of what Heger said, all this occurs not because "allah" means "the god" (al-'ilah) but because the Arabs misinterpreted the Syriac "alaha" as "al-ah(a)", in line with what they have done with other foreign words beginning in AL or L, such as Alexander or Lawrence (al-'orens).
In the Wake of the Failed Seige - Ha'aretz
Yes, but the Quran was written long after the Allah was in use. How can one be sure Al-lah, meaning El-the-something-or-other) did not become Al-lah, "the God," simply because the Arabic article for "the" corresponded with the Semitic name for the mountain god and in usage became confused? From that confusion would have descended all ordinary usage consonant with "al" meaning "the," as well as the conviction that "al" does and has always meant "the".
It would be interesting to know if there is some old Semitic word "lah" or "lat" which could have served as a modifier for El. El the shining, El the bountiful, El of the people, something along those lines.
I'm not sure it's moot. The point is that "allah" may have been a name derived from El at one time, and thus a personal name of God. But by Mohammed's time, it meant something else: "the God". So these different definitions of the word are not mutually exclusive, as you and Transient have implied in your arguments.
Second, even if Allah can be translated as "the God", it is how the word is used that determines if it is a name. This is true of many words. You can say, "My father works on the railroad" and the word father is just a noun. If you say, "Father, you work on the railroad," the word father is being used as a name. Same word, two different uses.
To go a step further, go to any book of baby names. Most of our names mean something in one language or another. Then name Alexander is Greek for helper and defender of mankind.
So this argument is all well and good, but as is so often the case around here, it misses the point.
I see.
the two "l"s in "Allah" are written in Arabic as one "l". In Arabic, if the letter is pronounced twice after each others such as the "m" in "Muhammad", then it is written only once, and a special punctuation called "al-shaddah" is applied on the top of the letter to indicate that it is a double pronunciation. So the point is, the Arabic "Allah" is written with one "l" and not two "l"s. Perhaps the old Aramaic thousands of years ago was like that too, and maybe that's why "Allah" is written with one "l" in Aramaic.
If this is so, it indicates still further that Allah was originally El-something, not "the god."
You are misinterpreting what your site says.
Below is how "Allah" is written in a pointed text: 
"Pointed" means that all the markers for vowels & consonants (the equivalent to the "dots" of Hebrew) are present in the text in order to guide in correct pronunciation.
Pointed text usually appears only in the Qur'an and in lexicographic references. In newspapers and other ordinary text, "Allah" would simply appear as: 
The bare-bones spelling for "Allah" in unpointed Arabic is ALLH.
In the pointed text, the little mark which looks like a W is the shadda, which indicates that the consonant below it is doubled in pronunciation. The little line above the shadda is the vowel marker for short A. The other other line at the end is the vowel marker for short U.
Thus, according to the way it's pointed, the full rendering of the Arabic "Allah", showing both the letters and the markers, is ALLLAH.
Heger's point was that the shadda was a late addition and can be safely disregarded. Thus, we arrive at ALLAH.
But in Arabic, the only time a letter appears twice in succession is when the definite article AL is followed by a word beginning with L, such as al-laylat. Otherwise it is never doubled. Thus, Muhammad is always written MHMD.
I mentioned the Qur'an only because the particular grammatical phenomenon I cited, appears in its very second line. The grammatical phenomenon itself is much older than the Qur'an or Islam.
"How can one be sure Al-lah, meaning El-the-something-or-other) did not become Al-lah, "the God," simply because the Arabic article for "the" corresponded with the Semitic name for the mountain god and in usage became confused?"
If "allah" is directly derived from "el" ( instead of first having been borrowed from "alaha" which itself was derived from "el" ), then the /h/ is explicable as a transference of the same phoneme evident in the variant "eloh-", "elohim".
We now have three theories of the etymology of "Allah":
The first is untenable for the compelling reasons given by Heger. The third is less likely -- I opine -- than the second because Arabic would have had extensive contact with Aramaic for a longer period than Hebrew.
alexandros => alexein + andros => defend + human
Please take note that I am the bearer of this name in both its western and eastern variants.
Al-Muhaymin: The Protector, The Vigilant, The Controller
Al-'Aziz: The Almighty, The Powerful
Al-Jabbar: The Master of the Fade-Away Jump Shot
That's three L's.
These are reduced to two by Heger's observation that the shadda is a late embellishment.
According to the Manicheans, Jesus, who was subject, like all of us, to the interplay of heavenly Good and earthly Evil, alternately shat and abstained from shitting. Approaching his death, he attained the final degree of perfection, renouncing meat, sex, and, presumably, defecation.
And then he died. There must be a lesson there.
For "alaha", please read my Message # 585. (pseudoerasmus has already forgotten it.)
In Message # 547 you stated your argument:
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case. The noun lah simply means "god" and is cognate to the Hebrew el. Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god").
Your argument is that Allah cannot be the name of the deity in Islam because it is not a proper name at all.
In Message # 549 I disagreed, quoting evidence to show that Allah is the accepted Islam common name for God.
In Message # 555 you argued that:
. I merely cited a simple grammatical fact: the Arabic definite article is al and the Arabic word for "god" is lah.
This was the "solid chair" on which your faulty argument stood with a noose around its neck.
In Message # 567 pseudoerasmus fabricates the truth to support his contention:
when an Arab says "Allah" he is well aware that "lah" means "god", as in "false gods" or "pagan gods".
In Message # 572 I cited a reference to show that Allah is the proper name of God:
Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (which is based on classical Arabic dictionaries), says under the word Allah, while citing many linguistical authorities:
"Allah... is a proper name applied to the Being Who exist........
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In my Message # 585 I give a quote indicating that Allah may stem from "alaha".
Amazingly, you, in Message # 588, agree!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thus you agree, that even from an etymological point of view, Allah is the proper name of God!!!!!!!!!!
You have knocked the chair out from under you argument stating Message # 547:
"Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name....."
killing it.
Yet you go on to proclaim you are right and introduce the 'personal' name of god.
Weirdly you end up arguing my point and claiming it was your point all along.
Surely, this is the strangest exchange I have ever had!!!
Uniquely, your logic confounds yourself. Truly, you are a formidable debater!
BTW
Your Message # 630 is a masterpiece.
I wonder how a Hindu would define a "personal name" of a deity?
May you could elucidate? Many thanks.
Goddamned Arabs, eternally adding superfluous L's and L-substitutes. (See below.) What will they want next, world domination?
It would certainly seem so, wouldn't it? Except that, in Hebrew at least, I think you might need an additional letter (vav) before the hey, for the /o/ in "Elohim". In other words, I don't think you could go from Ala(h) to Elohim directly by simply adding the pural suffix, even if you were a Semite with a native contempt for vowels.
But let me check, maybe Elohim is spelled without a vav...
...and indeed, it is. No vav. Just a superscript dot indicating the vowel sound /o/.
So, yes, the Aramaic alaha, which seems to make sense as a forerunner to Allah, is possibly also related to Elohim.
I guess if you're a speaker of Aramaic and you say "El-ha" (the God) fast enough, you can get to "alaha" pretty easily, since the initial vowel might have altered in speech from the short /e/to the long /a/, and an extra /a/ following the /l/ makes the /h/ easier to enunciate.
On the other hand, if you were a Syriac referring to a deity who was associated with El, but not El, then perhaps you would alter it and call it "Al." Alaha would mean "the god," but not "the God." If you then dropped the Aramaic definite article -ha, you'd have had ala(h).
If you're an Arab whose definite article is "al," and if you've forgotten all about El, you could come to believe you needed an extra L to make a word for god ("lah")that followed "al-". Thus, Allah.
Here's a novel take on YHWH. (The pronoun "he" in Hebrew is indeed "hu".):
The name "YHWH" came into use simply because the Torah was destroyed and re-written so many times. ... There were people who knew there was a God, a divine creative force or principal Creator, and these people were devoted to this belief. Unfortunately, they did not know who this Creator was, or how to call on Him. When they needed guidance, help, provision, etc., while praying, they were all calling on Him and saying, "Oh He! Who created the world..., "Oh He! Who created us..." "Oh He! Give us guidance..." "Oh He! Help us..." "Oh He! Protect us..." What is this "Oh He?" Now listen! "Ya Huwa! Who created the world..., "Ya Huwa! Who created us..." "Ya Huwa! Give us guidance..." "Ya Huwa! Help us..." "Ya Huwa! Protect us..." Now, take away the vowels and what do you get? "YHW" with the additional "H." Both in Hebrew and Arabic, this word means the same.
Pssssssst. Alaha. See Message # 585
Nah. Just keep going.....................
Message # 614
Read it a long time ago.
Great to read it again -- in its proper context.
"it should also be noted that the Arabic word "Allah" contains a deep religious message due to its root meaning and origin. This is because it stems from the Arabic verb ta'allaha (or alaha), which means "to be worshipped". Thus in Arabic, the word "Allah" means "The One who deserves all worship"."
Sorry, I'm no linguist but this strikes me as ridiculous. The likelihood that a noun such as "Allah" (God) would "stem from" a verb "ta'allaha" (to be worshipped) or especially the Arabic "to deify" (as in "huwa alaha"=he deifies) sounds back-assward to me.
The word "alaha" is ARAMAIC as well as Arabic. In Aramaic, it is a noun which means "the god." Your source provides NO plausible reason that "Allah" should derive from the Arabic alahah, which is only a single verb form of "to deify"--there being 19 others--and not the Aramaic noun meaning nearly exactly the same thing as "Allah."
Regarding those who insist that "Allah" is a name of God, I quote once again the Islamic scholarly authority from Saudi Arabia, earlier quoted in Message # 576:
...."Allah" is simply the Arabic word for "God"... because the Qur'an, which is the holy scripture of Muslims, was revealed in the Arabic language, some Muslims use the word "Allah" for "God", even when they are speaking other languages. This is not unique to the word "Allah", since many Muslims tend to use Arabic words when discussing Islamic issues, regardless of the language which they speak.
Transient continued:
Message # 639: " [PE] I merely cited a simple grammatical fact: the Arabic definite article is al and the Arabic word for "god" is lah. [Transient] This was the "solid chair" on which your faulty argument stood with a noose around its neck."
But what I said is true. You can look up "lah" or "ilah" in an Arabic-English dictionary and find the word defined as "god". And "al-" is the definite article in Arabic.
This is not a fabrication. It is the truth. One of the most important phrases in Islam, "bismi-llahi rahmani" contains the word "lah". The phrase means "in the name of God the Lord".
Message # 640: "Thus you agree, that even from an etymological point of view, Allah is the proper name of God!!!!!!!!!!"
Etymology is irrelvant to the present-day meaning of "Allah", which depends on usage. As I said to you early on, I was not making an etymological argument at all.
I am, however, having a very interesting and separate etymological discussion with Andonly.
I find it inconceivable that it is not related, so I can't understand why you say "possibly also related".
The final A in the "alaha" is the definite article, according to Heger.
Absolutely. And modern day Jews learned from Jesus's mistake. The Shulchan Aruch explicitly prescribes multiple daily defecations.
The Talmud, moreover, requires that a man service his wife on a regular basis. Since the Torah (of which the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch are interpretations) was given to us in order that we might live well, long, and happily on earth, and not because we needed to be saved from damnation, it is obvious that Jesus's crucifixion was a natural consequence of his silly, hubristic attempt to promulgate a faddish alteration of sound advice.
But personally, I think Jesus was strung up because he hoarded his sperm.
Sorry.
BTW
pseudoerasmus found that information, state it was from a reliable source and quoted it in his Message # 577.
At the time, he did not appear to realize that it conflicted with his etymology of Allah. And this why I repeated the quote in my Message # 585
I thought this was the information that changed his position on the etymology of Allah which he stated in Message # 588
AND
It was this change in position that completely self-demolished his claim in Message # 547 that:
"Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god")."
which he and I were debating.
So I do find your comments a curious footnote.
(1) "allah" = al + lah
(2) "allah" is also used by Arabic-speaking Jews and Christians.
I recognise that I was wrong about #1 and I recognised because of Heger's linguistic argument, which I myself supplied to this thread. Allah is not the same as al 'ilah".
But my overall argument is not "self-demolished" as #2 remains indisputable and robust.
I almost posted a detailed explanation for my timorousness over this but was bumped offline a half second before hitting the post button.
Will explain at length later tonight or tomorrow, but the core of my question revolves around the plural form -im, which would not ordinarily in Hebrew follow a noun with the ending -ah.
I have a reason for believing it might, however, in this case; but the reason is not strictly etymological.
Later...
Message # 649
Does this mean you do not read your own quotations?
BECAUSE
You mentioned the connection between "allah" and "alaha" first in your Message # 577
We were not debating 2.
You keep dragging in red herrings -- like 'personal' god that are only reside somewhere in the handful of neurons in head.
Message # 648
This is not a fabrication. It is the truth.
But it is out of the context of what you trying to demonstrate.
This is a wonderful demonstration of the adage:
The truth -- cleverly told -- is the biggest lie.
Have you followed any of the details of this conversation at all? The "alaha" refereneced by Heger -- a Syriac word -- is not the same as the "alaha" mentioned in #577.
Message # 658: "We were not debating 2. You keep dragging in red herrings."
We were debating whether "allah" is a name, as opposed to a word. Both #1 and #2 were arguments in that debate. The fact that you fixated on #1 and ignored #2 because #2 was inarguable and irrefutable, is hardly my problem.
....like 'personal' god that are only reside somewhere in the handful of neurons in [your] head."
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Message # 660: "But it is out of the context of what you trying to demonstrate."
I said Arabs are aware that "lah" means "god". You called that a fabication. It was not a fabrication. Then you say it was out of the context of what I was arguing. Given that many constructions in Arabic involving the supreme deity of Islam use the term "lah", my words were eminently in context.
For the Aramaic "alaha" to get to the Hebrew "Elohim" seems to require two things. First is an alteration of vowels. Second is appendage of the plural suffix -im.
Offhand, I don't see how -im, and not -oht, should form the plural of a version of "alaha", unless the -a on the end of alaha could be easily dropped (which I think it could, because it is the definite article in Aramaic, but not in Hebrew, whose definite article is the prefix ha-). But that would still leave a feminine form, "Alah."
I've read that some Muslims pronounce Allah, "Allawh" in certain circumstances, so that this "awh" sounds like the /o/ in the word "ought". (In fact, I have heard this myself in various recorded liturgical material and wondered whether it was done for some sort of spiritual emphasis.)
What if Aramaic speakers pronounced "alaha" the way Arabs pronounce "Allawh"? In that case, you might say, "ALAWHa," which begins to edge into "Eloha." In fact, one could argue it is Eloha. In any case, drop the suffix "the" and you then have Aloh-, which I'm pretty sure is no longer a feminine form. To make it plural in Hebrew, one would add -im.
The qustion is, why would Alaha (or ALAHa or ALaha) become Elawha/Eloha? I have no difficulty understanding a natural transition from al- to el- and back, between peoples. But the -ah to -awh/-oh I don't know about. Maybe it could simply happen in usage. But in that case, where are all the other -awh sounds in Hebrew? And are they not nonexistent in Arabic aside from the "Allawh" instance?
So it occurs to me, what if "alaha" became "eloha" as a part of a concious effort to masculinize a term referring to deities? What if the linguistic change followed a trend toward a preference for excusively male gods, which seems to have occurred in both early Judaism and, much later, Islam?
Just a wild speculation.
So, considering that final short /u/, would you not in fact come up with something that sounded like Allauh or Allawh (an Arabized Eloh)?
Message # 647
You claim Message # 630 leads to the final and definitive explanation of why "Allah" is not a name of God but is a word meaning "God"
CONSIDER
1
A word is usually thought of as a speech sound or series of speech sounds that sybolizes and communicates a meaning without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.
2
A name is usually thought of a word or phrase that constitutes a distinctive designation of a person or thing. Basically, it is a verbal identity tag.
THEN
By definition, Allah is not only a 'word' but also a 'name' used to designate a deity with specific properties (although those properties need not be invariant in time or from person to person).
Also, by definition, God is not only a 'word' but also a 'name' used to designate a deity with specific properties (although those properties need not be invariant in time or from person to person).
Some people, who are not Muslims, may have been brought up in a culture where they are taught that their 'God' and Allah are sufficiently close in properties that the two words are interchangeable.
Even so there are obvious differences between Allah and, say, the Christian God. For example, the latter has a son named Jesus.
THUS
pseuoeramus's conclusion:
"Allah" is not a name of God but is a word meaning "God"
is simply meaningless --for a word meaning "God" is just another way of designating another name of "God".
In a similar fashion, the fruit we designate as an apple has another name in a different language.
You're right. I donno, maybe it was a promo for the show then. The line was "be there, aloha". There was a kid in my class, Bob Unger, who always used to say that. Him and a friend of his.
Well, I would guess "alaha" and "eloh-" are probably just cognates sharing a common ancestor in Proto-Semitic.
First is an alteration of vowels.....The qustion is, why would Alaha (or ALAHa or ALaha) become Elawha/Eloha? I have no difficulty understanding a natural transition from al- to el- and back, between peoples. But the -ah to -awh/-oh I don't know about.
No big deal. Sound shifts happen all the time. Nothing says that a sound must change to another sound that is somehow "close" to it, as from al to el.
In historical phonology, no sound shift, no matter how radical, is improbable as long as it is evident in a regular pattern across many words. Thus, Latin nominal forms ending in -tio/-tion became -ción in Spanish, -zione (pron. -tsione), -tion in French (pron. -sion), -ção in Portuguese, etc.
The same principle could be illustrated with the word farangi, which is an Arabic corruption of the word "Frank". Meaning "European" or "westerner", the word was borrowed by all the languages of Islam from Turkish to Malay and some non-Muslim languages like Thai. It also supplied the clan name of the former Christian president of Lebanon Suleiman Franjieh, as well as the name of a nasty race of aliens on Star Trek.
Again, not a problem. Languages typically borrow a lexeme but not the rules of inflexion governing that class of lexeme. Thus, in Arabic, the word for 'student' is talib and its plural is tulub. But when non-Arabs borrowed this word, they just took talib and applied their own languages' rules of pluralisation. Thus, talib, taliban.
Message # 666: "So, considering that final short /u/, would you not in fact come up with something that sounded like Allauh or Allawh (an Arabized Eloh)?"
In Classical Arabic, citation-style stand-alone words are uninflected. Thus, al-bint (the girl). But as part of a phrase or a sentence, words are inflected. Thus, "bintun" (a girl), al-bintu (the girl). The -u is simply the nominative case ending for words preceded by a definite article. One always says "allahu akbar". You would only actually say "Allah" without an ending of some kind only if it stood alone unaccompanied by any other word.
I said earlier that a name is something which one does not translate. Mexican newspapers say el presidente Bush, not el presidente Zarza. If you have a child, rename him Moonbeam and send him to France. I assure you not even the Frenchman most chauvinistic about his language will insist on calling your child "Rayon de Lune".
But Arabophone Jews and Christians do the equivalent of that. Yemeni Jews don't say Elohim; they say Allah. Christian Arabs don't say Theos, which is the word used in the original of the New Testament; they say Allah. If Theos is a name, why don't they just say Theos instead of Allah? Hindus speaking English say Vishnu or Ram. Mexican newspapers say Bush and not Zarza.
So substituting the Greek New Testament "Theos" for the Arabic New Testament "Allah" is precisely like substituting "pomme" for "apple", i.e. a translation. And a name is not translated. Thus in the Arabic language, Allah is a word meaning "God", not a personal or proper noun.
You're right, I carelessly got sidetracked by a trash source.
I have read in somewhat better places that "ehyeh asher ehyeh" has a parallel in ancient Egypt: "nuk pu nuk," which translates to "I am the I am" or something to that effect, and is supposedly an attribute of Osiris. And there's this from the Egyptologist Jan Assmann:
"Reinhold [in 1788] traces the divine names of Jehovah and Isis to the same concept of an all-encompassing being. According to Exodus 3:14, 'Jehovah (translated in the King James as I AM THAT I AM) means 'I am the being one,' and an inscription at Sais passed down by Plutarch and Proclus proclaims Isis as 'all that was, is, and shall be.' The addition 'no mortal has raised my veil' was generally interpreted as a reference to the concept of 'natural mysteries' (secreta naturae), much aired at the time ... Moses, then, had translated into Hebrew the idea of God that he had attained in the last stage of his initiation. And the God of Moses was none other than the all-encompassing, all-creation, and all-preserving Being whose veil cannot be raised."
Yes, I know, that's just my point: if the imported word were alah or alaha, Hebrew speakers would have employed their own pluralization rules to produce "alahot," not "elohim". So it must first have been changed to sound like "Eloh."
"One always says "allahu akbar". You would only actually say "Allah" without an ending of some kind only if it stood alone unaccompanied by any other word."
OK, that takes care of my notion. I was supposing the indicated /u/might have fallen before and not after the final /h/ in Allah. (Allauh, not Allahu.)
Oh I see. You have been arguing that Hebrew borrowed from Aramaic. I have been misunderstanding you then. Sorry.
Hebrew almost certainly didn't get elohim from Aramaic alaha. As I said before, elohim and alaha are probably cognates, meaning that each results from an independent evolution of the same root found in a language ancestral to both Hebrew and Aramaic. English didn't derive the word "bread" from the German "Brot", or vice versa. They are cognates.
But if there was borrowing, it would almost have to be from Hebrew to Aramaic, since Hebrew was replaced by Aramaic as the speech of Jews and that would have introduced many Hebrew words into Aramaic.
At first I considered that alaha/elohim were cognates, but what then is the root source that contributes the second syllable? El was of course a Syriac deity worshipped probably before Hebrew existed. In considering the second syllable I reasoned "backward" (Aramaic to Hebrew) because I couldn't see why the Hebrew plural for El-gods would be Elohim instead of Eliym, and I knew the Aramaic "alaha" existed, therefore it seemed that it might be the source of the derivation.
But you're right, there's probably a much more parsimonious explanation that simply depends on knowing the source of the cognate, and it makes little sense to presume an Aramaic-to-Hebrew derivation.
I refer you to John bin Lennon formerly of El B'Aheetli of Al 'I-ver-Bul. I am not sure I understand it either, but it sure sounds deep.
Sto, you're a funny guy.
In other news, a person I greatly respect tells me if you can't defeat something, you sometimes just have to feed it until it sort of explodes. Do you agree with this?
Precisely. Together with Yussuf Khar-ibn-son and Ringullah al Sta' al-hallah they formed El B'Aheetli, also known, affectionally, as Al-Fab Fa'hur.
And all they wanted was to be like al-Wis Barasali. Yes?
In Arabic and other languages of Islam, Greece is Yunan (or Yunanistan in Turkish), which is simply a corruption of "Ionian", a reference to the Greeks who inhabited the eastern coast of the Aegean Sea. But can Yavan be the same thing? The word is first mentioned as the son of Yaphet in Genesis 10.
Since Yavan is spelt Yud, Vav, Nun, could it have something to do with Zion which is spelt Tsadi, Yud, Vav, Nun?
Ion, Tsion....?
Last week I read Myths and Facts: A Guide Book to the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which is published by the Arab-Israeli Co-operative Society (or something like that). It is not exactly balanced; but as some Amazon reviewers pointed out, it isn't proganda or hateful towards Palestinians, either. It contains plenty of information and, for me, not knowing much about the hisatorical background of the conflict, it was good historical background.
I am looking for other books on the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Middle East in general, and am considering Said's The Palestinian Question to read next -- I know, I know, many here have reservations about Said, but I am curious about this one (and promise to read it with a critical eye). I am also likely to read one of Bernard Lewis' books, but my usual bookstore didn't have much of his work in stock. As always, book suggestions are much appreciated.
Martin Van Creveld has written an excellent (and highly critical) history of the IDF (The Sword and the Olive Tree). Some parts of it make the reader wonder who was less competent, the Israelis or the Arabs. He is extremely trenchant on what the occupation and the Intifidas have done to the IDF as a fighting force.
Am I totally off course, Rustler?
It couldn't have been, because then I would have remembered it. Also, I wouldn't have recommended a book I haven't read, because that's not how I am, normally. And I know I haven't read that one, because I am sure I would have remembered it if I had. I think. But I forget. Anyway, thanks for recommending it (back?), I would love to read it, but I know I won't for the foreseeable future. Therefore, I would also appreciate any effort at summarising here and I am looking forward to comments from the resident Middle East cognoscenti here.
Message # 671
In other words, you are trying to win this argument through semantics, i.e., by muddying and obscuring the distinction between "name" and "word" (or between what English teachers call "proper noun" and "common noun"). According to your reasoning, the English word "God" is also a name of the supreme deity.
It is not According to (MY) reasoning, the English word "God" is also a name of the supreme deity .
"God" is simply the accepted designation or name in English of the one, only and supreme deity.
For example, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary gives:
God: the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness whom men worship as creator and ruler of the universe.
Thus when Christians pray to God such as in: Please God help me. Or, in breaking the second commandment when they exclaim: God damn it. They would be very surprised to learn that they were not using the name of the supreme deity.
Maybe you can explain exactly what they are doing?
UNFORTUNATELY
The best that can be said of your 'argument' is that you are confusing the customs of people for semantic meaning.
BTW STATING
By "name" you meant "proper noun" and by "word" you meant "common noun" simply illustrates that your nomenclature is as muddy and meaningless as your argument.
If the distinction is valid, then my argument is not "muddy and meaningless" at all. And it is obvious that by "name" I have always meant "proper noun" since in the very beginning, and thereafter, I said "Allah is not a name in analogy with Zeus and Vishnu".
I asked you elsewhere, but I haven't seen your answer if you gave one: Is anti-semitism strong in Turkey?
One could make an argument for a drastic reduction in the size of Israel's land forces, perhaps using reserves for defense of external borders only, while creating a paramilitary force that is trained and equipped to handle civil unrest and internal security. This force would also have SWAT and Commando units, as well as an air component. It would be under the operational control of the Ministry of Internal Security rather than Defense.
Message # 693
" I have always meant "proper noun" since in the very beginning,
Yet in your precise method of reasoning you failed to use it and instead used "name".
Cunning.
As I already stated your distinction is not valid. You are confusing custom with semantics.
AND
You did not answer my question posed Message # 692.
Anyway: enough is enough.
Have fun.
All the best, David
According to Sanford J Shaw in The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, the Turks have always had a special relationship with Jews, even before the founding of the secular Kemalist republic. Since the minorities recognised as a "problem" (separatist, irredentist, etc.) by the Ottomans were Christians, the Jews were seen as loyal allies against this threat. And indeed they were. Ottoman Jews, many of them beneficiaries of the asylum given them by the Sultans when they were expelled from Iberia, were certainly the most loyal non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman sultan.
Jews in the West were also highly pro-Ottoman. In Bernard Lewis's very interesting essay "Pro-Islamic Jews", he describes how the political rivals of Disraeli, including and especially Gladstone, interpreted his policy toward the Eastern Question (the slow demise of the Ottoman empire) as motivated by his Jewish background. Disraeli was indeed one of those "pro-Islamic Jews" who had a soft spot for the Ottoman empire. Bernard Lewis's student, Martin Kramer, edited a book called The Jewish Discovery of Islam, whose main thesis is that while European orientalism might have been hostile or condescending to Islam in some ways, the work of Jewish orientalists in Europe was profoundly sympathetic to Turks, Arabs and Islam. Thus, the book contends, the romantic image of "Jewish-Muslim harmony" in mediaeval Islam, particularly Islamic Spain, was created and exaggerated by European Jewish scholars as part of their political agenda to fight antisemitism in Western Europe.
Thanks for the recommendation. I will be getting to your other economic history recommendations soon (I hope).
stostoso,
Ha-hah. It must have been Andonly, then. I will attempt a comprehensive review when I am done.
But I suppose this is straying from the topic you asked about. Shaw has another book, unread by me, about the role of the Turkish republic in rescuing Jews from Europe during the second world war. Apparently there is a Turkish equivalent of Raoul Wallenberg.
All the same, I have the impression that there will be more antisemitism in the future in Turkey on account of the growth (compared to 20 years ago) of the Islamist movement. On the other hand, it would surley not be as virulent as you find in the Arab countries.
But the last 75 or so posts in this thread have reminded me why I do check this site out always always always. It's not addiction if the object brings gut-level hilarity, no?
thanks, that's very interesting. I find myself being more and more intrigued by the Jewish people and their turbulent history. I know it's probably one of the most heavily studied and written about subjects, but could anyone recommend a good sweeping introduction?
Please continue to goad our man for our common entertainment. Besides, the bloke needs it.
Start with Josephus.
I actually have a good friend who is a classical scholar and who translated the Josephus work into Danish a couple of years ago. But, it's a massive volume, and it's necessarily limited in time. I am looking for comprehensive but concise. One thing I would be curious to see is a map of Jewish migrations, with dates and indication of population size. Why and how and when did so many Jews end up in Russia and Poland, by the way?
There's an old book from the seventies (?) I've been meaning to get to, by Nasser's confidant (Michael Oren refers to him as Nasser's apologist) Mohammed Heikal. I think it's called either "The Road to Ramadan," or "The Road to Damascus".
I had put off reading it because, after the Oren, I was half afraid I'd find myself wading through a novel of Nasserite propaganda; and time is short. But I'm still sort of curious to read precisely what Egypt told itself and the west, just in case something Heikal asserts might persuasively contradict Oren's convincing account of Nasser's intentions, or what Egypt believed about Israeli intentions.
I haven't read the book. I have only read Bernard Lewis's review of Heikal's book, and Lewis agrees with Heikal's opinion on why the Islamists killed Sadat.
Other details remembered from the review:
(1) The review essay begins with the fascinating observation that one of the conspirators in the assassination plot, after he was arrested, declared "I have killed Pharoah" in front of the media.
(2) Lewis also observes that while the left-wing Egyptian intelligentsia was opposed to the peace treaty with Israel, the Egyptian masses were in favour. Which if true, means there's been a big change in attitude since the late 70s /early 80s.
(3) According to Lewis, Heikal constantly baits Sadat for being black. (His mother was Sudanese.)
"Why and how and when did so many Jews end up in Russia and Poland, by the way?"
Good question.
The short answer is that they were courted, at some time in the 13th-14th centuries, while they were being expelled from parts of the Med. At that point Poland and Russia were attractive destinations for Jewish refugees.
By the way, a recent genetic study of Pakistani populations has found no evidence for the folkloric claim that Pashtuns are descended, in part, from Jews.
What's your theory, bub?
As for Poland, many Jews who wound up there apparently came via Germany beginning in the mid-1300s,and successive migrations and expulsions established them in numbers by the start of the 16th century.
The Jews who had settled in Germany prior to that began migrating to the Rhine area from southern Europe (Italy, France) at least by the 9th century, and I think there was another sustantial migration to the region in the 11th, which, I've read, re-established religious customs that had assimilated away or been forgotten.
This timeline may prove somewhat useful. Sorry not to be able to recommend a comprehensive history.
I just read that quote in a recent New Yorker article about the history of Ayman Zawahiri.
Not that anyone was losing any sleep over it, but that's interesting. What were they using for genetic markers?
I read that article on Zawahiri -- which was very good, I thought. The other intriguing detail about the asassination mentioned in the article was the description of Sadat standing, stoically, in full salute, waiting for the inevitable gunfire and death.
And thanks for the great recommendation of Six Days of War. Sorry to have confused you with stostoso --not that that is a bad thing, of course.
I seriously think I need to dig up some foundation-laying reading.
Your hunch wrt yavan is spot-on. That is what I was taught - that it was originally yon.
“Y-Chromosomal DNA Variation in Pakistan”: Eighteen binary polymorphisms and 16 multiallelic, short-tandem-repeat (STR) loci from the nonrecombining portion of the human Y chromosome were typed in 718 male subjects belonging to 12 ethnic groups of Pakistan. These identified 11 stable haplogroups and 503 combination binary marker/STR haplotypes. Haplogroup frequencies were generally similar to those in neighboring geographical areas, and the Pakistani populations speaking a language isolate (the Burushos), a Dravidian language (the Brahui), or a Sino-Tibetan language (the Balti) resembled the Indo-European–speaking majority. Nevertheless, median-joining networks of haplotypes revealed considerable substructuring of Y variation within Pakistan, with many populations showing distinct clusters of haplotypes. These patterns can be accounted for by a common pool of Y lineages, with substantial isolation between populations and drift in the smaller ones. Few comparative genetic or historical data are available for most populations, but the results can be compared with oral traditions about origins. The Y data support the well-established origin of the Parsis in Iran, the suggested descent of the Hazaras from Genghis Khan’s army, and the origin of the Negroid Makrani in Africa, but do not support traditions of Tibetan, Syrian, Greek, or Jewish origins for other populations.
”Two populations, the Kashmiris and the Pathans, also lay claim to a possible Jewish origin. Jewish populations commonly have a moderate frequency of haplogroup 21 (e.g., 20%) and a high frequency of haplogroup 9 (e.g., 36%; (Hammer et al. 2000). The frequencies of both of these haplogroups are low in the Kashmiris and Pathans, and haplogroup 28 is present at 13% in the Pathans, so no support for a Jewish origin is found, and the admixture estimate was 0% (table 3), although, again, this conclusion is limited both by the small sample size available from Kashmir and by the assumption that the modern samples are representative of ancient populations.”
This is hardly definitive, so it would be interesting to see what Tudor Parfitt, one of those who did the Lemba study, comes up with. He’s announced he’s going to do a study of the Pashtuns.
Weirdly, while looking for something I chanced upon this:
Allah
ALLAH is the proper name of God among Muslims, corresponding in usage to Jehovah (Jahweh) among the Hebrews. Thus it is not to be regarded as a common noun meaning 'Gods' (or 'god'), and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity. Similarly, no plural can be formed from it, and though the liberal Muslim may admit that Christians or Jews call upon Allah, he could never speak of the Allah of the Christians or the Allah of the Jews. Among Christians, too, a similar usage holds. In the current Arabic Bible versions, 'God' (myhla) is uniformly rendered Allah, but when 'the Lord God' (myhla hA'hy.) occurs, it is rendered ar-rabbu-l-ilahu, 'the Lord, the Ilah,' where 'the Ilah' is an uncontracted form, retaining its force of a common noun with the article, from which Allah has been shortened through usage. The Muslim, too, who usually derives and explains Ilah as meaning 'worshipped,' uses it and its plural Aliha in the broadest way, of any god, explaining that such is possible because worshippers believe that their god has a claim to worship, and 'names follow beliefs; not what the thing is in itself' (Lisan, xvii. 358). But more ordinarily, in referring to the gods of the heathen, a Muslim speaks simply of their images or idols, asnam, authan.
[Although Duncan B. Macdonald died in 1943, his book ' Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and ConstitutionalTheory' is considered sufficiently important to be available at http://www.muhammadanism.org/.]
Guess he never got around to considering your 'logic'.
Is Allah angry?
pseudoerasmus,
Weirdly, while looking for something I chanced upon this:
Allah
ALLAH is the proper name of God among Muslims, corresponding in usage to Jehovah (Jahweh) among the Hebrews. Thus it is not to be regarded as a common noun meaning 'Gods' (or 'god'), and the Muslim must use another word or form if he wishes to indicate any other than his own peculiar deity. Similarly, no plural can be formed from it, and though the liberal Muslim may admit that Christians or Jews call upon Allah, he could never speak of the Allah of the Christians or the Allah of the Jews. Among Christians, too, a similar usage holds. In the current Arabic Bible versions, 'God' (myhla) is uniformly rendered Allah, but when 'the Lord God' (myhla hA'hy.) occurs, it is rendered ar-rabbu-l-ilahu, 'the Lord, the Ilah,' where 'the Ilah' is an uncontracted form, retaining its force of a common noun with the article, from which Allah has been shortened through usage. The Muslim, too, who usually derives and explains Ilah as meaning 'worshipped,' uses it and its plural Aliha in the broadest way, of any god, explaining that such is possible because worshippers believe that their god has a claim to worship, and 'names follow beliefs; not what the thing is in itself' (Lisan, xvii. 358). But more ordinarily, in referring to the gods of the heathen, a Muslim speaks simply of their images or idols, asnam, authan.
[Although Duncan B. Macdonald died in 1943, his book ' Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence, and ConstitutionalTheory' is considered sufficiently important to be available at http://www.muhammadanism.org/.]
Guess he never got around to considering your 'logic'.
Once again, if this is so, why do Arabophone Jews and Christians say Allah? Why don't they something else? Your MacDonald is not logical.
Thus it is not to be regarded as a common noun meaning 'Gods' (or 'god')
Of course it's not a common noun meaning "Gods" (plural) or "god" (any old god). It is a common noun meaning "God", the English word for the supreme deity.
"In the current Arabic Bible versions, 'God' (myhla) is uniformly rendered Allah, but when 'the Lord God' (myhla hA'hy.) occurs, it is rendered ar-rabbu-l-ilahu, 'the Lord, the Ilah,' where 'the Ilah' is an uncontracted form..
The second line of the Qur'an: al-Hamdu-l-illahi rabbi-l-"aalamiin. In other words, when the Qur'an says "praise be to God" (al Hamdu-l-illahi), the word for God is rendered in the same way as the Arabic Bible renders "the Lord God".
ALLAH is the proper name of God among Muslims, corresponding in usage to Jehovah (Jahweh) among the Hebrews...."
Once again, if this is so, why do Arabophone Jews and Christians say Allah? Why don't they something else? Your MacDonald is not logical.
Thus it is not to be regarded as a common noun meaning 'Gods' (or 'god')
Of course it's not a common noun meaning "Gods" (plural) or "god" (any old god). It is a common noun meaning "God", the English word for the supreme deity.
"In the current Arabic Bible versions, 'God' (myhla) is uniformly rendered Allah, but when 'the Lord God' (myhla hA'hy.) occurs, it is rendered ar-rabbu-l-ilahu, 'the Lord, the Ilah,' where 'the Ilah' is an uncontracted form.
The second line of the Qur'an: al-Hamdu-l-illahi rabbi-l-"aalamiin. The same contraction is there.
You can always reread my Message # 667:
Some people, who are not Muslims, may have been brought up in a culture where they are taught that their 'God' and Allah are sufficiently close in properties that the two words are interchangeable.
Think about custom -- or, if you want, characteristic sociolinguistic properties.
And, I am sure, things will fall into place for you and you will come to realize that both Allah and God are proper nouns.
Goog luck!
Good luck!
bi + ism + allah
So the same form occurs again.
What you're saying is not logical at all. Since Arabophone Christians have no other word for "God" than "Allah", there is no second word for them which is interchangeable with "Allah". Therefore, your point is totally vitiated.
"And, I am sure, things will fall into place for you and you will come to realize that both Allah and God are proper nouns."
I am sure things will fall into place for you and you will come to realise that it doesn't make sense to be talking about two interchangeable when there is only one word.
When you refer to one word you are neglecting that Allah and God are words in different languages.
""Some people, who are not Muslims, may have been brought up in a culture where they are taught that their 'God' and Allah are sufficiently close in properties that the two words are interchangeable."
Well, as I have already told you, Arab Christians, who are not Muslims, have been brought up in a language where the only word for God is Allah.
Hopefully this helps.
The Christian God and the Jewish God have, at least some, different characteristics. For example, the Christian God has a son named Jesus.
Yet in English speaking 'Christian' countries, many Jews use the word God.
And, perhaps, after, say, 100 years of living in the US or UK it would not be unreasonble for those Moslems to also use the word 'God'.
But, just as the Jews are aware that there are significant differences between the Jewish God and the Christian God, so the Moslem would realize that their God is different.
This is the phenomenon which you seem to find so puzzling that you wish, in some way, to reflect it in the classification of the word for designating the name of the deity. However, culture and custom do not necessarily follow clear logical rules.
Put another way:
When a serious schism occurs with a religious society which of the two divergent sects gets the 'logical' right to keep the name of deity.
PE, you are rigidly ruling out the possibility that two seemingly contradictory facts may coexist. I know it's fun beating up on Transient, but the point he is trying to make, however spastically, is that the descriptive term "Allah," which in Arabic usage means "the one and only god," becomes in common parlance the proper name of God for Arabs, just as "God" becomes the proper name of God for Anglophones. No one sits around debating whether "God" is God's name precisely because most English speakers unconciously assume, and speak as though, it is--in English. I have a hard time believing Arabic speakers conceive of the noun/name "Allah" any differently: they speak and think about the word as though it is God's proper name in Arabic.
cont.
I should add that I even came across a website yesterday in which some imam was arguing that Arabic speakers themselves must be reminded that Allah is not a proper name. Moreover, that when proselytizing to English-speakers, better care should be taken to use the term "God" and not "Allah," so as not to alienate potential converts. (The writer's complaint was that Arabs in his experience disliked using a term other than Allah; he charged that this tendency came out of Arab nationalism, not Islam.)
Perhaps a better test of your contention would be to see whether Muslims who do not speak Arabic refer less often to "Allah" than to nomenclature in their own language meaning "The One God". But ultimately, unless you can get inside the heads of 4 billion Muslims and dissect just what they're thinking, I'm not sure you're ever going to be able to rule out that many of them do consider Allah a proper name.
"But, just as the Jews are aware that there are significant differences between the Jewish God and the Christian God, so the Moslem would realize that their God is different. And, perhaps, after, say, 100 years of living in the US or UK it would not be unreasonble for those Moslems to also use the word 'God'."
This is idiotic. You seem to believe that all Muslims always say "Allah" even when they are not speaking Arabic or other languages of Islam. Nothing could be farther from the truth. No one in my family in Pakistan, when speaking English, says "Allah". They say "God". In fact even when they're speaking Pashto, they say "khoda" (the native Persian-Pashto word for "God") just as often as they say "Allah". Phrases such as "insh'allah" (God willing) are common ways of expressing or intensfying the future tense, and vey often (though not always) these get translated into English when they're speaking English.
When North Africans are speaking French, they don't say "Allah". They say "Dieu". They never ever say "Allah" in French. I spent most of August in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, where French is widely spoken and that was the only language I could use; and I did not once hear the word "Allah" in a French sentence. But I did hear phrases like "grâce à Dieu" (thanks to God), "le bon Dieu" (the good God), "Dieu seul le sait" (only God knows), "s'il plaît à Dieu" ("God willing"), etc. These are all French translation of common Arabic-Muslim expressions.
I also used to have Moroccan neighbours in an apartment next to mine, with whom I communicated in French. They would frequently talk about religion, yet they never ever said "Allah". Only "Dieu".
"No one sits around debating whether "God" is God's name precisely because most English speakers unconciously assume, and speak as though, it is--in English. I have a hard time believing Arabic speakers conceive of the noun/name "Allah" any differently: they speak and think about the word as though it is God's proper name in Arabic....But ultimately, unless you can get inside the heads of 4 billion Muslims and dissect just what they're thinking, I'm not sure you're ever going to be able to rule out that many of them do consider Allah a proper name."
Andonly, as I have said about 500 times now, the issue of whether "Allah" is a name or a word is for me an issue of TRANSLATION. The semantics of what is a word and what is a name interests me less than whether "Allah" should be rendered "God" in translations from Arabic into English. As far as I'm concerned, the act of rendering "Allah" as "God" is an act of translation -- because proper names don't ordinarily get translated.
So this whole issue should be thought of as "should 'Allah' be rendered as 'God' in translation from Arabic into English"?
"...the descriptive term "Allah," which in Arabic usage means "the one and only god," becomes in common parlance the proper name of God for Arabs, just as "God" becomes the proper name of God for Anglophones."
Therefore, "God" is a translation of "Allah".
Fair enough. But surely the answer will depend on a given translator's intentions, which one would hope would surrender to the preponderance of usage.
But if not, who is a prescriptivist to say that the rendering of Allah as Allah in languages not Arabic is incorrect? It might be deliberate and politically motivated, or simply chauvinist, but that in itself would not make it wrong as translation, if you follow me.
You: "Therefore, "God" is a translation of "Allah"."
Sure, insofar as "God" has many names as well as a designation "The One God" in every language. The point is, translating Allah to God can't be wrong, but not translating it can't be wrong either.
Also, I'm not sure you can apply the rules distinguishing ordinary nouns from proper nouns when discussing the unitary deity (which in liturigical as opposed to common usage only retains its names in Hebrew) created from a pantheon of deities and bearing many names, some of which nevertheless probably simply meant "god" at some point.
Say for instance that YHVH does indeed derive from "I am that I am." Well, "I am that I am" is not a name, and its abbreviation isn't, either, it's more of an acronym--a signifier once removed from a name. I'm not sure that "Dieu," "God" or "Allah" today are any different. Nu, the One Deity has multiple signifiers and some ancient Hebrew proper names. The signifiers are certainly interchangeable; but despite the fact that the Jewish God, the Christian God, and the Muslim God are all supposed to be one being, none of the actual names of this God/Dieu/Allah/Etc. are used by anyone but Jews.
But if there is such a clear distinction to be made between the applicability of names and God-designations between the Abrahamic faiths, so that designations should be translated but names should not, how come Muslims do not call Allah "Yahweh", "Elohim", or "El-elyon"?
So the One Deity has multiple signifiers (God, Allah, etc.) and some ancient Hebrew proper names. The signifiers are certainly interchangeable; but despite the fact that the Jewish God, the Christian God, and the Muslim God are all supposed to be one being, none of the actual names of this God/Dieu/Allah/Etc. are not commonly used by anyone but Jews (and a few Christians).
Well, there you go. Are you going to argue with them about what can be translated and what can't? I might as well argue with a Lubavitcher over whether it's alright to utter "Yaoueh".
For some questions there can be no universal answer, even if you're "just" concerned with translation.
What language or languages do the Makrani speak?
The Makarena.
Iac, the rift between Pe and transient is exactly what led to the various splits in the Christian churches over the centuries. Some guy like Pe comes along and says something few people can even understand. Then some guy like transient decides to pick that bone. Then Ando joins in. You never really get an answer to the original question, but you do get three churches: the Church of Pseudoerasmus (pronounced the worst kind of heresy by Less-Than-Pious IV, adherents drawn and quartered, sliced into very thin sheets and fed through a Lexmark printer), the Transient Church (whose followers can still be found living in subway stations and sewers throughout the northeast) and the Church of Andolea (whose followers wear no underwear and have large breasts. Needless to say, this is the only movement which has thrived).
By the way, are you a fan of Daud al-Buw'i?
That's a fascinating assertion. Can't say I've heard it made elsewhere.
Daud al-Buwi was an excellent singer, and still occasionally does something halfway OK. The geezer is still a regular act at Rick's Place in Marrakesh (is that where Rick's was?). If you sit real close you can get an occasional glimpse of his varicose veined scrotum - looks like a third knee, with pubes dyed pink - from under his galabiya!
A translation should be more objective than that, by which I mean a translation should be descriptive of usage and should, as much as possible, match the usages between the one language and the other. That's why what Arabophone Jews and Christians say is important. If a Palestinian Catholic hears at mass the word "Allah", then the word "Allah" in Arabic is, according to usage, "non-denominational" and non-sectarian. It can be rendered as whatever word signifies the unique supreme deity in any language which has such a concept.
This passage seemed much less stupid the first time I read it than the second time. What am I supposed to find puzzling? I don't find anything puzzling. You are the one over-rationalising human behaviour. I am saying that persons with different conceptions of God nonetheless use the same word for "God" when they are speaking the same language. Your ruminations about the Christian God and the Jewish God having slightly different characteristics, are irrelevant. The rice that the Japanese are primarily familiar with -- glutinous short-grained white rice -- is not quite the same as the rice that westerners are primarily familiar with -- medium-grained non-glutinous. Yet "rice" is still translated as "okome" and vice-versa in Japanese-English dictionaries. The camel known to the Arabs --the dromedary -- is not quite the same as the camel known to Central Asians --the Bactrian. Yet the Arabic "gimel" is still translated as the Persian "shotor" (in Tajikistan anyway). There is a simple reason for this: in ordinary language no one gives a fuck about the minor details; what counts is the basic idea.
You're sodomising history. Jews began using foreign words for "God" when they adopted those foreign languages as their own native first language. That is, they began using foreign words for "God" because they adopted foreign languages, not because of some schismatic contest over what name for God would prevail. Likewise with the Christians of the Middle East: they started saying "Allah" when they became Arabic speakers. I doubt they had debates over whether the word for "Allah" was the correct for them. They just used the word when they became assimilated into the Arabic linguistic culture.
I guess I try to leap ahead too fast.
A
In your Message # 740 you suggested that I was "trying to pull a fast one" when I stated:
Some people, who are not Muslims, may have been brought up in a culture where they are taught that their 'God' and Allah are sufficiently close in properties that the two words are interchangeable.
Note that I put that I used 'God' not God. This was to indicate that it was their concept of their deity and not a different word.
B
For me, it would be useful to clarify what I think you mean.
In Message # 547, you stated that Allah was different from Zeus, Yahweh or Vishnu in that the latter are names of a deity but Allah was not because of its grammatical construction as 'the god'. And further because of its usage Jews and Christians. So Allah was not a "proper name".
After you were mistaken and that Allah was not simply "the god" you stated Message # 594 that Allah was not a 'name' because::
A name cannot be translated, only transliterated. A word can be translated.
My point in a nutshell has been that in any translation of an Arabic text into English, the correct one for the Arabic noun "Allah" is "God", just as the correct translation for the French word Dieu into English is "God". God is to Allah as God is to Dieu.
So Allah, God and Dieu are not names.
>>>>>>>>>>
In your Message # 630 you repeat your argument:
I mean by "personal name" a designator which is to be transliterated but not translated. I have been holding that "Allah" is a translateable word because it refers to the same thing that the word "God", "Dios", "Dieu", etc. refers to in the Jewish and Christian contexts. By contrast, Zeus and Vishnu have no equivalents outside Graeco-Roman and Hindu religions, respectively. Therefore, I reckon these two are personal names while "Allah" is a word.
So that Allah, God and Dieu, Dios are not names.
In Message # 647 you stated:
"Allah" is not a name of God but is a word meaning "God"
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In Message # 671 you clarify what you were trying to convey by name and word:
Message # 667: In other words, you are trying to win this argument through semantics, i.e., by muddying and obscuring the distinction between "name" and "word" (or between what English teachers call "proper noun" and "common noun"). According to your reasoning, the English word "God" is also a name of the supreme deity.
So 'name' is 'proper noun', and 'word' is 'common noun'. And God is a word or common noun.
In Message # 693 you state:
So you do or do not recognise a distinction between "proper noun" and "common noun"?
If the distinction is valid, then my argument is not "muddy and meaningless" at all. And it is obvious that by "name" I have always meant "proper noun" since in the very beginning, and thereafter, I said "Allah is not a name in analogy with Zeus and Vishnu".
Stressing that "name" is "proper noun".
In my post Message # 735 I state:
And, I am sure, things will fall into place for you and you will come to realize that both Allah and God are proper nouns.
To which you respond Message # 738:
I am sure things will fall into place for you and you will come to realise that it doesn't make sense to be talking about two interchangeable when there is only one word.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
C
IN SUMMARY
Your argument is that God is not a proper noun.
Therefore, if God is a proper noun, then your argument fails.
But God is a proper noun (See Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania ).
So your argument fails.
AND
Allah, being in the same catagory, must also be a proper noun.
BTW
Unfortunately, you misconstrued the intent of my posts Message # 741 and Message # 742. They were intended to explore the logic you were employing -- not to be a commentary on concrete examples.
If this exchange continues, the issues in those posts may be raised again.
I suspect that what motivates transient to exhibit his flawed mental acrobatics in public is a refusal to acknowledge that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same supernatural entity.
Message # 768
1
What does it all mean?
pseudoerasmus is claiming -- by a long and involved argument --that Zeus, Yahweh and Vishnu are proper nouns; while God, Allah, Dieu and Dios are common nouns.
This is NOT correct --all the words are proper nouns.
2
I suspect that what motivates transient ............ is a refusal to acknowledge that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same supernatural entity.
Is this supposed to be a joke?
If you answer no, please elaborate on how you came to arrive at this suspicion.
Thanks, in advance, for the courtesy of a response.
2. Do you agree that Jews, Christians and Muslims worship the same supernatural entity?
Message # 770
1
Maybe you should read
Department of Linguistics, University of Pennsylvania )
and, perhaps, you will have a second thought.
2
Since I have absolutely no idea whether or not supernatural entities exist and even less an idea what their characteristics could possibly be, to me this question is completely meaningless.
Maybe you could enlighten me?
From Transient's link to the U. Penn Linguistics website (NPR here stands for "proper noun"):
"In adjective-noun pairs, like ALMIGHTY GOD, the adjective is not considered part of the name, as long as the head noun is, by itself, a proper noun (or part of a noun-noun compound). ...GOD, CHURCH etc. are NPR when alone..."
Transient's thinking may be fractured unto inscrutability, but I'm nearly certain you have jumped to an unfair assessment of his motives.
Shades of Lawrence!
The authors say this explicitly: "Our primary goal has been to create an annotation system that facilitates automatic searches, not to give a correct linguistic analysis of each sentence".
I repeat: Transient1a lacks the least discrimination in his linking and searching. He will find something, without examining what it is, what its provenance is, or even what it actually says. Does this Transient even own books? Or does he just google?
Aramaic-Greek Bible is translated as "Allah" in the Arabic Bible, then the word is being used and treated, grammatically speaking, like a common noun. Don't consider the religious aura surrounding the word "God". Consider the descriptive linguistics of the translation.
Message # 777
Consider the descriptive linguistics of the translation.
proper nouns are not usually translated
Vast numbers are. Names of countries, cities, planets, stars, etc.
You are not thinking!
BTW
My 'Handbook of Current English' (1983) lists God as a proper noun -- but it is nice to be give people a source they check.
I collect books. The house is full of them -- besides boxes full of them in storage. Last week I gave away 9 boxes of books.
Message # 755
Thanks for the good laugh!
I think it's more of a demonstration of how Greek philosophical schools evolved in an atmosphere of sophistry, argumentative keenness and an abundance of spare time.
By contrast, descriptive linguistics restricts itself to describing what ain't means, how it's used, when it's used and other characteristics associated with the phenomenon. Descriptive linguistics is silent on whether ain't is correct or incorrect. In fact, linguists dismiss the very idea of "incorrect" grammar.
It is true that some toponyms (names of cities, countries, rivers, oceans, planets, etc.) are translated from one language to another, yet are considered proper nouns by style manuals. But style manuals distinguish common nouns from proper nouns in order to prescribe the rule that the latter must be capitalised while the former must not be. That rule is of course irrelevant in those many languages like Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Hindi that have no such thing as capitalisation.
In descriptive linguistics, a "proper noun" is any word in one language referring to any single, particular member of a class of objects which define a nominal ("RustlerPike" refers to a single, particular member of a class of objects known as "person" or "human being" or "Israeli"; which word is not, or cannot be, conveyed by an equivalent in another language; and which word is therefore either transliterated with as accurate a representation of the sounds of the original as possible, or simply transferred unmodified in the original form.
This is exactly the same with the names of persons. Legendary persons' names often get translated: Columbus is Colon in Spanish, the Mona Lisa is La Giaconde in French, Julius Caesar is Giulio Cesare in Italian, Alexander the Great is Al-Iskandar in Arabic. But these names have a long pedigree and the persons represented by the names were linguistically assimilated into those languages long ago. That NEVER happens with non-legendary names or persons. "Rustler Pike" is "Rustler Pike" in any language, no matter how legendary he has become in our hearts and minds.
Yes, but the point of Transient's link should be to point out that in common usage endorsed as a matter of course by linguists, God is a proper noun. He then brings up the Handbook of Current English, which, however prescriptivist it may be, is also an indicator of standard usage, and lists God as a proper noun.
Perhaps "Allah" (maybe I should leave it uncapitalized from now on) is never a proper noun, but "God" often is.
Anglophone hegemony strikes again.
So it's more a case of the school of Pseudus vs. the teachings of Andulus and the followers of Transientus?
Mine says I'll die Thursday, July 22nd, 2038.
Which is hardly of any relevance.
At the very beginning, I said "Allah is not a proper noun in the way Zeus or Vishnu is", which is correct, given that "allah" is translateable while "Zeus" and "Vishnu" are not.
...given that "allah" is translateable while "Zeus" and "Vishnu" are not."
How did the Romans speak of Zeus and the other Greek Gods in Latin?
In English, when speaking of the Roman deities, we refer to Zeus as Jupiter, Hermes as Mercury, Hera as Juno, etc.
Is this distinction maintained in Latin when speaking of the Greek gods?
Or are those Greek names tranliterated into Latin as you earlier argued?
1
I think your attempt to reclassify nouns was misguided.
CONSIDER
Everyone on the planet is dies from an extremely virulent form of AIDS except for the majority of several Mormon communities living in Utah who happened to have specific genetic mutation which confers immunity to the disease.
Now, by your definition, God is miraculously transformed from a common noun to a proper noun.
Yet, for the Mormons, nothing about the word God has changed.
2
The classification of proper nouns is not ’logical’.
For example, the days of the week are proper nouns; but the seasons are not -- probably because the days of the week of day are named after the god who ’owned’ the day.
3
Much more interesting is the topic of Proper Names and Naming .
Note the concept of Empty Proper Nouns:
One example given is Santa Claus -- the minor deity that rewards good children, who believe in him, with presents. Sadly as the children grow older, their belief fades and he becomes an empty proper noun.
For me, the same unfortunate transformation happened to God.
Etymology of the Word "God"
Anglo-Saxon God; German Gott; akin to Persian khoda; Hindu khooda).
God can variously be defined as:
* the proper name of the one Supreme and Infinite Personal Being, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, to whom man owes obedience and worship;
* the common or generic name of the several supposed beings to whom, in polytheistic religions, Divine attributes are ascribed and Divine worship rendered;
* the name sometimes applied to an idol as the image or dwelling-place of a god.
The root-meaning of the name (from Gothic root gheu; Sanskrit hub or emu, "to invoke or to sacrifice to") is either "the one invoked" or "the one sacrificed to." From different Indo-Germanic roots (div, "to shine" or "give light"; thes in thessasthai "to implore") come the Indo-Iranian deva, Sanskrit dyaus (gen. divas), Latin deus, Greek theos, Irish and Gaelic dia, all of which are generic names; also Greek Zeus (gen. Dios, Latin Jupiter (jovpater), Old Teutonic Tiu or Tiw (surviving in Tuesday), Latin Janus, Diana, and other proper names of pagan deities. The common name most widely used in Semitic occurs as 'el in Hebrew, 'ilu in Babylonian, 'ilah in Arabic, etc.; and though scholars are not agreed on the point, the root-meaning most probably is "the strong or mighty one."
Allah as a proper name:
Allah
The name of God in Arabic. It is a compound word from the article, 'al, and ilah, divinity, and signifies "the god" par excellence. This form of the divine name is in itself a sure proof that ilah was at one time an appellative, common to all the local and tribal gods. Gradually, with the addition of the article, it was restricted to one of them who took precedence of the others; finally, with the triumph of monotheism, He was recognized as the only true God. In one form or another this Hebrew root occurs in all Semitic languages as a designation of the Divinity; but whether it was originally a proper name, pointing to a primitive monotheism, with subsequent deviation into polytheism and further rehabilitation, or was from the beginning an appellative which became a proper name only when the Semites had reached monotheism is a much debated question. It is certain, however, that before the time of Mohammed, owing to their contact with Jews and Christians, the Arabs were generally monotheists. The notion of Allah in Arabic theology is substantially the same as that of God among the Jews, and also among the Christians, with the exception of the Trinity, which is positively excluded in the Koran, cxii: "Say God, is one God, the eternal God, he begetteth not, neither is he begotten and there is not any one like unto him." His attributes denied by the heterodox Motazilites, are ninety-nine in number. Each one of them is represented by a bead in the Moslem chaplet, while on the one hundredth and larger bead, the name of Allah itself is pronounced........ Let it be noted that although Allah is an Arabic term, it is used by all Moslems, whatever be their language, as the name of God.
You know about the Jewish habit of avoiding writing or pronouncing the names Yahweh or Adonai, except in prayer. I think "Adonai" simply means "the Lord", but the rabbinical tradition holds that Jews are to avoid even getting near the edge of breaking the Law. Presumably, as soon as "Adonai" became popularly perceived as a proper name for God, it was made off-limits.
The need to have some designator for the deity resulted in "Adoshem," which I think translates to "the name of the Lord," and "Hashem," which means "the name". These apellations are indisputably not proper names for God; in fact, they are conciously devised not to be.
I don't know if any such workaround exists in Arabic. As a translation, "Allah" would seem to stand in, more or less, for the unpronounceable "Adonai". But in English, observant Jews, in addition to avoiding the names of God mentioned in scripture, never use the word "God" in casual conversation, and in non-liturgical writing always alter the spelling of it thus: G-d.
Therefore, for observant Jews, it is clear that the English "God" is sufficiently near to a proper name that it can't be spoken or written in full.
I have no idea whether Arabic-speaking Jews abbreviate or decline to pronounce "Allah"; the custom might be primarily Askenazic anyway. Then again, for Arabic-speaking Jews perhaps "Allah" simply is never considered a proper name of God. I also don't know whether French-speaking Jews say or write out "Dieu."
It could be that "Allah" is not a proper name of God for anyone except Islamist zealots, whereas "God" is a proper name to all observant Jews and quite a lot of Christians.
Let it be noted that although Allah is an Arabic term, it is used by all Moslems, whatever be their language, as the name of God.
PE's personal account of his family's usage of other terms belies that.
It is certain, however, that before the time of Mohammed, owing to their contact with Jews and Christians, the Arabs were generally monotheists.
Not according to what I've read. Whoever wrote this apparently has a wishful stake in Arabs having been monotheists for as long as everyone else.
If you went to the URL's, you would see that my last two posts were from the Catholic Encyclopedia.
As you may be aware, I do NOT endorse their viewpoint.
A case of ecumenism run amok, then.
I think this is probably because George W. made a speech in which he urged both sides to opt for a peaceful settlement. So we are doing just that: creating a new, peaceful settlement. See?
I know, not funny. Sorry: it's late and I'm tired. The old landlord is giving me hell over stuff that needs fixing, and I still have to move the A/C out. Everyone agrees that moving is one of life's most depressing tasks.
I'd have hated to be a nomad, I think. But maybe it's different when everyone gets uprooted together.
Languages without capitalisation may have other standards for distinguishing proper nouns from common nouns, but the only standard that can be applied across all languages for the distinction between common and proper nouns that is objectively manifest in usage, is translateability of that word. If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
[The Latin name of Zeus was Iouis; Iupiter is a corruption of "iouis pater", Jove the Father.]
In early Roman writings, such as those of Ennius, Greek gods are regarded as separate and distinct from the Roman gods, and Greek gods' names are transliterated. This is because the gods of the Roman pantheon were, originally, indigenous Italian deities which had evolved independently from the deities in Greece. But in later Roman writings, the Roman deities are simply identified with the Greek gods, and all the attributes of the Greek gods are simply assigned to the old Italian gods which were plausible counterparts of . This was a deliberate political attempt to confer prestige and legitimacy on the activities of the Roman state through the cachet of a classical "superior" civilisation. But not all Greek gods were identified with Roman gods. There was no Italian god which had attributes comparable with those of Apollo, so "Apollo" was simply transferred to Latin from Greek.
But still Romans still must have known that Zeus was not exactly the same thing as Iovis. In Suetonius's Life of Caligula, Caligula declares himself Zeus and rejects Iouis. This was picked up in Robert Graves's novelisation of Suetonius as well as on the BBC television series.
All the same, if people insist that Iovis is a translation of Zeus, I could have just said "Allah is a translateable word, unlike Vishnu or Huitzilopochtli".
I did not "reclassify" anything. I simply gave the definition of the term "proper noun" according to descriptive linguistics.
"Everyone on the planet is dies from an extremely virulent form of AIDS except for the majority of several Mormon communities living in Utah who happened to have specific genetic mutation which confers immunity to the disease. Now, by your definition, God is miraculously transformed from a common noun to a proper noun. Yet, for the Mormons, nothing about the word God has changed."
I have not the slightest clue about what you're talking about.
"The classification of proper nouns is not ’logical’."
Irrelevant. You appear to be talking about what is subjectively perceived by people to be a proper noun or a common noun. I'm talking about an objectively visible distinction in the ways people use certain nouns.
"For example, the days of the week are proper nouns; but the seasons are not -- probably because the days of the week of day are named after the god who ’owned’ the day."
Days of the week and the names of the months are "proper nouns" (i.e., they are capitalised) only in English, not in any other language I'm aware of except German, where every noun is capitalised. In French, Spanish, Russian or Greek, days of the week and the names of the months are not capitalised.
Message # 804
Your rule:
If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
So both Allah and God are common nouns.
How about the names of stars, planets, rivers, countries, cities, etc.?
I already gave the example:
Everyone on the planet is dies from an extremely virulent form of AIDS except for the majority of several Mormon communities living in Utah who happened to have specific genetic mutation which confers immunity to the disease.
Now, by your definition, God is miraculously transformed from a common noun to a proper noun.
Yet, for the Mormons, nothing about the word God has changed.
And the significance of this just washes over you.
I am curious, why do think no else has ever put forward your method of classification?
Could it possibly be because it is meaningless?
All the same, if people insist that Iovis is a translation of Zeus, I could have just said "Allah is a translateable word, unlike Vishnu or Huitzilopochtli".
I ran into Huitzilopochtli on the street the other day. He's thinner and grayer, like something bad has happened to him.
I was gonna go "hey Huitz, huitzhappenin, man?" but thought better of it.
We both just pretended we didn't see each other. 
From Arutz 7.
BTW
Names for the Planet Venus in Other Languages (Starting with the Mayan name)
Or why the word Venus cannot be a proper noun by your method of classifying nouns.
Transient1a will have to explain to me the meaning of his opaque Mormon example.
If "Venus" is translateable, then it's translateable.
All I was doing was demonstrating that
Your rule:
Message # 804
If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
is meaningless twaddle.
As I said, my primary concern is translation, not categories of grammar.
The concept that words can be translated from one language to another is neither new or novel.
Throughout this whole exchange your logic has been hopelessly muddled.
Now you claim you were not really interested in producing your rule at all.
I guess you will say any nonsensical thing to protect your easily bruised ego.
Where Israel, as opposed to Jewish history in general, is concerned, you might find interesting "The Zionist Resort to Force" by Esther Shapira. It chronicles the ideological trends and policies of the Zionist movement, vis-a-vis Arab Palestinians, and describes in some detail how hardliners emerged in response to Arab violence and the waffling responses of the British. They ultimately prevailed for a while over the predominant cautious Zionists who believed appealing to the Brits by demonstrating restraint was the key to survival.
Surah 25, known as "an-furqaan," is ordinarily understood to mean, "Blessed be He who sent down the [Qur'an] on His servant that he might be/become a warner for the worlds." But according to Heger, it originally was rendered, "Blessed be He who sent down the redemption on His servant that he might be/become a sacrifice for the worlds."
He's rather persuasive.
I say "meta-" because of a separate refutation it comments and elaborates on, but which is too hysterical to be taken seriously.
That depiction of Hairy and Saddam is really the most succinct possible summary of the way I see these two guys, and pretty much always have. I'm convinced Hairyass has a crush on Soddom, both personally and politically.
You know he's a fruitcake, right?
Enough with the theology, please.
I'm starting to miss jexster.
Is that why he can bear to stay away from his lovely wife for such periods of time?
OTOH, is that why he permits the persecution of Palestinians for being gay?
He's a self-hating fairy?
Hairy Fairy?
Sorry, RP. You can't have just a 'little' jexster. It's all or none.
I knew Egyptian gaysters were persecuted. I didn't know about the Pal ones.
And yes, I assume that's why he never married until real late, was never seen with women, then finally married an ugly witch and hardly ever sees her. I remember hearing these stories (intelligence? rumors?) from other IDF reporters about him getting boinked by his bodyguards in his hotel room, and the sounds of his screaming being heard throughout the corridor, back in the 80s. It always seem to fit the image he projected.
But you have a better gaydar than me, you should be able to tell us if you see any blips from the fucker.
Ando: fruit, OK. It does matter because it affects his political behavior wrt Sadie, imo. No doubt who's on top in that couple.
I never said it was new or novel.
"Now you claim you were not really interested in producing your rule at all."
What, exactly, are you talking about?
"Throughout this whole exchange your logic has been hopelessly muddled."
What I've said is eminently and coldly logical, and my pointed was stated at the very beginning in Message # 547: "I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case at all."
Despite all the arguments, the single decisive point of mine remains unblemished: unlike Vishnu or Quetzelcoatl or Thor -- names which have no equivalents outside their own cultural-linguistic contexts -- the Arabic word Allah is translateable and translated from Arabic into other other languages.
But Transient1a either cannot understand that the crux of the issue is translateability because he is intensely stupid; or does understand it but, smarting from many a bashing I've given him in the past six years, must pretend to be incomprehending and keep arguing red herrings about the names of planets in order to be a vindictive gadfly.
Transient does not even understand that the statement, 'Allah is a proper noun', cannot possibly have the same meaning in the Arabic context -- which is the issue -- as in the English context, because Arabic has no concept of capitalisation, which defines the proper noun in English.
What books do you recommend on the sharia? (this was asked in the Religion/Philosophy thread.)
'Cause Bahíans never could convert to shia
They won't dump the bossa nova
Nor for Allah nor Jehova
They would much prefer a spate of gonorrhea.
(Ho-hum).
smarting from many a bashing I've given him in the past six years
A braggart with false memory syndrome. Curious.
in the Arabic context -- which is the issue -- as in the English context, because Arabic has no concept of capitalisation, which defines the proper noun in English.
What! The discussion centered on was English -- until you just tried to switch the topic. But that's one of the problems you just keep changing the topic.
After many maneuvers you summed up your final position in the form of a new rule, PE's rule Message # 804:
If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
By this reasoning you claimed that God, Allah, Dieu, and Dios were all common nouns.
Using by this reasoning the name of the second planet from the sun, Venus must be a common noun since it has other
different names in other languages.
Now you state Message # 26:
Despite all the arguments, the single decisive point of mine remains unblemished: unlike Vishnu or Quetzelcoatl or Thor -- names which have no equivalents outside their own cultural-linguistic contexts -- the Arabic word Allah is translateable and translated from Arabic into other other languages.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So what.
The statement can be equally true if reworded:
Despite all the arguments, the single decisive point of mine remains unblemished: unlike Vishnu or Quetzelcoatl or Thor -- names which have no equivalents outside their own cultural-linguistic contexts -- the English word God is translateable and translated from English into other other languages.
Or
Despite all the arguments, the single decisive point of mine remains unblemished: unlike Vishnu or Quetzelcoatl or Thor -- names which have no equivalents outside their own cultural-linguistic contexts -- the English word Venus is translateable and translated from English into other other languages.
Making Venus, along with Allah and God common nouns.
Which, of course, must be the case by PE's Rule.
Well, either your Rule is nonsense or it is a new discovery.
Do you really feel PE's Rule has any merit?
Last chance to be a mensch.
I really must develop sufficient patience to proof read.
Tuesday October 8, 2002 12:00 AM
Here is a list of Israeli attacks on Palestinians that caused extensive civilian casualties.
- May 18, 2001: An Israeli F-16 warplane attacks a Nablus jail, killing 11 people, mostly policemen, and wounding 30 people. The target of the strike was the prison's only inmate, Hamas militant Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. He escaped with light injuries.
- March 4, 2002: Israeli tank shells hit a pickup truck in Ramallah, killing the wife of an Islamic militant and her three children. A second car is hit by shrapnel, killing two children. The target was the owner of the truck, Hamas leader Hussein Abu Kweik. He was not in the vehicle.
- July 23, 2002: An F-16 warplane drops a one-ton bomb on an apartment house in Gaza City, killing Saleh Shehadeh, head of the Hamas military wing, and his bodyguard. Thirteen bystanders, including nine children, are also killed.
- Sept. 26, 2002: Two Hamas militants are killed in a helicopter missile attack in Gaza aimed at Hamas bombing mastermind Mohammed Deif. At least 15 children are among 35 people wounded, and Deif was also wounded.
- Oct. 7, 2002: Fourteen people are killed in an army raid on Khan Younis, a town in the central Gaza Strip. Eleven died when a missile slammed into a large crowd. Palestinian officials said all the dead were civilians, while the Israeli army most were armed men killed in battle.
What an idiot. The statement of mine that you disputed was: "I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case". In what way then is the Arabic language not the issue and in what way is the English language the issue?
Message # 833: "Despite all the arguments, the single decisive point of mine remains unblemished: unlike Vishnu or Quetzelcoatl or Thor -- names which have no equivalents outside their own cultural-linguistic contexts -- the English word Venus is translateable and translated from English into other other languages'.
Yes! Thank you.
"Making Venus, along with Allah and God common nouns. Which, of course, must be the case by PE's Rule. Well, either your Rule is nonsense or it is a new discovery. Do you really feel PE's Rule has any merit?"
Firstly, once again, it's not my rule. Secondly, the non-translateability criterion is the only definition of "proper noun" that is applicable to all languages. Thirdly, you seem far more interested in the superficial issues of semantics and grammatical classification than in the actual substance of the "Allah" question that I introduced, viz., whether it should or must be translated as "God" in an English-language context. Thirdly,
UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 7 —(Reuters)--The United Nations warned on Monday that a deadly Israeli missile attack on a crowd of Palestinians in Gaza could lead to an escalation of the Middle East conflict.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was ''particularly concerned by reports that a missile from an Israeli helicopter gunship was fired into a crowd of civilians in reckless disregard of the obligation under international law to protect the civilian population,'' said a statement read by chief U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard.
''Such actions have no legal or moral justification,'' Annan's spokesman said, calling on both Israelis and Palestinians to ''halt all violent and provocative acts.''
The missile attack was part of a raid on the Gaza Strip town of Khan Younis that killed 14 Palestinians and wounded another 80. Israel said the missile was launched as covering fire after its troops came under attack. It said it regretted any civilian deaths in what it called a raid to root out ''terrorists.''
But Palestinian U.N. Observer Nasser al-Kidwa, in a letter to Ambassador Martin Belinga Eboutou of Cameroon, the Security Council president for October, called the raid a ''war crime,'' part of ''a pattern of behavior by Israeli occupying forces.''
Al-Kidwa appealed to the 15-nation Security Council to take measures to protect the Palestinian people, such as dispatching international observers, a plan Israel strongly opposes.
''Actions like those carried out this morning do not promote Israeli security. Rather, they could lead to a further escalation while increasing the sense of vulnerability and insecurity among both Palestinians and Israelis,'' the U.N. spokesman said.
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip, Oct. 7 — The Islamic militant group Hamas threatened new attacks Monday after Israel fired a missile into a crowded Gaza street and killed 11 Palestinians. The United States said it was ''deeply troubled'' by the raid in which three other Palestinians died and 110 were wounded.
Israeli said its troops were searching for Hamas militants when they raided Khan Younis with 40 tanks backed by helicopters shortly after midnight Monday. Most of the dead fell victim to a missile fired into a crowd. The Palestinians said they were civilians. Israel said most were fighters killed in battle.
''Everyone should know that as our people were not safe in Khan Younis, so Israelis will not be safe in Tel Aviv,'' said Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader. ''We will strike everywhere.''
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher couched U.S. criticism of the operation with a restatement of American support for Israel's right to self-defense.
''We're deeply troubled by the reports of Israeli actions in Gaza over the weekend,'' he said, while adding: ''We've always respected Israel's right to defend itself, including going after armed groups and armed men in some of these areas.''
Javier Solana, the European Union's visiting foreign policy chief, said he was shocked by the number of casualties. ''I think that it is even more dramatic because of the efforts that the Palestinian people were making in order to get out of the way of violence in recent weeks,'' he said.
Israel's deputy defense minister, Weizman Shiri, regretted the loss of civilian life. ''But what can we do?'' he said. ''It's war.''
(continued)
The Israeli military said Khan Younis is a stronghold of the Islamic militant group Hamas, which has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians in suicide bombings. It said during the raid, troops arrested a wanted man carrying a homemade explosive device.
But there was no indication of a specific target, as in previous strikes against wanted militants that also claimed civilian casualties.
As the raid began, the military said soldiers exchanged fire with armed Palestinians, killing two. Doctors said a 45-year-old woman also died. The missile was fired in a densely populated neighborhood as the Israelis were pulling out.
Brig. Gen. Yisrael Ziv, the army commander in the area, said troops met heavy resistance from Palestinian gunmen and many armed men gathered in the streets as the Israelis withdrew.
''They fired a lot and threw grenades. There was a battle there,'' he said. ''The helicopter aimed at this armed group and hit them.''
Palestinian witnesses gave a different account.
Wissam Abdeen, who was hit by shrapnel in the arm, said as troops withdrew, residents emerged from homes to inspect the damage, and there were no gunmen in the crowd. Another witness, Walid Sabah, whose 17-year-old son Abdullah was killed by the missile, said there were armed men in the street but they were not shooting.
Ziv said the battle was filmed from a pilotless plane; the army has not responded to an Associated Press request to see the footage. Ziv said none of the dead Palestinians were on Israel's wanted list.
Most of the dead and wounded — including children as young as 9 — were taken to the city's Nasser Hospital. There, as more than 500 people gathered outside near the morgue, shots from Israeli machine guns and assault rifles hit the courtyard.
Ziv said the shooting by Israeli forces was prompted by mortar fire from a nearby position; at the hospital, two explosions were heard before shooting began.
People ran for cover behind trees and walls. A 27-year-old man was killed and three were wounded, including a 14-year-old boy hit in the neck. One bullet narrowly missed an AP reporter, who was hit in the shoe by a small bullet fragment.
The dead, wrapped in Palestinian flags, were taken from the hospital on stretchers, carried by gunmen firing in the air and shouting ''revenge, revenge.''
Israel withdrew from the devastated Ramallah compound under U.S. and United Nations pressure last week, and there have since been signs of a fledgling Palestinian campaign to move to a strategy of nonviolent resistance to Israel's occupation.
''Every time we witness efforts to revive the peace process ... like those being exerted now by Solana, the Israeli government moves to conduct such war crimes ... because the end game of the Israeli government is to resume full occupation'' of the West Bank and Gaza, said Palestinian Cabinet Minister Saeb Erekat.
Raanan Gissin, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, said Palestinian militants were to blame for the many deaths. ''We try to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, but we can't say that because there are civilians there, we will not take action against the terrorists,'' Gissin said.
— A 42-year-old Palestinian man was shot by Israeli soldiers between two roadblocks near the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses said. The man died in a hospital. The Israeli military had no comment.
— Palestinian gunmen disguised as police at a fake checkpoint kidnapped and killed the chief of Palestinian riot police, Col. Rajeh Abu Lehiya. Palestinian officials blamed Hamas. In the aftermath, four Hamas supporters were killed in clashes with Palestinian police in Gaza City and the nearby Nusseirat refugee camp.
— A Palestinian convicted as an accomplice in the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi a year ago was sentenced to life in prison by an Israeli court. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction, took responsibility for the killing.
— Three Israeli Arabs have been arrested on suspicion of planning bomb attacks, the government said. A statement said the three were recruited in March by Hamas master bomb-maker Mohammed Deif, who was wounded in an Israeli strike on Sept. 26.
Your original statement Message # 547:
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case. The noun lah simply means "god" and is cognate to the Hebrew el. Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god").
Your argument was grammatical. After abandoning this approach, you chose to differentiate between “name” and “word’ -- which you subsequently claimed were “proper noun” and “common noun”, respectively.
Then you claimed that God, Dieu, Dios and Allah must be common nouns by the because Message # 804:
If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
Since Venus is obvious in this category, then it must also be a common.
But, in English, these words are proper nouns and so your argument fails.
Or do still feel that:
If a word is translateable from language A to language B, as opposed to merely transliterateable, then it is a common noun in both languages.
is valid?
And, if you did not originate this rule, where can it be found?
"Then you claimed that God, Dieu, Dios and Allah must be common nouns..."
Yes, by the translateability/non-translateability criterion, these are all common nouns.
You are still more interested in the classifications of nouns than in the substantive issue of whether the words "God", "Dieu", "Dios" and "Allah" are equivalent terms in different languages.
"Since Venus is obvious in this category [of translateable nominals], then it must also be a common noun."
I have no problem with such a designation.
"But, in English, these words are proper nouns and so your argument fails."
No, "Venus" is a proper noun only in prescriptive grammar, because English teachers wish you to capitalise the name of a planet.
But you are still obsessed with a side issue. The substantive question is and has always been, should the Arab "Allah" be rendered "God" in English?
"And, if you did not originate this rule, where can it be found?"
It's not so much as a rule as an observation. I read about it in the essay "Internal and External Evidence in the Identification and Semantic Categorisation of Proper Names", part of the book The Translation Studies Reader, ed. Lawrence Venuti and Mona Baker.
I apologize if you feel that I misquoted you with malice.
No, "Venus" is a proper noun only in prescriptive grammar, because English teachers wish you to capitalise the name of a planet.
The point is that if there was only language in the world you would claim that "Venus" is a proper noun.
But if someone suddenly discovered a previously unknown group of people speaking another language and with another name for Venus then you would claim that Venus had become a common noun.
This makes little sense.
ANYWAY
The translateability criterion implicitly requires at least two languages to be present, so the distinction between "proper noun" and "common noun" be would be meaningless.
I have spoken.
I understand how the criterion works; however, I think that it leads to a pointless differentiation.
BTW
RustlerPike,
Don't you realize that many Jews will automatically lose their proper name status if this criterion is applied.
All it is is an informative report, but the information contained within has changed the way I see the Middle East. Rather, I see it much more clearly now.
Thinking out loud: if Saddam is thinking of the most creative way to use the Pals for attacking Israel, what would that way be? Can chemical weapons be lobbed by mortar from Gaza, for instance?
Wombat, you're an expert on things military.
It is with great respect and humility that I say to you: last chance, before I transient your butt over to religion!
I have spoken.
Chemical/biological weapons lobbed by mortar from Gaza and the West Bank.
Btw, latest shabak reports are that, predictably, Hamas has started creating bomb workshops in Israeli Arab villages, seeing as the West Bank bomb centers are in trouble and The Wall is becoming a reality.
In theory, yes they can. They can also be fitted to Katyushas, and whatever missiles the Palestinians allegedly possess in Gaza.
Sounds like we'll have a fun November, and even more fun on December.
Will Israel retake southern Lebanon once the attacks start in earnest?
To answer Ronski's question, the article suggests that Israeli action in southern Lebanon is an almost certain eventuality in the event of war in the area. The bigger question it seems, is how to respond to Syria. Hopefully the secon part will address these issues in greater detail.
I can hear it also (am using Windows Media Player).
Druckman discusses parashat hashavua - the weekly bible passage read in the synagogues - which relates to Noah.
He talks about the flood, which is referrred to somewhere in the scriptures as
Turns out the sages have treated this question. They say that the reason is that while Abraham and Moses pleaded with God not to punish their generation, Noah just took care of his own ass after being informed by God of the impending flood. So while he was definitely a tzadik - a saintly, uprighteous man - he was not a father or leader figure, not a man of the stature of Abraham (known in Judaism as Avraham avinu - Abraham our father) or Moses (known as Moshe rabenu - Moses our rabbi).
He quotes from some other passage from some other sage, of the hasidic movement, who defines a hasid as one who cares for his own generation. There is a term, says Druckman - 'a fur hasid'. What is a fur hasid? Say it is a very cold night, explains Druckman. A true hasid will light a fire to make the room warm for everyone. A fur hasid will wear a fur coat and take care of his own butt.
The conclusion of the near 30 minute sermon relates to the present day. Our generation is a very problematic one, says Druckman - morally, spiritually, politically. The temptation is to 'build an ark' and take care of ourselves only (the righteous, the believers). But we must not do that. We must pray for our generation, be involved, try to change it. The way to chase away the darkness, he concludes, is by making as much light as possible.
I like it.
I don't know what will happen in Lebanon but I can say this: the Lebanese front has always been a less important front than Israel's other fronts. No matter what they do to us from Lebanon, it is never truly life-threatening. They bleed us and terrorize us but Lebanon is weak and has never been a threat in and of itself. The Hizbullah is an annoyance - an extremely annoying annoyance - but not more. It is in Israel's interest not to open a full scale front there, and it is also in Syria's interest, so I doubt there will be a full scale war there, ever.
So keep that in mind. They'll definitely try to distract us from the north - and I have no idea how the IDF will respond - but no matter what happens, the real front will never be in Lebanon.
I agree that reoccupation -- or, at least, not an extended reoccupation -- is not a viable Israeli option, from what I have read. Some sort of action does seem inevitable to me, however; given that the Hizbullah does seem to have the run of southern Lebanon these days (at least, according to the New Yorker article I referenced above) and appears determined to take advantage of any conflict in the Middle East by further punishing Israel. The article mentions that Israel is in a tough position -- as usual -- in that, re-occupation will breed terrorism and anti-Israel hate; but any failure to respond to Hizbullah terrorism will be regarded as weakness that further breeds terrorism. The really tricky issue, it seems, is dealing with the states most actively funding, sheltering and arming the Hizbullah -- namely: Iran and Syria (it seems that it is unrealistic to talk of a Lebanese government, given that said government is apparently a mere puppet of Syria). Anyways, that is my armchair analysis, at this point -- fwiw and it may be worth zero.
And thanks for paraphrasing the sermon, which brings a question (likely naive): How does the influence of the rabbinate in Israel compare to the influence of the calliphate in Islamist countries, like Syria say? Do certain rabbis have more influence? How much is government policy influenced by rabbinic opinion?
1) Syria is not an Islamist country.
2) The Syrians have horrifically massacred Islamists within, look up the destruction at Hama.
3) There is no caliphate.
4) The religious right in Israel has considerably more influence on the politics and daily life of Israel than it does in any number of Arab countries including Iraq, Syria and Egypt.
I am still interested in the influence of rabbinical opinion in Israel -- on politics and popular opinion -- especially as it compares to that of caliphs in other, predominantly, Muslim parts of the Middle East.
Certain caliphs have a great amount of influence in certain parts of the Middle Eastern Muslim world, no?
There are mullahs, and there are other religious leaders with various spheres of influence. The most powerful one in the Arab world is probably the head of Al Azhar in Cairo, one Sheikh Tantawi. This bloke is a progressive person in most matters, for instance he was far more amenable to the UN's Population Summit's findings a decade ago than was the Pope or the American fundies.
But yes, Tabouli, you are also misusing the word Islamist and in this you are very far from alone.
Caliph means approximately 'successor', i.e, successor to the prophet Muhammed. There can only be one successor at any given time. Currently there is none. The last one to claim the title was the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.
Don't know why the term caliph came to mind. I meant mullahs.
Again, just curious here about the different role of religious leaders in the Middle East.
I didn't mean to use the term Islamist loosely. (And, won't chime in on the rather fractious, Mote, debate re: the appropriate use of the term).
One of the things most Americans are unaware of is the extent that civil society in Israel is influenced by the local religious right. There are all kinds of symptoms of this powerful influence, one egregious example is marriage, but you can find many more including the ongoing war over who exactly is a Jew and who is not.
I would not say what exists in Syria is religious freedom. Syria is ruled by the Alawites -- a small religious sect that fuses Christian and Islamic elements and is considered heretical by most Muslims. In order to stay in power, the Alawites have tried to balance the Sunni majority by relying on support from the Shiites, the Christians, the Druze and other minorities that fear a Sunni-dominated Syria.
I cite Dalrymple because his is the best big-picture survey I can think of specifically covering Syria and its approach to religion. Yes, he does find that the Turks are markedly worse than the Syrians in protecting their Christians, but that is only part of the picture.
Dalrymple travels through Turkey and the Levant to examine what remains of their ancient Christian past. He finds that Turkey hasn't much left of it while Syria has quite a bit --because the Armenians and the Greeks who used to live in Anatolia are no longer there.
Dalrymple's purpose is not to analyse the current state of religious freedom in the modern republics, but to examine the historical treatment of Christians in the Middle East. In the history of Muslim-Christian relations, Turkey obviously comes out looking the worse, while Syria comes out looking better.
Dalrymple also notes that while Syrians preserve Christian buildings, the Turks tend to tear down old, now disused Armenian churches (though not Greek or Assyrian ones). That's a cultural tragedy but hardly relevant to the question of religious freedom.
Because his mind is on vacation?
Ah. A progressive commitment to population control must be why Tantawi did a 180 and, like both the Egyptin grand mufti he just fired, and the mufti he hired to replace him a few months ago, now endorses suicide bombings in Israel:
The great Imam of Al-Azhar [University], Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, demanded that the Palestinian people, of all factions, intensify the martyrdom operations [i.e. suicide attacks] against the Zionist enemy, and described the martyrdom operations as the highest form of Jihad operations. He says that the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all.
[Sheikh Tantawi] emphasized that every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat …
In other ways, Tantawi is also quite progressive. For instance, he bucked more reactionary voices in the religious establishment to attempt to permit Egyptian TV watchers to enjoy the delights of "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?".
Isn't freedom grand?
Dalrymple's focus is on the Christians of the Middle East, to the exclusion of the other major religious minority, the Jews.
If we rewrote Dalrymple's book with a focus on the Jews of the Middle East, the Turks would come out looking like pretty good and the Syrians like evil villains.
1) Syria enjoys a degree of religious freedom today that is quite unlike many of its neighbors. Yes, there are expedient reasons because of the Alwaite origins of a certain elite but that does not alter the result.
2) Sheikh Tantawi is indeed quite progressive on most matters, quite unlike the mullahs and imams of popular American imagination. Citing an edict on suicide bombing in Israel is silly, Arabs in general will support anti-Israel actions, whether they be Christian, Muslim or irreligious Baathist.
I don't disagree. But then, there are almost no Jews in Syria and the reason isn't the regime but the fact that they all buggered off after 1948.
His description of an Israeli society controlled by Religious Extremists is also absurd. He should check out the Tel Aviv beaches on Friday night.
Israel's religious right exerts an undue influence on civil society, and on the structure of the legal framework of that country. Forget the beaches of tel Aviv (where I've cavorted on every night of the week) and focus on the nitty-gritty of marriage laws. You want to get married not under the strictures of the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel? Too bad - go to Cyprus. That is a great deal more influence than the Muslim religious right has on marriage in Syria.
Getting your feet wet in the hurly-burly of politics again? FYI, my marriage (reform Jewish) would not be recognized in Israel. While Marj overstates as usual, Israel's religious life is controlled by Orthodox Judaism. The religious right also plays a disprortionate role in Israeli politics. It is an unhealthy situation, that cries out for separation of powers, as in the US.
This is more a judgement than a fact; and I seriously doubt Syria would be judged by many as exercising more religious freedom than the Turkish Republic today (as opposed to the 1920s- 1940s).
Message # 892: "But then, there are almost no Jews in Syria and the reason isn't the regime but the fact that they all buggered off after 1948."
(1) Well, there are almost no Christians left in Turkey, either. except for an Assyrian minority.
(2) The Jews didn't exactly leave Syria (or Yemen or Iraq) in the happiest of circumstances at the time Israel was founded.
(3) There are at least 3000 Jews left in Syria today, and everthing about their behaviour is restricted, starting with the right of emigration (not allowed).
The adverb 'very' only applies, of course, because Jordan is a majority Muslim country.
Sheikh Tantawi, a state-appointed cleric, is indeed more progressive than the mullahs and imams that enflame Arab public opinion in the real world, not merely in American popular imagination.
"Citing an edict on suicide bombing in Israel is silly, Arabs in general will support anti-Israel actions, whether they be Christian, Muslim or irreligious Baathist."
Which is exactly why Tantawi changed his tune. But it is a notably immoderate position. A year prior, he had condemned "all" terrorism, which anyone with an ear could tell was intended to include Israeli military occupation in the definition of term. Which was well fine, entirely to be expected. At least he had come out against the argument that Israeli children should be targeted because they all grow up to be soldiers.
But then he reversed himself dramatically to capitulate to the passions of the rabble. And now the most powerful religious figure in Egypt, who is, again, an appointee of a secular state fromally at peace with Israel, endorses suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
I'm not surprised you think it "silly" to bring that up in the context of a discussion about Islamic power within predominantly Muslim states. (I wouldn't be surprised, either, were anyone here to continue thinking of you as 'Spanky the Terror Apologist'.)
Actually, Israel and Syria have precisely the same policy on the question of marriage and divorce. Syrians maintain the Ottoman milat system: each sect or religious group gets its own personal law. Thus, marriages and divorces for Sunnis are governed under Sunni Sharia courts, those for Greek Orthodox under Orthodox ecclesiastical courts, etc. I understand this is the same in Israel.
I think most everyone in Israel agrees. Damned coalition government.
There is no church in Saudi Arabia, do you all know that? By church I mean a building, a physical church. There are tens of thousands of Christians working in this US-allied country but no church.
--
Yes, the circumstances of the Jewish exodus in 1948 and slightly after were very unpleasant.
Kindly acquaint yourself with the differences in the modern Jewish observance.
I agree but what does Saudi Arabia have to do with anything?
Of course Christians in Syria and Iraq have far more rights than in Saudi Arabia. So what?
?
You said in Israel one must get married under the religious law, that is true. Jews get married under Jewish law, Muslims get married under Sharia law, Christians.....etc.
This is the same in Syria.
It is a position I have come to support, by the way, despite serious misgivings. The main opposition to these laws comes from the Bajrang Dal and other rightists.
But the situation in India is not dire, the laws will change but it will take a different time and a slightly different civil society to enact the changes.
---
Now, I'm off. I will check in later to see what is being said about what.
A result of this is that although I could emigrate to Israel under the Law of Return (I have at least one Jewish grandparent), because only Orthodox conversions abroad are recognized by the religious authorities in Israel, and because my mother converted (in 1955, in Mississippi, for god's sake) under Reform aegis, she is not considered Jewish, nor would I be. Nor would my children.
Getting your feet wet in the hurly-burly of politics again? FYI, my marriage (reform Jewish) would not be recognized in Israel. While Marj overstates as usual, Israel's religious life is controlled by Orthodox Judaism. The religious right also plays a disprortionate role in Israeli politics. It is an unhealthy situation, that cries out for separation of powers, as in the US.
Marj said "daily life", which is absurd. You are correct that I should think twice before wading into these discussions, but Banks' knee-jerk, anti-Israeli exagerations and outright falsehoods get under my skin, which is his intent.
I completely agree with the other points you are making. The US could use some more separation too.
My kids would not be considered Jewish either, as my wife is a lapsed Catholic.
Au contraire, you should dive right in. I have missed your contributions from the sane slightly-to-the-left-of-center.
When divorcing--that is another matter. A horrendous other matter.
Falwell hasn't said anything much more exceptionable than what Mark Twain wrote of Arabian Muslims for American newspapers after his tour of the Holy Land: They "never invent anything, never learn anything. . . . They are a stupid population . . . all beggars by nature, instinct and education."
What a fucking pussy!
1) That quote is misrepresentative.
2) The quote is most likely, given the context, an outright lie, and thus par for the course for the rightwinger scum who generated it.
3) I can guarantee that Concerned has not read Twain's account.
Having read all of Twain's report of his journey around the world on lecture tour (especially paying attention to the bit that includes the Orient)
Twain was not in the Holy Land on a 'lecture tour' (who would he be lecturing before? The Tiz el-Nabi branch of the Ottoman Women's Organization for the Protection of Endangered Species?). He was there with a group of fellow Christians and wrote about it for the American papers that ran his column, as I recall. The result is a book called The Innocents Abroad. It's a good read. He describes a largely barren and uninhabited land, teeming with robbers.
As for TJ's original questions wrt Israel's religious right and the rabbis: there are more influential rabbis, to be sure, but the religious right in Israel is a small faction in the Knesset. Sharon can live with or without Efi Eitam's NRP. Unlike Arab countries - or the US, for that matter - where the leaders practice Islam or Christianity, the Israeli Prime Minister never goes to synagogue. The largest part of the populace here is not just non-religious: it is quite anti-religious.
>>>
The general elections are scheduled for next October, and could be held earlier. I'm positive the hard right will take the Knesset by landslide, but it won't just be the religious right: Avigdor Lieberman's Russian immigrant based faction is not religious, and parts of (the assassinated) Ze'evi's faction are not either (both the Ze'evi and Lieberman factions are united in one party, which is presently filling Israel's highways, bridges and bus stops with posters openly calling for a 'transfer').
The religious minority in Israel is a highly fractured one - between Sephardi and Ashkenazi, ultrareligious and national-religious, etc., - and there is a limit to the influence it can wield. I don't think this will change, essentially, in the next Knesset. To answer your implied question - I doubt there will ever be one rabbi, or even a group of rabbis, who can decide or even seriously influence the government's policy on issues of war and peace.
Well, 'agnostic' back then and agnostic now are slightly different things. Twain was certainly well versed in Scripture: his account of the Holy Land is full of these observations of how crummy looking the actual land is in comparison with the biblical accounts.
Twain may have been agnostic, if you say he was, but he was also a man of his country, his times and his people, and his country, times and people were religious.
FYI, Twain did indeed go around the world on lecture tour (including India), the compilation of his accounts is published under various names and I have one called Crossing the Equator.
The whole set appears online here. I assumed the twisted quotes posted here were from that book (in which he recalls his previous trip to your part of the world) but maybe they're being misquoted from Innocents Abroad after all.
I highly recommend Twain's bits on Oz and NZ (in which he lambasts the colonialists) and also the long bits on India in the link I provided (in which he similarly lambasts the colonialists, especially hammering their missionary activity).
This is indeed India! the land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations - the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after the lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me, and I hope never will. It was all new, no detail of it hackneyed.
I'm sure he was on that lecture tour but I doubt it included the Holy Land.
Sorry. I just feel like that sometimes, since the latest trauma and the move to Harish.
Thought I'd share.
Today was the second time I spun out of control and took out my aggressions and rage on the kids. I apologized right afterwards but it's scary. I just fly into a blind rage, and totally lose control. I don't think it was ever quite that bad before.
You need to get the fuck out of Dodge, go somewhere else for a good few months- seriously. You're no good to anyone or yourself where you are and you are going to wind up dead or committed for life if you continue this way.
(I don't usually give advice on such matters, but this is getting to be very ugly to watch and there is clearly a bad ending in sight)
My sentiment exactly.
Sixty Minutes did a nice little segment on Falwell and the fundies' support for Israel, noting that the ADL's Abe Foxman has given to accepting such friends at face value, the imbecile.
Someone interviewed on the program succinctly described the phenomenon as the Jews being the third act in the fundies' five-act play.
I can't imagine hardshell Xtians will be too pleased when they are confronted with the realization that Jews, like other people, place their own interests and survival first.
Of course it would. Israel recognizes civil marriages performed abroad. You have a marriage license, don't you?
Your marriage simply wouldn't be recognized as Jewish by religious authorities.
Pike, your 922 was helpful. I always enjoy weighing in your takes on political developments.
Have you considered resuming a journalism career?
Yes, but we'll all be pork-eating blondes.
Naturally, that will be spelled "Kr-shna".
K R S N
which, through the well known process of orthographic interference, will get misread in a century for
K(a)RS(o)N
I don't really understand why people get so worked up over a little proselytization. It hardly has the potential of being a matter of life and death, unless, I suppose, one thinks so because one is gullible enough to rigidly place their faith in the edicts of a religious sect.
Its "well-deserved place", Jewboy?
I really don't understand why you got so worked up about being propositioned by a homosexual. It hardly had the potential of being a matter of life or death....
I seem to recall you getting quite worked up about it a few years ago in the Mote (or was it the Fray).
Wrong. That will be K(e)R(o)S(e)N(e), source of the ner tamid (eternal flame).
Read your Zohar, for K''N's sake.
You must be projecting. I've never done more than mention it in passing here or in the Fray, if even that. However, once a stranger did follow me in a car at midnight when I was walking back to my dorm from the Quad at the U of I, offering to suck my cock for $10.
Can I therefore infer from your post that being propositioned in that manner is actually considered the norm wherever you happen to reside?
I was suggesting that what might not seem such a big deal to some, might indeed be considered as a big deal by someone else, with you as an example. Admittedly, growing up in New York City may make one blase about such things...although homosexual propositions were hardly the norm.
Then you remember wrong. There was absolutely no response to anything I have posted heretofore here or in the Fray regarding any real life experiences I have had with homosexuals. Period.
I'm doing no more than is necessary to make it plain that I'm correcting your error. Sorry if that bothers you.
I poke humor at fundamental Christians myself. Quite a few of their ministers are charlatans. But I don't see the sense in being a bigot about it.
Once, a long time ago, I ran into a black guy carrying a placard saying that Jesus was black and he gave me a dirty look because I happened to be white. I didn't let it bother me, and I didn't get an attitude about a religion which may prefer to believe that Jesus was black.
Message # 940
I beg of you to take care.
Currently Krishna is a personal name, otherwise known as a proper name.
If your monkeying around with his moniker can be in any way construed as a translation, then Krishna is instantly transmogrified to a common noun -- which will undoubtly invoke the, not inconsiderable, wrath Krishna upon you.
otherwise known as a proper noun. 
Looks a bit like Daniel Pipes if you asked me....
It's probably OK.
Krishna is a crypto-common noun; that is, the name of the god has been translated but no one knows into which language -- or, for that matter, the word.
(Commonly called a pseudo-common noun -- in honor of the person who first claimed to have discovered the catagory.)
Joe - Sorry. Fallwell and his ilk make my skin crawl. When people like them pat you on the back, it is wise to check to see if he has left a knife behind.
Give me a break. Your comment was, to say the least, much broader than "Jerry Falwell and his ilk."
Okay, he can be common and he can be a noun, but he stays blue.
I recall him being much paler, with an overly tidy aspect.
Thanks,
Andonly
That reconstructed Jesus looks just like any number of Caucasians from Harish.
How did they figure out that the guy was dark-skinned, dirty and unkempt, with the body of a moving man and a lost look in his eyes?
Talk about silly research.
I can't get out of Dodge. Too late for that.
I'll just have to go to court on my trumped up threat charges.
Meantime, I'm hoping the wife relents and agrees for the kids to stay with me one at a time on some (not all) of the days, because it gets less nerve wracking that way and there's a lot more peaceful one-on-one interaction. The kids like the idea too.
I'll do my best to turn it into a show trial against the militant women's underground.
I have an Arab judge.
Arraignment is set for November 15th, I believe. I don't know if this is the proper term - Joe prolly does. The first time I appeared in court was when the police asked to have my initial 24 hour arrest extended into a nine-month sojourn in prison, until the proceedings are over. This stage is called, literally, "the reading of the charges". The judge reads me the charges (or whatever it's called) and I plead guilty or not guilty.
That is very natural and understandable given your circumstances. I actually find your usual resiliance and verve more surprising, and even inspiring.
OK, here's my idea. I will ask all you I&P devotees to each write a little snippet recommending my talents as a journalist/columnist who reports on matters Israeli, and send me the snippet to my email address or post it here (but your e-mail and something resembling your real name - say, a name and an initial, at least - has to appear at the end).
Then I will gather all of your recommendations into one e-mail and send it to Slate's editors.
Then, if that doesn't work, I'll try the Wayne, NJ YMHA/YWHA website's bulletin, or any other publication that wants a Jewland reporter.
Do you guys agree?
Thanks.
Note to self: see - men can be supportive too.
The interesting trend in my life lately is that a lot of people are helping me in different ways, and some of them are even women! And they're being very nice and going out of their way to help.
Like Hagai and Gila, who came all the way from the kibbutz to help me pack on Saturday. And they are, like, in their mid-60s, I'd say.
Or two different women who have been helping me find work! And a possible third woman, too!
And a lot of women on Cal's ThePerfectWorld who have not sniped at me at all despite me being in a vulnerable position (possibly because Cal told them not to snipe. But then again - Cal's a woman too).
Perhaps my pike was theratening. I am faring much better as a penisless one (sto knows what I'm talking about).
Hmmmnm.
Do you think so? I'm convinced I spared myself all sorts of tsuris by getting one last year.
But last year I happened to have gotten my flu shot from my son's pediatric pulmonologist (who is an Israeli, therefore this tangent is topical).
I forget now what the formulation was, but the thing had been engineered to produce fewer side effects, and it lived up to its billing. By contrast, the shot my husband got at work last year left his arm sore for two weeks.
Mine still feels like I got punched, but it's much better than yesterday.
(rukkashnukkashlukka)
At the same time, the fundamentalist parties have vowed to throw American troops and F.B.I. agents out of Pakistan, establish Islamic law and reverse the general's support for the United States. Their apparently strong showing stunned many Pakistani experts.
.............
The threat of an American attack on Iraq and the perception that the United States supports Israel against the Palestinians are stoking anti-Americanism even in the governing elite and middle class. The fundamentalist parties even appeared to have won a parliamentary seat in the capital, Islamabad.
I sent you a hastily composed testimonial. Let me know if it's too, um, revealing of you. For your purpose, I mean. Also, I can think of several things I might have added.
The testimonial is great and I thank you for it. I took out the part about my body though.
If I could get four more, that would be good enough.
Actually, after reading it I realized maybe Slate is the wrong place for me to try and ---- my wares (what's the word I'm looking for? I keep thinking 'trundle' but that can't be it). What is a good, intelligent, right-leaning publication that could hire a guy like me? Anyone?
Whoa! Sounds like a more adverse reaction than the one I had when I got stung in the leg by a yellowjacket a couple weeks ago. I didn't notice it until several hours later when there was this terrifically sore spot which ached on my leg. Btw, I got my first flu shot last year (don't know the religion of the shooter) & had no particular reaction I can rememeber. 
- How did you know he was a terrorist?
- I see he no spicking good Hebrew
"I believe that our hand, which is outstretched in peace, will not remain untouched forever. I believe that our neighbors, the Palestinians, will reach a stage of historic change in their attitude toward the State of Israel. I promise that this government will remain alert and watch for any sign of change, and that it will capitalize on any opening, any small crack pointing to change, so as to redeem the hope of generations and make peace."
Hahaha (but in fact it makes one want to throw up).
Quick Thoughts:
1) Oren does a good job of establishing the historical context of Israeli-Arab conflict just prior to the crisis.
2) The book does an excellent job of detailing the elements leading to the precipitous expulsion of UNEF troops from the Sinai, such as: the role of Soviet manipulation, Syrian goading of Nasser, internal Egyptian political machinations and the poor judgment of UN General Secretary U Thant. There is also excellent detail on: the tensions within the Israeli Cabinet as the crisis deepened, Lyndon Johnson's fruitless efforts to coordinate a convoy of maritime states to assert international rights of free passage through the Suez Canal (to both chasten Egypt and take pressure off of Israel), and the various responses to the crisis by the major military powers, among other things.
3) The events of the actual war are told with clarity and riveting detail. Most interesting for me was the near ineptitude shown by the Egyptian military command and the efforts by Nasser to spin the war as an imperialist conspiracy involving the coordination of Israeli efforts with the might of American and British forces (aptly referred to in the book as The Big Lie). Also interesting, and obviously of great importance, was the shifting sentiments of the Israeli cabinet and military command to the issue of capturing territory (The West Bank and Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the southern portion of the Sinai) as Israeli success mounted.
4) The book needs more on the consequences of the war -- especially on how the abiding controversies are still relevant to this day.
And thanks again for the recommendation (or was it stostoso; oh wait, we've been down that road).
If the settlers get their way, Israel will de facto or de jure annex the West Bank and Gaza. And if current Palestinian birth rates continue, by around the year 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza combined. When that happens, the demand of the college anti-Israel movements will change.
They won't bother anymore with divestiture. They will simply demand: "One Man, One Vote. Since Israel has de facto annexed the territories, and there is now just one political entity between Jordan and the Mediterranean, we want majority rule." If you think it is hard to defend Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies.
This is not a call for unilateral Israeli withdrawal. This is a call for everyone who wants Israel to remain a Jewish state — and not become a binational state — to urge President Bush to renew the U.S. push for a two-state solution. If you think the Bush team is doing Israel a favor with its diplomacy of benign neglect, if you think the only campaign Jews need to be involved in today is with hypocrites on U.S. college campuses — and not with extremists in their own camp — you too are telling yourselves a very big and dangerous lie.
Friedman.
Israel is in the process of falling to its own extremists, something I've lamented for the last two years, here and elsewhere, as dangerous business that will destroy the essence of the democratic Jewish state. But that corner hasn't quite been turned yet. You had the Jews half way to hell fifty-four years ago.
As I've said again and again, Sharon was the right sonofabitch for a nasty job. It may not be over yet. But everyone with sense agrees--and this still includes most Israelis--that the settlements have to begin to be evacuated as soon as possible, with Gaza first.
It doesn't look like Sharon will pursue my own favorite plan of conquering (Pals), reoccupying (Pals), evacuating (Israelis), and rebuilding and overseeing (Pals). Nor does the US or anyone else seem to want to jump into the breech. But I believe we should be ready.
Friedman is doing his centrist, Jewish, journalistic duty. Don't cite him to buttress your foolish anti-Israel notions.
An interesting question. But I think you can go read Hamas's and Hizballah's websites, or various MEMRI trnaslations both pre- and post-Sharon, and figure it out for yourself.
In any case, the second intifada started long before Sharon was elected, and he was elected because of the intifada. Suicide bombing was never, as some have claimed here, a response to Pal civilian killings. It's just a tactical extremist manouver, powerful, and therefore inevitable as long as the extremists don't get their way.
No, Spanky, but I do need a good recipe for chole.
I am sure that Hamas would have continued. After all, they, like Sharon, do not want to see a peace settlement. Also, while not all suicide bombings are linked to the deaths of Palestinian civilians, some were, and others were in retaliation for Israeli killings of Hamas leaders. Did the Israelis expect to kill Hamas leaders without the possibility of retaliation? Who would be naive enough to think that?
One thing that most likely would not have happened, had Sharon not been elected, was the Palestinian Authority jumping on the suicide bomb bandwagon. After all, Sharon made made no secret about opposing the Camp David and Taba negotiations.
So Sharon promised to end the 2nd Intifada and suicide bombing, and instead made the situation worse, so that now a return to the frequency of Palestinian attacks that existed before Sharon took power is seen as a "victory."
But it looks like it, even that I note that your favorite Mote activity has always been shamelessly attempting to divine various complicated and sinister motives behind simple-to-read posts.
...chole
Chole simply means garbanzo beans, chickpeas. There are 800 million different ways to cook them, Punjabi, Gujerati, Mangalorean, etc, and you can add scores of ingredients to them. Narrow down your desired outcome and I may be able to help you.
The political realities were what they were. There's a degree of inevitability that attends even one suicide bombing.
I see you have picked up Pseudoerasmus's tiresome habit of defining words for people who already know their meanings, then offering a boatload of possibly interesting (one day) but (at the moment) irrelevant detail.
I wasn't interested particularly in where a recipe might originate or in precisely how many recipes for chickpeas exist in written form.
Anyway, I have located one or two good-sounding recipes for chole. One involves tamarind paste, the other cilantro. I have both in hand, along with all the requisite spices. Additionally, there is my friend Priya, who has been threatening to make chole herself in honor of Lakshmi or one of the other goddesses her family worships and whose periodic festival has just passed.
Whenever the goddesses get honored at Priya's house my daughter gets sent some warm halwa and pooris.
I wind up eating most of it.
But I thank you for your offer. My criteria remain what they were: a good recipe.
Last night I started (on PE's recommendation) David Fromkin's A Peace to End all Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. I will keep you posted on my progress.
Hilarious. I suppose this is what supply-sider cranks used to call "static reasoning".
After the 1948 war, 165 000 Arabs were left behind the Green Line, who have since now bred themselves into more than 1,2 million. If even half of the 750 000 Arabs from behind the Green Line who left in 1948-9, had actually stayed behind, then today there would be 4 million Arabs within the boundaries of the present state of Israel, compared with 4 million non-Arabs. And this latter figure included the almost 1 million Jews from the ex-Soviet countries who arrived in Israel after 1990.
Therefore, either (1) Israel would have ceased being a Jewish state long before 1990; or (2) it would have had to practise literal apartheid in order to remain a Jewish state within the confines of the current state; or (3) it would have been a much smaller state than it is today, with those formerly Arab areas to the north and east of Haifa, to the south and east of Gaza, and on the periphery of the West Bank, not annexed but given the status of "occupied territories" much as Gaza and the WB are today.
This would have been all the more true if all the 750 000 Arabs had stayed behind in Palestine, or if the Arab states hadn't been so stupid as to expel their own large Jewish minorities and add to the Jewish population of Israel.
Had the Jews not been able to command a secure majority in 1948 thanks to the departure/expulsion/whatever of the majority of the Arab population of Palestine, there might have been a liberal democracy only for Jews, and the Arabs within Israel might have been denied citizen status.
How do I know? Well, I can't know for sure, but the European settler population practised apartheid in South Africa until 1990, in Rhodesia until 1980, and in Algeria until 1960. In the southern USA, the white majority could not quite tolerate letting the black minority vote until the 1960s, when they were forced by the central government to do so.
So, if the French, the British and the Afrikaners (settlers of Dutch-Flemish and French Huguenot stock) could practise apartheid because they could not abide rule by a native majority, I suspect why wouldn't European Jews have done the same in Palestine if they hadn't been able to secure a solid Jewish majority? Unless, of course, you believe that a bunch of Jews from Russia, Poland, Romania, Yemen, Morocco, and Iraq (none of them screaming with liberal traditions) were somehow intrinsically more liberal and democratic than British, French and Netherlandic peoples.
Unless, of course, you believe that a bunch of Jews from Russia, Poland, Romania, Yemen, Morocco, and Iraq (none of them screaming with liberal traditions) were somehow intrinsically more liberal and democratic than British, French and Netherlandic peoples.
Yes. I believe it.
Let me attempt to give you some insight.
Met my wife while I was taking a PhD at Cambridge University. She came from Slovenia to learn English. When my children were young, they and my wife spent every second summer in Slovenia.
My daughter's first serious boyfriend was Jewish, the next was a Palestinian Arab and her husband is a European Texan who has an American Indian grandmother and spent 10 years in Europe. All have a common religion --no religion.
Most of the Jews and Arabs I have met fall into the above catagory. But this is far more common for European Jews and, especially, Israeli Jews of European origin. One American professor from Isreal, I knew, was extremely proud of his heritage and knew his rabbinical lineage stretching back hundreds of years. The last time I saw him, he was much prouder of his Japancese wife.
Yes. There are lots of religious Jews. And Arabs. And Christians.
The problem with the Palestinian refugees is not that they are Arabs. The problem is that a lot of them are very religious and simply want to kill the Jews in Israel.
This is a real problem. (As compared to whether God, Allah, Venus, etc, are 'proper nouns' (aka 'proper names'), or whether DVD is superior to VHS -- where your logic went down the toilet.)
And it is a world wide problem: Can a non-secular, scientific culture prevail?
Anyway, got to go.
By the way, I never said that VHS was superior to DVD. I merely said I don't care about movies enough to care about the technical advantages of DVD.
Very interesting that Banks quotes from Tom Friedman's excellent column, but leaves out the part of the column that was directed to him:
You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth, and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought Ariel Sharon to power.
It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer, pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery.
You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I'm not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?
Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.
Thanks for posting that bit of missing context. I hadn't seem the whole column, but I'll reiterate what I said before: Friedman is, as usual, correct.
What he is especially right about is placing Israeli behavior in the context of mideast behavior generally. Israel bashers prefer to place it wholly in relation to ideal western-democratic behavior, as though all other would-be liberal democracies were also territorially puny, surrounded by hostiles, and shot through with a potential fifth column to whom they nevertheles owed citizenship rights.
I have no trouble with, say, finding Ariel Sharon a dangerous man. But you would think he was the anti-Christ, the way the left likes to portray him. Meanwhile, scarcely a one of them knows the name Elie Houbeika, or the fact that the man who actually planned the Sabra and Shatila massacres was elected to Lebanon's parliament, served for some years, and was considered a big local hotshot.
I think I'm getting proficent at translating Slater.
He will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe his point to you above is that Israeli Jews from eastern Europe, at least, could indeed have been presumed to have leaned more toward liberal democracy than the French, English, or Netherlanders because they were largely secularists. (Incidentally, I'm not sure why you or he put the Dutch in the same category with the French and the English.) In his view, it is secularism that makes liberal democracy possible or likely.
He also goes on to cite examples of Jewish liberalism, which he's right to suggest has historically had something to do with secularism among Jews. As you know, the founding ideology of the Israeli state was secular.
I would counter Transient's point by observing that the Zionist "revisionists"--I don't mean today's historical revisionist writers but the hated, minority, ideological "revisionists" who were the ancestors of today's Likud--were also secularists. The Arab rejection of an Israeli state ultimately legitimized their goals and assured their ascendance.
One can speculate about what might have happened in the absence of a Pal exodus in 1948, but in the final analysis, Arab rejectionism would, one way or another, still have brought to power within the Israeli state an illiberal Jewish minority. And I do not believe that Arab rejection would have been less pronounced had the Pals stayed put.
Had the Jews not been able to command a secure majority in 1948 thanks to the departure/expulsion/whatever of the majority of the Arab population of Palestine, there might have been a liberal democracy only for Jews, and the Arabs within Israel might have been denied citizen status.
That is as close to a smelly post as I have ever seen.
Please give your version of events in case, say, 350,000 Palestinins had stayed on.
I read the column when it appeared, and I thought about that, because it somehow didn't strike me as completely right.
I think there is also an element of affinity with Israel that makes Western critics "single it out for opprobrium". Like South Africa was similarly singled out for opprobrium despite the fact that there were other African regimes who were far more oppressive and undemocratic. And, to wit, there are many Jews in America and Europe (and Israel) who "single out" Israel. I think precious little of the criticism is rooted in anti-semitism.
Then of course there's the journalism factor that PE likes to cite: There are more attention given to Israel than to, say, Syria in Western media simply because there are many more journalists in Israel, and they're free to move around and interview dissenters to government policy whether on the Palestinian side, or, indeed, the Israeli.
Please give your version of events in case, say, 350,000 Palestinins had stayed on.
I don't know. But I know what would have happened if the Arabs had won.
I found it nauseating that Pe has found a way of knocking us even for our democracy, saying it was made possible by expulsion (what about American democracy?).
But why stop there? If we hadn't been able to expel the Arabs, and if they proved difficult to subjugate, we would have thrown them into gas chambers, right? Let's just cut to the chase: Jews are Nazis.
Pelle, surely you can manage a dour yet enthusiastic recommendation for me?
Ando? Something kind hearted and large breasted perhaps?
Pe? Something snotty with a lot of big words?
Marj? Something coy?
I'm not asking Pincher. He doesn't read my posts.
Please?
(Oh, and the journalists are there).
Well, if he meant that, it would be nonsense. Firstly, the British, the French, and the Dutch were pioneers of liberal democratic societies in the 19th century. Secondly, the colonial settler societies founded by them in Rhodesia, South Africa, and Algeria, respectively, were eminently liberal democracies, at least amongst whites. Thirdly, the British and the French weren't particularly religious, certainly not fundamentalists, by the mid-20th century, when Rhodesia and Algeria were still administered under local variants of apartheid.
"(Incidentally, I'm not sure why you or he put the Dutch in the same category with the French and the English.)."
The Dutch, along with the British and the French, were the pioneers of the Enlightenment. Where did Spinoza live again?
You're being a silly hysteric. Given that at least four colonial settler societies in the Third World -- derived from European countries with solid liberal traditions -- practised apartheid well past the second world war, it's plausible, and reasonable to believe, that Israel, a European colonial settler society in the Middle East, might also have done the same if the Jews hadn't commanded a demographic majority. One would really have to a be Jewish chauvinist-tribalist-nationalist to believe that somehow Jewish settlers in the Middle East would have been more liberal than British, French and Dutch settlers in Africa.
Message # 1030
One would really have to a be Jewish chauvinist-tribalist-nationalist to believe that somehow Jewish settlers in the Middle East would have been more liberal than British, French and Dutch settlers in Africa.
Well I guess that settles the issue. Judgment has been passed.
OR
Maybe it is just a faulty opinion stated rhetorically?
In any case:
I do not pretend give be able to give definitive answers.
The secular scene is not limited to writing. Countless discussion groups concerned about the state of the Arab countries have religion on their agenda as one of the main elements of the underdevelopment formula. Heeding the call of Farag Fouda before his assasination, rationalist societies are coming into being in Egypt and other places under different names, unannounced officially. Some Arab intellectuals have also issued a statement in support of Salman Rushdie's right to publish and against Khomeini's Fatwa.
No opinion polls concerning religious beliefs are usually allowed in Arab countries, to judge the real spread of secular ideas. An exception is the survey of living conditions of the Palestinian society under Israeli occupation in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem, 25 (Marianne Heiberg, et al., Palestinian society in Gaza, West Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions, Oslo, FAFO-report 151, 1993) which challenges some widely held notions about religious attitudes. It shows that the percentage of 'secular' men is 20%, going up to an unexpected 30% among women, and that it is on average higher than the percentage of Islamic 'activists' on the other end of the spectrum even in the Gaza refugee camps. Secular is defined in the study as someone who's life is not dictated by religion. The larger middle ground is being held by simply 'observant' moslems. Partial surveys by some university students elsewhere seem to confirm this distribution of the degree of belief.
>>>>>>>>>>
This growing flurry of secular writing should not, however, give the impression that the Islamist tide in the Arab world is being checked. The fundamental activists present an 'alternative' to the impoverished masses with their slogan, 'Islam Is the Solution', coupled with social welfare programs in many places, not provided by the state, in addition to other various activities for the masses. Islamic teaching as preached in thousands of mosques every week all over the Arab world, as well as the weight of history, still carries the day. The secularists cannot hope to compete for the minds and souls of the masses, without a change in social conditions, but their message is being written and distributed and they are reaching countless readers. Rewriting and re-evaluation of Islamic history, including its secular aspects, is taking place as never before in the contemporary history of Arab and Islamic countries. Islamists are having to contend with this growing trend, in addition to facing an array of other challenges: the growing disappointment with 'Islamic states' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Sudan, inter-Islamic strife as in Afghanistan, women's movements, the economic failures and scandals of 'Islamic investment banking', the excesses of 'Islamic' violence in Algeria and elsewhere, the onslaught of new scientific findings in astronomy and molecular biology, and to top it all, satellite TV broadcasting and the Internet. So, as far as the belated conflict between religion and secularism in Islam, it is not the end of the story.
Israel's deputy education minister called for Jewish-only schools in order to prevent assimilation. Knesset member Avraham Ravitz said he is concerned about Jewish youth being led astray by mixing with non-Jewish students, including children of foreign workers, former members of the South Lebanon Army and immigrants who are not Jewish according to Jewish law, many of whom are from the former Soviet Union. Knesset member Roman Bronfman, an immigrant from the Soviet Union, condemned Ravitz's remarks.
A year ago I wouldn't have hesitated. As things stand now I cannot recommend you because of your nutty, obsessive anti-feminist campaign.
Can't you pretend it's a year ago then? For old times' sake?
Israel is us.
?
The British, French and Dutch were colonial powers long before they were liberal democracies. Their colonial traditions were far more entrenched than their democratic traditions. It is not surprising that they chose to colonize the way they did.
The Jews coming from Europe were not a colonial power. They weren't looking to form a colony to enrich their home country. They were looking to build a homeland that would be a refuge for all Jews around the world.
The British, French and Dutch had a long history of subjugating people around the world. The Jews had a long history of being subjugated and oppressed. The Jews who left Europe pre-WWII were fleeing religious oppression and pogroms. The Jews who left during WWII were fleeing genocide. Jews who left post-WWII were fleeing internment and resettlement camps after one of the most horrific periods in history.
It is absolutely ridiculous to assume that under those conditions, Jews would act in any way similar to the colonial powers.
OK, so you're a democracy. But if so-and-so had happened, you wouldn't have been a democracy. So it doesn't count.
Get it?
We have a saying here: if grandma had wheels, she'd be a bus. I think that saying is common in other places in the world.
Israel is us.
!
You appear to be totally under a misapprehension. The idea of "colony" you have in mind is exemplified by India, which the British did not settle but ruled in order to "enrich their home country" in various ways.
But this model of colonialism does not describe Rhodesia, Algeria and South Africa. These regions were settled by millions of Europeans much as North America and Australia were settled by Europeans -- i.e., to farm land and to create a new, permanent home. (The major difference is that the native population was not decimated by disease in these countries, as it had been in the Americas and Australia.)
Algeria was seized by France, but settled by private citizens from all over Europe who were hungry for land. In 1960, there were almost 2 million Europeans living in Algeria who considered themselves Algerians (but not Arab or Muslim), who were born in Algeria, whose ancestors had settled in Algeria in the mid-19th century, and who called Algeria home.
Rhodesia was not founded by the British government, but by private British citizens who settled there, initially for the mines, but later for the farmland. Like the European Algerians, the 100 000 Europeans who lived in Rhodesia in 1980 called the country their home.
The foundation of the various Boer Republics (precursors to the Union of South Africa) did not involve any European state entity at all. Dutch and Flemish farmers simply staked land claims in southern Africa.
I did not equate them. I pointed to a fundamental difference between them: the European Jewish settlers in the Middle East came from countries with solid autocratic traditions. The British, French and Dutch-Flemish settlers in Rhodesia, Algeria and South Africa, respectively, came from countries with solid liberal traditions.
"The British, French and Dutch were colonial powers long before they were liberal democracies.
False. Rhodesia, Algeria and South Africa were founded at a time when constitutional government, elections, and civil rights were already the norm in Britain, France and the Netherlands-Flanders. These norms were not as advanced as they are today, but they were nonetheless the case.
Their colonial traditions were far more entrenched than their democratic traditions."
Rhodesia, French Algeria, the Orange Free State, the Republic of Transvaal, and their successor the Union of South Africa were all model liberal democracies, at least for the millions of the European settler population. Their political evolution mirrored that of their motherland countries.
No, it counts, but be realistic. If European settlers in other parts of the world did not wish to allow majority rule because that would mean native government, why on earth would Jews in the Middle East have done otherwise if the Arabs had been a majority in the new state? After all, hadn't the Jews come to found a Jewish homeland?
Sometime ago when I asked you: What was Heidegger's relationship to Hitler?
You responded: I really have no idea. I don't collect every bit of trivia about Jews and the Holocaust.
Since Heidegger, thought, by some, to be the last century's greatest philosopher, was a German ( and you are part German) I was struck by the your sheer ignorance.
From your argument in the above posts, I must assume that you have no knowledge of actual Jewish trivia -- such as Marx, Engles, Trotosky, etc. and the preoccupation of European Jews with social justice.
IN ANY CASE
I am curious to know your evaluation of what the Arabs would have done with the Jews if the Czechs had not supplied the nascent Israel with arms (while the West waited for Israel to be annihilated).
Message # 10123
(And you started the argument about proper nouns, not me.)
You are terminally confused.
You stated:
Message # 547
I have noticed many people mistakenly suppose that Allah is the name of the deity in Islam, in analogy with Zeus or Yahweh or Vishnu. But that is not the case. The noun lah simply means "god" and is cognate to the Hebrew el. Thus "al - lah" is not a proper name at all but simply the common noun preceded by a definite article ("the god").
where, as I assume you must know, ‘proper name’ is simply the alternative designation for ‘proper noun’
Pseudoerasmus: "The Dutch, along with the British and the French, were the pioneers of the Enlightenment. Where did Spinoza live again?"
You mean Spinoza the Dutch Jew?
I believe you misunderstood my parenthetical. I wasn't suggesting the Dutch have been historically less inclined to liberal democracy than the French and British, but more so.
Pike's hilarious rejoinder about grandma's wheels is apt, for reasons I'll explain below. But I do think he is wrong to discount your assertion as anti-Jewish; what he forgets is that it is routine for you to heavily discount cultural particulars as predictors of how groups will behave under certain circumstances. (Pike probably also remembers that you remain a student of the idiotic Toynbee on the subject of whether Jews prior to the establishment of Israel even had a common culture.)
What you are not addressing is the Arab component--that is, Arab actions and intentions and how they might have affected Zionists when the state was being created. It isn't widely known, but in the run-up to the creation of the state, and subsequently, there were not only Arab rejectionists but Arab supporters of Israel, and these colluded extensively with the Zionists' nascent intelligence services. Unfortunately, in the contest between Arab Israel-supporters and their opposite, the former were ultimately killed or driven out of Palestine.
Had they not been, and had the Muslim loathing of Jewish authority and power not animated a virulent Arab nationalism, it really isn't that difficult to see how the idealism of the earliest Zionist pioneers might finally have prevailed over the brutally realpolitikal views of the Irgun and Lehi, which held a democratic Jewish homeland had to have a Jewish majority.
The review was written two years ago; things have changed a bit since then.
I have never read Toynbee on the subject of Jews. But it is self-evident that German Jews and Yemeni Jews, prior to their settlement in Israel, had very little in common.
"What you are not addressing is the Arab component..."
Because I am taking the Arab component as a given -- the Arabs would have been rejectionists of Zionism no matter what.
"Had they not been [rejectionists] it really isn't that difficult to see how the idealism of the earliest Zionist pioneers might finally have prevailed over the brutally realpolitikal views of the Irgun and Lehi, which held a democratic Jewish homeland had to have a Jewish majority."
Well, possibly, but I have two objections: (1) the vast majority of those who came to Israel were probably not as idealistic as the earliest Zionist pioneers; they were just ordinary people fleeing persecution and oppression and few other places to go to. (2) Your conclusion is far more speculative than mine, requiring changes in two variables. My speculation is rather straightforward: it simply changes one variable (the Jews did not become a majority in Israel) and provides three possible outcomes, as outlined in Message # 1009.
Not at all. What I often do is, not dispute that culture is a predictor of how groups behave, but dispute whether certain behaviours which are described as cultural norms, are indeed cultural norms. I have two examples, both involving things Andonly has said in the past.
(1)
Andonly has attributed violent Arab rejectionism of Zionism (prior to the foundation of the state of Israel) to a kind of xenophobia. But was this response an Arab cultural thing or is it something trans-cultural?
Many Arabs of Palestine objected to the founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine because it required that some of them were made into an ethnic minority on their own soil. But given the same situation, when do such anxieties not emerge in other contexts? That is, when in recent times has any group, which has always lived as a dominant group in a particular place, not objected or resisted when it is suddenly threatened with incorporation into a new, alien state where they would be turned into a minority? I really can't think of many.
The Serbs resisted the dissolution of (Serb-dominated) Yugoslavia because they feared that their ethnic community would be splintered into minority enclaves in several different countries dominated by other ethnic groups. They let go of Slovenia without much of a fight, because few Serbs lived in Slovenia. But the Krajina region of Croatia saw vicious fighting because hundreds of thousands of Serbs lived there who didn't want to become a minority in Croatia. Likewise, the Bosnian Serbs had no intention of sitting idly by as the Muslim-instigated secession of Bosnia-Hercegovina from the Yugoslav federation turned them suddenly into a minority.
In essence, the Bosnian Muslims provoked the Bosnian Serbs.
In the waning days of the Soviet Union and after its dissolution, the Republic of Moldova toyed with the idea of reunification with Romania. After all, Moldovans are ethnic Romanians and Moldova (formerly known as Bessarabia) was annexed by Stalin only in 1945. Once again, the fear of being made an alien minority in a foreign country incited Moldova's ethnic Slavs (Russians and Ukrainians) and the Gagauz (an ethnically Turkic people but Christian) to revolt. They set up two separatist republics, Transdniestria and Gagauzia; and a brief but intense civil war ensued, complete with mutual ethnic cleansings. The situation calmed down only after the Russian 14th army intervened, albeit to take the side of "Transdniestria" and "Gagauzia".
There was exactly a parallel story in Georgia at the same time. After independence in 1991, Georgia was riven by a brutal civil war with two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which wanted to secede from Georgia and return to the Russian Federation. (Abkhazia has subsequently declared independence.) They'd been ruled by Russians for a long time and had no wish to live as minorities in an ethnically Georgian state. The ethnic cleansing and violence of the Georgian civil war probably rivalled what took place in the Balkans. The same fear -- the fear of suddenly becoming a minority in a new and alien state -- partly motivated the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh, possibly the most brutal war of the 1990s.
The same fear was a crucial element in the bloodletting of India's partition in 1947. Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs panicked about being left behind on the "wrong" side of the demarcation lines proposed by the British Boundary Commission. [continued]
When the Liberal UK government committed itself to Irish Home Rule in 1912-14, the Protestants in Ulster could not take this lying down and formed a paramilitary group called the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). This was formed to give resistance to the authorities in case London granted home rule to all of Ireland. But the UVF also terrorised the civilian Catholic population in the north (who then promptly formed the Irish Volunteer Force or the IVF). The situation had been turning into a full-scale civil war between terrorist groups just as the First World War intervened to calm things down. Later, the Catholics also turned to terrorism when they learnt that the northern part of Ireland would be left out of the Irish Free State and, therefore, that a large minority of Catholics would remain behind in the north.
The fear of sudden "minoritisation" when international boundaries change, is a common theme of violence in ethnic & sectarian conflicts. The Arab reaction to the Zionists, particularly in light of the Arab landlessness caused by Jewish land purchases, was not exceptional.
Aren't you glad for the comparative sanity of the New World? But I can't imagine non-Hispanic Americans would take it lying down either, if Hispanics managed to gain a majority in California, Arizona, etc. and decided they wanted "reunification" with Mexico. But that's just speculation.
I elaborated so much on this theme because some things need to be examined on an internationally comparative basis, because the temptation to reduce local behaviour to local cultural norms is always great. Andonly has a tendency to view the Levant, the one region of the world outside the USA with which she has some acquaintance, in isolation.
(2) In the past, Andonly has taken the Hindu-Muslim conflict in India out of its South Asian context and put them into an international Muslim context. But violence in South Asia goes well beyond Hindus and Muslims. When Mrs Gandhi was assassinated by her own Sikh bodyguard in 1984, Hindus went on a rampage in Delhi killing thousands of Sikhs. Thousands. Hindu fundamentalists, thrown into a livid rage by Christian missionary activity, often launch attacks against missionaries and native Christians, particularly in the Northeast, where most of India's Christians live; and Christians have counterattacked the Hindu majority often enough that hyperbolic Hindus accuse them of genocide. In Sri Lanka, there are also pogroms against Hindu Tamils by Buddhist Sinhalese, and vice versa, all the time. The point is that things like Godhra are best explained in the South Asian context.
Engels was not Jewish. But Lenin and Bukharin were.
But thanks for reminding me that Central/Eastern European secular socialism ended up a totalitarian nightmare....
That's why I could not take your blanket equation of secularism and liberalism too seriously. After all, the Nazis, the Stalinists and various authoritarian nationalist regimes have been secular too.
"....it is routine for you to heavily discount cultural particulars as predictors of how groups will behave under certain circumstances."
In my argument about what might have transpired if the Jews were not able to command a majority in the new state, I thought I was doing just -- i.e., using cultural particulars as predictors of how groups will behave under certain circumstances. After all, I noted that even those European settlers who had come from countries with liberal political cultures did not want to live under majority, even as late as 1960-90. So I don't understand why European Jewish settlers of Palestine ought to have been any different.
Message # 11820 in thread 113: "Many Hawaiian groups have tried for years to declare independence from the U.S. Like the Palestinians, they had their leaders overthrown and their land stolen. Unlike the Palestinians, they are not in a favorable demographic position relative the newcomers. Also, unlike the Palestinians, they have not resorted to organized violence to achieve their aims."
And, unlike the Palestinians, Hawaiians are full citizens of the USA, they have the same civil rights as other Americans, they are no longer driven off their land, they are free to move about within the USA, they receive financial benefits from the state, they receive protection from the state, their lands are not under military occupation, etc. As far as I know, native Hawaiians (or those who are partly native Hawaiians) are beneficiaries of positive discrimination by the state of Hawaii. In short, they are no longer a colonised people. Why on earth should Hawaiians turn to organised violence to achieve their aims?
Suppose a group inhabiting a particular territory wishes to secede from the state and become independent. It matters terribly whether the disputed territory and its inhabitants are (a) integrated into the state (i.e., they are full citizens of the state from which they seek secession); or (b) under colonial-military occupation (i.e., they are without rights in, and are not citizens of, the state from which they seek secession).
None of the above can be said of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who fall into category (b). Palestinians have been under military occupation; 19th-century-style colonial settlements are splattered across their country; and their civil rights are severely restricted. In other words, the position of the Hawaiians vis-à-vis the USA is completely dissimilar in every way to the position of the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza vis-à-vis Israel.
Therefore, the comparison between the "civilised" Hawaiian separatists and the "barbaric" Palestinians is ludicrous. In fact, the comparison of Palestinians with any separatist or independence group whose members are integrated into the country from which they seek separation, is inapt.
How do Palestinians behave when they find themselves in a situation even slightly like the Hawaiians in the USA? We have a test case: the 20% of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians, though not fully equal to Jewish citizens, are nonetheless citizens of Israel and participate in its society, economy and polity.
[ (***) It bears noting that Rabin's premiership, Oslo II and Barak's premiership would not have been possible without the votes of Arab Israelis. The Arab votes within Israel overrode the purely Jewish majorities in those cases. This was also almost the case with Oslo I; without the Arab votes, the margin of approval within the Knesset for the first step in the peace process would have been only 2 or 3, I believe. In other words, based on Jewish votes alone, Israel might never have engaged in the peace process. ]
Andonly has ascribed the behaviour of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to culture. But how to account for the difference between the "civilised" behaviour of Israeli Palestinians and the "barbaric" behaviour of WB&G Palestinians? The difference is in the constraints and the circumstances each group faces.
(1) There are over 1,2 million Palestinians inside Israel proper who resist Israel peacefully.
(2) The overwhelming majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza went along with the peace process between 1993 and 2000. During this time Hamas did not even remotely have the popularity that it enjoys today. Even the State Department agreed that the Palestinian Authority cooperated with the Israelis in curbing terrorism by Palestinian rejectionists of Oslo.
(3) During the first Intifadah (1987-93), there was non-violent resistance to Israel in the Occupied Territories. Palestinian civil institutions in the West Bank and Gaza set up committees to organise boycotts of Israeli goods and Israeli employers, to call general strikes (closures & work stoppages) and to forge relations with Israeli peace activists and leftists. Moreover, the bulk of the violent resistance was aimed not at civilians, but at Israeli military targets.
(4) Between 1967 and 1981, the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza did not resist Israel violently. If there ever was a people who stood by and allowed themselves to be pushed around by an occupation force, in some cases dispossessed and deported so that the Israelis could make way for colonial settlers, then it was the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. And the result? Settlements, settlements, settlements, settlements, and settlements, plus a network of military bases and security checkpoints to protect those settlements.
(5) Besides, Israel has worked to prevent the emergence of peaceful resistance to itself. Israel has deported and exiled Palestinians who have advocated non-violent resistance, such as Mubarak Awad.
[PE] "Israel doesn't have a constitution, Rask. For the government to start acting more like, say, Turkey in Kurdistan is just a matter of legislation and the Likud government's overcoming its residual sensitivity to international and domestic (liberal) opinion."
[Pincher] "Once again, you take the exact opposite tack of a general position you supported some months ago. When some American lawyers...favorably compared [the constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms in the USA with those] of some countries in Europe [which lack constitutions], you pooh-poohed the idea, saying in effect the Constitution was only a piece of paper supported by other more powerful norms. I supported that position.... Now that it's Israel without the Constitution, however, you see the Jewish state as less than a hop, step and jump from turning into Russia or Turkey. A few legal changes and the least vestiges of civilized norms will slip away."
I have not taken the "exact opposite tack" at all. A constitution is a worthless piece of paper unless there is a prior willingness on the part of the political actors to adhere to it. That means, the social-cultural norms must already be liberal and democratic to begin with.
That's what I've said in the past, and that's what I still believe. But I said the above in reference to the UK, a country whose social-cultural norms are solidly liberal and democratic. The only reason you suppose I have contradicted myself with respect to Israel and its lack of a constitution is that you think Israel has also the same norms. But Israel's norms are probably more fragile and contigent than the UK's.
Secondly, Israel has a demonstrated record of civil rights repression when it comes to its own Arab citizens. In the first two decades of independence, Israeli Arabs, despite being citizens, were subjected to restrictions on movement, pass laws, curfews, administrative detentions, rule by military governors and land confiscations. The word "land confiscations" does not adequately describe what happened. The Israelis didn't just seize the lands of those Arabs who became refugees outside Israel. The Israelis also seized nearly all the privately owned lands of those Arabs who remained in Israel and became Israeli citizens.
And until 2000, Israeli Arabs could not be apportioned state-owned land; and Jewish communities were allowed to bar Arabs from their communities. (This discrimination meant that Israeli Arabs were confined, effectively, to lands they had held in 1948, minus those confiscated after 1948.) And there are numerous other institutional discriminations against Arabs about which I've spoken in the past.
Thirdly, although a supreme court decision supposedly put an end to this discrimination in 2000, nevertheless the Sharon cabinet announced backing for Druckman's bill in July which was meant to vitiate the Israeli high court ruling of 2000 and explicitly bar Israeli-citizen Arabs (over 20% of the population) from over 90% of the lands in Israel. The Sharon cabinet did withdraw support for the bill after being criticised for it, but the fa
(Rustler did predict Druckman's bill would not be passed. Andonly praised Israel's decency, still hypothetical at the time she praised it, in letting this bill die. But wouldn't that mean that between 1948 and 2000 Israel had not been decent in this regard?)
In no western country today would an ethnocentric legislation depriving minority citizens of certain rights ever even get proposed, let alone receive even temporary support from the government. This, combined with the overtly ethnocentric character of some of the policies and practises of the Israeli state, leads me to conclude Israel's norms are probably more fragile and less "western" than, say, Great Britain's.
Then you have studied his heirs; either way, you've reached an erroneous conclusion based on selective (or more likely, inadequate) information about Jews and an odd definition of culture which consigns religion to the status of artifact or something when it is, in fact, a strand of culture.
"But it is self-evident that German Jews and Yemeni Jews, prior to their settlement in Israel, had very little in common."
They had Judaism in common. And in case you didn't know, in the 19th century Yemeni Jews in paticular took pains to translate and take into account the works of the European rabbinic traditions they had been cut off from for centuries.
If you measure culture entirely according to its extraneous characteristics, such as language, hairstyles, and porridge recipes, and if you simply ignore its subjective characteristics, then you can easily define away anything peoples regard as intrinsic to their collective identity. But peoples are made in no small part by their shared history, experiences, hopes, and objectives. Really, once you get past the second Temple period, especially in the Diaspora, Judaism becomes largely a vehicle for transmitting a tale of origins and past empire, with the great bulk of its moralizings aimed at organizing and isolating a people from their surroundings.
Maybe with the exception of Yom Kippur, the religion is fundamentally about peoplehood. It isn't about mysteries and miracles, nor does it retain much of its old cultic aspect; we have no burning bush holiday, no resurrection holiday, no circling a big black repository of deities holiday. It isn't about personalities: we don't lionize Moses or Jesus or Mohammed, or even David or our prophets. There's just God, and God's covenant with the people.
One more thing. The majority of Jews alive prior to Israel's founding, and certainly the majority who established the state, were Ashkenazim, not Mizrahim. It's a little ridiculous to insist that Jews were not a people on the basis that Jews existed who were superficially dissimilar to the majority of Jews in the world.
This line of reasoning implies that a people must be a homogeneous entity, when of course it rarely is. In truth, the concept is far more flexible than you will allow.
I have never read anything specifically on the subject of whether Jews before their in-gathering in Palestine were a single people.
"...and an odd definition of culture which consigns religion to the status of artifact or something when it is, in fact, a strand of culture....If you measure culture entirely according to its extraneous characteristics, such as language, hairstyles, and porridge recipes, and if you simply ignore its subjective characteristics, then you can easily define away anything peoples regard as intrinsic to their collective identity.
No, I do not consign religion to the status of artefact. Religion is clearly a major component of culture, but far from being the only one. As I've said in the past, your criterion for "common culture" is so loose as to make African-American Muslims, Indonesians, and Volga Tatars "one culture".
"....if you simply ignore its subjective characteristics, then you can easily define away anything peoples regard as intrinsic to their collective identity... But peoples are made in no small part by their shared history, experiences, hopes, and objectives"
And the majority of Jews have no shared history for a few thousand years prior to the founding of Israel, unless you are talking about the deepest mists of antiquity. Nonetheless, I think the subjective perception of cultural unity is an important possible element in ethnicity or peoplehood, but not a necessary or sufficient one.
Well, I don't even agree that the Ashkenazim constituted a cultural unity. After all, what did Lord Rothschild have in common with Lev Bronfstein (Trotsky), other than ancestry? Put another way, did Lord Rothschild have more in common with other Englishmen or Frenchmen than with Bronfstein; and did Bronfstein have more in common with other Russians than with Lord Rothschild? I think the answer is yes on both counts.
"This line of reasoning implies that a people must be a homogeneous entity, when of course it rarely is. In truth, the concept is far more flexible than you will allow."
I do not insist on homogeneity, and I agree definitely that ethnicity or peoplehood or whatever (I prefer the German term Volk) is a flexible concept. But all I am saying is that if the disparate Jewish communities of the world prior to the in-gathering in Palestine are to be reckoned a single Volk, then the criteria for such reckoning are looser and more flexible than for any other Völker in the world.
Sometimes, two or more peoples speaking the same language are reckoned distinct because they have different religions. (Serbs/Croats/Muslims; Indians/Pakistanis; Indian-Bengalis/Bangladeshis; etc.)
In a very few cases, various peoples speaking different languages are considered the same Volk because they share so every other kind of commonality. (e.g., Chinese.)
I can't think of those who are considered a single Volk because they share a common (nominal) religion.
Misleading. Christians and Hindus indulge in barely any actual violence at all against each other in India, even if you include violence against the fundie missionaries.
I will say this, though: this could mean Labor is out of the coalition and that erections will be held before the scheduled date (28/10/03). This is major trouble for the government, and was probably planned as such by the Minister of Defense.
Not according to Human Rights Watch:
'Attacks against Christians throughout the country have increased significantly since the BJP began its rule at the center in March 1998. They include the killings of priests, the raping of nuns, and the physical destruction of Christian institutions, schools, churches, colleges, and cemeteries. Thousands of Christians have also been forced to convert to Hinduism. The report concludes that as with attacks against Muslims in 1992 and 1993, attacks against Christians are part of a concerted campaign of right-wing Hindu organizations, collectively called the sangh parivar, to promote and exploit communal clashes to increase their political power-base. The movement is supported at the local level by militant groups who operate with impunity. "Christians are the new scapegoat in India's political battles," said Smita Narula, author of the report and researcher for the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.'
There are also accusations that Christians in northeastern states have attacked Hindus, but I don't a nice report like the one above.
Perhaps you meant that there is Christian-Hindu harmony in south India. But clearly the Northeast, Orissa and Gujarat have seen communal violence between Hindus and Christians.
What I have done is, I think, show that both groups are less exceptional and more like other peoples, than they are typically depicted.
Marj? Ando? A warm recommendation for your smelly host? Please? I won't write about feminism, the world isn't ready yet. Or if I do, I'll do it subtly.
You answered, "I have two objections: (1) the vast majority of those who came to Israel were probably not as idealistic as the earliest Zionist pioneers; they were just ordinary people fleeing persecution and oppression and few other places to go to."
Sorry, I know too many people who were a part of that pioneering effort's later phase and who adopted the idealism absolutely. Try to find any dissenting literature from the period, if you can.
The idealism was part and parcel of early Israeli culture, irrespective of the population you presume must have been illiberal. It simply wasn't. Zionists not only were convinced they were building a socialist-democratic utopia, they were very much invested in convincing Jews and non-Jewish powers outside of Palestine that their dream was going to be a paradigm on earth. (To use the hubristic phrase in vogue even as late as the '60s, "a light unto the nations.")
Well, your speculation dangles in midair. Had Jews failed to achieve a majority in Israel, why? Your 1009 discusses the Arab flight in '48. Well, that was caused by fear of Zionist terror. But there would have been no Zionist terror had there been no Arab terror to begin with.
There would have been no Jewish majority without the Arab flight. So I simply extrapolated backward from your condition--no Jewish majority--to no Arab exodus, presumably the necessary condition for there being a Jewish majority. And no Arab exodus implies no Jewish revisionism, which requires no Arab rejectionism.
Now, you assume an Israel with a majority of Arabs in it would not likely have remained a democracy for anyone but Jews. I don't automatically disagree! Yet you ignore the ideology of early Zionism, which in its egalitarian idealism was not like the ideologies of the other European settler societies you mention (this is what I mean by your discounting the effects of cultural particularities), and you ignore the extent to which the Zionists desperately needed the goodwill of supporting western nations merely to found a state, let alone prosper.
Given these factors, had there remained an Arab majority in Israel, it's just as plausible that the state would have become a different sort of entity--perhaps a democratic, egalitarian Jewish refuge rather than a state of the Jews--briefly, with the support of western powers, before eventually succumbing to an Arab-Muslim takeover and the erasure of democracy.
Because they were European Jewish settlers, not European settlers in general, and between 1960 and 1990 the fate of Jews living under an Arab majority was pretty easy to speculate! Why insist on a generic desire of colonizers to live under their own majority rule, when in this case the alternative was to be persecuted and slaughtered in the wake of having been persecuted and slaughtered? To my mind it's a miracle Arabs were not driven out of Israel altogether, and were given nominal rights.
If someone asked you in 1905 whether Jews were capable of creating a democratic state in Palestine, you would have laughed and said, No, they are too reactionary and disunited. Had you been asked the same question in 1929, you'd have said, No, they're simply a colonial extension of Europe and will fold when the Brits quit Palestine. In 1947, you'd have said, No, they're simply a gaggle of refugees hallucinating peoplehood.
False dichotomy. Xenophobia is nothing if not transcultural.
Arab-Muslim xenophobia was directed in particular at Jews (although I assume it would also have been directed at a Christian faction attempting to settle Palestine) because Muslims consider Jews and others their inferiors, and Europeans usurpers who have no right to live in "Arab" lands. Still, when Europeans from the Balkans were settled in Jordan, there was no fifty-year war, even though Circassians were placed in what's now Jordan, in large, disruptive numbers, by the ruling foreign power. The key is that the foreign rulers were Muslims and the Circassians were Muslims. Even though the Circassians were at first resented for taking up elite positions in society (where they persist to this day), they ultimately were accepted.
But Arab Muslims could not accept Jews in Palestine because they were Jews.
I am not alone in claiming that Arab anti-Zionism goes well beyond a reaction to any old set of foreigners interposing themselves on Arab territory, and is in fact an objection to Jews per se.
"A young Shiite scholar named Amal Saad-Ghoryaeb has advanced in Lebanon what is a controversial argument: that Hezbollah is not merely anti-Israel but deeply, theologically, anti-Jewish. ... Saad-Ghoryaeb calls Israel "an aberration, a colonialist state that embraces its victimhood in order to displace another people." [Not altogether inaccurate, IMO.] Yet her opposition to anti-Semitism seemed sincere, as when she described the anti-Jewish feeling that underlies Hezbollah's ideology. 'There is a real antipathy to Jews as Jews,' she said. 'It is exacerbated by Zionism, but it existed before Zionism.' She observed that Hezbollah, like many other Arab groups, is in the thrall of a belief system tht she called 'moral utilitarianism.' ... 'For the Arabs, the end often justifies the means, even if the means are dubious, ' she said. 'If it works, it's moral.'"
"In her book [Hezbollah: Politics and Religion], she argues that Hezbollah's Koranic reading of Jewish history has led its leaders to believe that Jewish theology is evil. She criticizes the scholar Bernard Lewis for downplaying the depth of traditional Islamic anti-Judaism, especially when compared with Christian anti-Semitism. 'Lewis commits the...grave error of depicting traditional Islam as more tolerant of Jews...thereby implying that Zionism was the cause of Arab-Islamic anti-Semitism,' she writes."
The article goes on to say that Saad-Ghorayeb prefers to label this phenomenon "anti-Judaism" as opposed to antisemitism, thereby localizing the hatred in theology, not race. She notes that Hizballah offers a remedy for Judaism that the Nazis did not: conversion to Islam.
All contexts are indentical, huh? Situations are reproducible? If a few stray facts escape the model, ignore them.
As I've already said, some Arabs had no trouble with Zionism. In fact, a great number of Arabs migrated to Palestine in the pre-state era because of the improvements wrought by Zionism (and, to some extent, the British). The "anxieties" you gloss over were often induced by landed elites and rabid Islamists. One could attribute them to envy, xenophobia, greed, fear of change, or plain religious intolerance just as readily as to the calculatedly bland "they didn't wish to become a minority on their own land"--land Arabs had in quite a few cases sold to the Jews.
Message # 1054
thanks for reminding me that Central/Eastern European secular socialism ended up a totalitarian nightmare....
That's why I could not take your blanket equation of secularism and liberalism too seriously. After all, the Nazis, the Stalinists and various authoritarian nationalist regimes have been secular too.
There is no blanket equation for anything.
JUST A NOTE ON HITLER AND THE NAZIS:
The Religion of Hitler
Hitler seeking power, wrote in Mein Kampf. "... I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews. I am doing the Lord's work." Years later, when in power, he quoted those same words in a Reichstag speech in 1938.
Three years later he informed General Gerhart Engel: "I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so." He never left the church, and the church never left him. Great literature was banned by his church, but his miserable Mien Kampf never appeared on the Index of Forbidden Books.
He was not excommunicated or even condemned by his church. Popes, in fact, contracted with Hitler and his fascist friends Franco and Mussolini, giving them veto power over whom the pope could appoint as a bishop in Germany, Spain and Italy. The three thugs agreed to surtax the Catholics of their countries and send the money to Rome in exchange for making sure the state could control the church.
>>>>>>>>>
Those who would make Hitler an atheist should turn their eyes to history books before they address their pews and microphones. Acclaimed Hitler biographer, John Toland, explains his heartlessness as follows: "Still a member in good standing of the Church of Rome despite detestation of its hierarchy, he carried within him its teaching that the Jew was the killer of god. The extermination, therefore, could be done without a twinge of conscience since he was merely acting as the avenging hand of god..."
ANYWAY
Garbage in is garbage out.
I can only wonder how much of the rest of your logorrhea is securely anchored in reality and how much is merely pseudo-reality stated to give as much support as possible to your contention.
When I have time I will try to read the rest of your posts.
AND
I am quite sure you all you bothered to read of the review Andonly referenced was the end.
Oh give me a break. Merchant Jews were welcomed by the absolute ruling powers, not necessarily by the locals. The locals took what they were given, didn't they?
Jews were imported from place to place, as were all populations the authorities wished to use to consolidate power or shore up economic circumstances. Jews were welcome only so long as they were subordinate to Muslim power.
"Jewish communities in Egypt, Morocco, and the Ottoman empire (including Greece and the Balkans) included a substantial population of refugees. But these Sephardic Jews were not greeted in these Muslim lands the same way the Zionists were greeted in Palestine. Why? The reason is obvious: the Zionists came to Palestine to make a state and, implicitly, to render some Arabs a minority within that new state."
Nonsense. One way and another Arabs were rendered minorities in various localities throughout the Muslim empire. The salient issue was not "minoritisation" but Jewish authority and power in iconographically Muslim territory.
For some years after 1967 they weren't under military occupation, PE, nor were their rights especially restricted. Then, in response to the antics of the PLO, they were.
Well, I suggested as much in #3 of Message # 1000 but people don't agree.
In 1930, there were 170,000 Jews in Palestine. Between 1930 and 1939, some 275 000 Jewish immigrants were added. Between 39 and 51, about 700,000. Are you telling me all these people, mostly from Eastern Europe, were woolly-eyed hippies? Sorry, but I don't believe it.
"...irrespective of the population you presume must have been illiberal."
No, I don't assume they were illiberal. I just have no reason to believe they were so liberal that, when confronted with the same prospect as European settler populations would have confronted in other parts of the world had they permitted majority rule, they would have acted differently from those other European settlers.
I also have no reason to believe they did not share the European prejudices of the day, apart from a handful of utopian socialist daydreamers.
It would be interesting to research the political behaviour of South African Jews before the founding of the state of Israel (when most of them emigrated). I have read that while some did participate in anti-apartheid organisations the majority of the Jewish community in South Africa identified with the ruling whites. But I'm not sure about that.
"...you ignore the extent to which the Zionists desperately needed the goodwill of supporting western nations merely to found a state, let alone prosper."
In the early years, such support was surely not predicated on whether the Arabs had a vote in Israel. South Africa had good relations with Western Europe until the 1960s.
What is the relevance of this sentence in the context of replying to my rhetorical question about why European Jewish settlers ought to have been any different from other European settlers when it came to prospects of majority rule?
Why insist on a generic desire of colonizers to live under their own majority rule, when in this case the alternative was to be persecuted and slaughtered in the wake of having been persecuted and slaughtered? To my mind it's a miracle Arabs were not driven out of Israel altogether, and were given nominal rights."
Precisely. That's why the European Jewish settlers were perhaps even less likely to abide native majority rule than other European settlers.
If someone asked you in 1905 whether Jews were capable of creating a democratic state in Palestine, you would have laughed and said, No, they are too reactionary and disunited.
To the contrary, I think I would have agreed with Joseph Chamberlain, the colonial secretary in the early 1900s and the father of Neville, that Jews would have made excellent, industrious settlers who would have set up model British crown colonies all over the world. It's too bad Weizman rejected Uganda as the Jewish homeland. It would have been interesting to see how it would have turned out.
They have adopted aspects of Israeli culture, including having assimilated to democracy.
This makes absolutely no sense at all. I would agree that Arab Muslims could not abide the idea of being ruled by Jews and being made a minority within a Jewish state, but it flatly contradicts historical reality to suppose that the mere presence of Jews is what incited their hostility. After all, more than a million Jews lived had already been living in Arab lands, some Sephardim refugees from Iberia and the Mizrahim having a more ancient presence. There had also been non-European Jews in Palestine, who did not incite hostility like the European Jews. What incited Arab hostility was, as I said earlier, the influx of specifically European Jews with a European culture, who sought to create a Jewish state in which some Arabs naturally would become a minority.
Also, Jewish land purchases created landless Arabs. The Jews of the Second Aliyah were, as you well know, communtarian socialists who believed in the labour theory of value and vowed not to "exploit" native labour. Thus, when Jews bought lands (yes, from rich Arabs), the Arab tenant farmers working on them were evicted and made landless for the glory of socialism and for the sake of putting an end to the exploitation of man by man.
So what? The question is, did the presence of Jews prior to Zionism incite Muslim Arab hostility? No.
"One way and another Arabs were rendered minorities in various localities throughout the Muslim empire."
Absolute nonsense. Tell me one place where Arab Muslims were rendered a demographic minority under foreign rule before the advent of the Jewish state. The fact that the Ottomans ruled Arab lands did not make the Arabs a minority in Syria or Egypt. We've been over this before. Ottoman rule was like British or French rule: the empires were administered by imperial officials temporarily in situ or local collaborators (such as the Hashemites of the Hejaz). Neither the Ottomans nor the European powers settled Turkish or European colonists in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. In the two instances where colonial settlement took place -- Algeria and Libya --the Arabs resisted violently.
Or the Palestinians of Israel have responded to incentives and circumstances which are different from those faced by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza.
If they are animated by one shared mythohistory and a beleief in one common future, and especially if they can put aside their differences to create a future for themselves, including resurrecting their common dead languge, then in some important respect they must be, quite evidently, one people.
You insisted in the past that Muslims are not a people, that the notion of ummah is as halucinatory as Jews' self conception as a people. Well, I'm afraid you are being proven wrong. Many Muslims currently believe what they believe about the world in part because it is "Muslim" to hold certain beliefs.
As I said once before--and you will undoubtedly still fail to understand--religion can be a vector for culture--for shared beliefs, senses of history or interpretations of reality, and future ambitions.
I didn't say it did. Insaid the prospect of Jewish power incited their hostility. This depsite the fact that the prospect of Jewish power probably could not rationally have been considered less benign than Ottoman power had been.
"What incited Arab hostility was, as I said earlier, the influx of specifically European Jews with a European culture, who sought to create a Jewish state in which some Arabs naturally would become a minority."
Minoritization surely causes problems, but minoritization alone does not account for endless wars in which the enemy is vilified to the absurd extent that Arab Muslims vilify Jews.
Well, I have no doubt the Jews of Israel are one people today. I've been talking about the Jewish communities of the world before the advent of Zionism and the foundation of Israel. And all they had in common was a "shared mythohistory", which is shared by Icelanders and Germans too but that doesn't make them one people.
"You insisted in the past that Muslims are not a people, that the notion of ummah is as halucinatory as Jews' self conception as a people. Well, I'm afraid you are being proven wrong."
No I don't think so. In almost every multiethnic or multilingual Muslim country in the world, there are, or have been, separatist groups who retain a distinct identity based on language and ethnicity. The notion of ummah is a pipedream based on a fancy, much professed but litle practised.
The European prejudices of the day? Well if what you mean was that Zionists hated Arabs, they sure did after a few gruesome massacres of Jews pre-statehood, which occurred in spite of relatively good relations in many places.
Anyway, I'm afraid this tranfer of an argument from some other thread taxes me too much just now. I've lost track of the time and missed the only TV comedy I ever bother to watch.
Well, if by "Jewish power" you mean that Arabs would become a demographic minority in a land they considered theirs but would be ruled by the alien majority, yes I can agree.
This depsite the fact that the prospect of Jewish power probably could not rationally have been considered less benign than Ottoman power had been."
The Ottomans left Arab society virtually untouched. European Jews radically altered Arab society. I'm not sure why it should be irrational to be content with the former but wary of the latter.
"Minoritization surely causes problems, but minoritization alone does not account for endless wars in which the enemy is vilified to the absurd extent that Arab Muslims vilify Jews."
Well, I didn't say minoritisation accounts for the endless Arab-Israeli wars. As I argued last year (?), the Arab-Israeli conflict fits very well into the pattern of other ethnic territorial conflicts, which always involve racial vilification. Armenians vilify Turks at least as much as Arabs vilify Jews.
No. I'm saying these people believed Arabs would one day accept Jewish power as a benevolent force for good, whereupon there would no longer be a conflict and the necessity of maintaining a Jewish majority would be moot.
They believed they would transform the Arabs as they had transformed the land.
It's exactly as speculative as what you've said, just more attentive to the possibilities for variation based on particulars, not gross generalities.
The Ottomans settled Circassians and other European Muslim refugees in Jordan, and they did this entirely for political reasons, to shore up support for the regime which was until then flagging in the region. (The Bedouin were not altogether loyal.) The influx was resisted at first, as the settlers were relative elites who displaced locals economically and in positions of official power. But eventually the outsiders were assimilated, partly by force I believe, and Ottoman power was reinforced. They now comprise a large proportion of the honor guard of King Abdullah.
Anyway, I'm not sure why you're going on about minoritization when Jews never came close to making minorities of Arabs throughout Palestine. Before 1948, it's hard to see how the Arabs were worried chiefly about minoritization. And as you've pointed out yourself, the Arabs who became a minority in Israel adjusted pretty well, all things considered.
I some cases it certainly did, PE. The "pogroms" were far less frequent than in Europe, but they were far from nonexistent, and I believe you are aware of this.
I'll take a page from your book and say, so what? The evicted feudal Arabs (who according to the Shaw Commission were often compensated by the Jewish Agency before 1927, despite the absence of any law compelling them to do so, in order to keep favor with British) could have adjusted to other means of making a living--and surely did, just as the issue of their dispossession was employed as a poltical tool of Arab elites opposing Zionism. The western port cities had become centers of industry and Arabs were migrating there in significant numbers from surrounding areas, including places outside Palestine.
One would think the disenfranchisement of fellaheen was the first and most egregious instance in world history of economic dislocation, given all the weight of guilt hanging off of socialist Zionism over the horribly displaced tenant farmers. But the Brits investigated some 3000 claims of displacement, threw out all but about 600, and for these tenants the Development Agency was to provide irrigable land or compensation to allow the farmers to move to cities.
Gosh, the Jews were awful, weren't they. But the fact is, there were better paying opportunities out there than tenant farming, in part because of the Jews, and Arabs were surely aware of this fact because their standard of living rose as they took advantage of it. Between 1922 and 1947 the Arab population of Palestine increased more than it had done in the previous four hundred years.
Zionists weren't the only immigrants. They weren't the only outsiders. And Arabs under British rule had no more natural right to be there than Jews did.
On several counts, your position seems to be that the Israeli population is generally similar to those found in Western European and Western European-settled countries. That is also my position. On other occassions, you evade this comparison by saying that the acceptance of Israelis to liberal norms is less than that of Western Europeans. I disagree.
While Israel now has numerous Asian and African Jews, and large segments of its population come from areas of Eastern Europe, a place with few liberal values, Jews from Western Europe are the most important conceptual founders of Israel. In addition, European Jews, in general, tend to be more liberal and better-educated than their European counterparts from the same country (a French Jew is better-educated and more liberal than the average Frenchman; a Russian Jew is better-educated and more liberal than the average Russian, etc.). So on the whole, I think its fairly safe to consider Israel as having largely the same norms as those countries in Western Europe. There are some assumptions here, but no more than the assumptions you are making.
You make what I think is an apt comparison of Israelis with minority European populations, which settled outside of Europe, but still originated from countries with liberal norms. You note that just as those Europeans governed far less liberally with their majority native populations, so the Jews would have probably adjusted their own values if the Arabs were a majority in Jewish-governed areas. I agree. Andonly is right that Jews probably faced a more serious and immediate threat than did your examples of Western European settlers, but I don't think it would have mattered. The Jews did not found Israel to be ruled by Arabs.
continued... That's what I've said in the past, and that's what I still believe. But I said the above in reference to the UK, a country whose social-cultural norms are solidly liberal and democratic. The only reason you suppose I have contradicted myself with respect to Israel and its lack of a constitution is that you think Israel has also the same norms. But Israel's norms are probably more fragile and contigent than the UK's.
I agree, but it's one of degree. If you were to transport several million British citizens to someplace like Israel, and force upon them the same conditions that Israel has today, what sort of committment to democracy, equal rights uder the law, and nondiscriminatory behavior towards whatever indigenous people with which they cohabited, would those Brits have? (You have already answered this question in a slightly different context, but you seem to evade giving the same answer here.)
Ther are some major exceptions that PE has brought up -- such as some Jewish laws -- but despite their pervasiveness, they seem easily avoidable, or at least should be considered problematic rather than oppressive.
good night
Message # 1089
Anybody who thinks Hitler was a practising Roman Catholic and the Third Reich was a theocracy doesn't know the first thing about the Nazi period. Read a book on the Third Reich instead of getting partisan-hack information from www.infidels.org, a site for atheists devoted to polemics against theists.
I never claimed that he was a practicing Roman Catholic or that the Third Reich was a theocracy -- only that Hitler was not a secularist and that religion was an accepted part of his Fascist state.
(BTW: My father fought in WW2 and routinely interrogated captured German soldiers. He thought it was funny that both sides believed God was them and German soldiers had 'Gott mit uns' on their belt buckles.)
Hitler and Religion
Rudolph Hess was Hitler's longtime confidante (and Hitler's deputy Fuehrer until his bizarre flight across the lines), and Hitler dictated Mein Kampf to him. Hess was a Christian, and at Nuremberg he stated that "No matter what human beings do I shall some day stand before the judgement seat of the Eternal. I shall answer to Him, and I know he will judge me innocent".
Heinrich Himmler was the head of the much-feared SS. Himmler was a devout Catholic who attended mass regularly, and he ordered all SS troopers to make the following oath: "I swear before God this holy oath, that I shall give absolute confidence to the Fuehrer of the German Reich and people."
>>>>>>>>>>>
Information that Hitler was not religious seems to have come from only two sources:
Martin Bormann was Hitler's private secretary and he was non-religious. He wished to make it appear as if Hitler shared his views, and his accounts of Hitler's opinions vary wildly and suspiciously from all others. The actual conversations in "Hitler's Table Talk" were recorded by civil servants Heim and Piker, and the latter complained that "no confidence" could be placed in Bormann's edited versions of them. Bormann took all the manuscripts for himself, produced edited versions, and then destroyed the originals. Given Bormann's suspicious editorial activities, his uncorroborated versions of those conversations cannot be considered credible evidence. Many anti-Christian quotes attributes to Hitler actually came from Bormann himself (for example, Bormann once said that "one can either be a German or a Christian, but not both", and overzealous Christian apologists have widely promoted the "mistaken" impression that the quote came from Hitler himself). He became very close to Hitler by the last days of the war, but by then, Hitler had become quite insane.
Hermann Rauschning was an obscure provincial official with no real standing in the Nazi party, no authority, and no serious ties to Hitler. His conversations with Hitler are widely thought to be entirely fictional, ie- they did not take place at all.
AND
There are enough secular villains about without including Hitler.
Glancing through some of your posts:
I can only repeat (Message # 1087):
I can only wonder how much of the rest of your logorrhea is securely anchored in reality and how much is merely pseudo-reality stated to give as much support as possible to your contention.
And I still wonder if you bothered to read all of the review Andonly referenced?
You also evaded my question:
I am curious to know your evaluation of what the Arabs would have done with the Jews if the Czechs had not supplied the nascent Israel with arms (while the West waited for Israel to be annihilated).
AND
I am seriously wondering if our last exchange was simply based on the fact that you did not know that "proper noun" = "proper name"?
It would explain a lot of the confusion.
IN ANY CASE
The conjecture that you are mightily laboring to "prove" is -- fortunately or unfortunately --simply conjecture.
It would be more to the point to consider the actual scenario rather than possible, or even plausible, pseudo-scenerios.
I realize now I must carefully delineate everything for you.
So to be clear:
My Message # 1096 in no way implies or insinuates that Hitler's Germany was a theocracy or that Hitler was a practicing Roman Catholic
ONLY
that Hitler was not a secularist and that religion was an accepted part of his Fascist state.
So your statement Message # 1089:
Anybody who thinks Hitler was a practising Roman Catholic and the Third Reich was a theocracy doesn't know the first thing about the Nazi period. Read a book on the Third Reich instead of getting partisan-hack information from www.infidels.org, a site for atheists devoted to polemics against theists.
Is simply misdirecting garbage rhetoric.
I guess I am really puzzled why you should even bother to make such a statement.
Maybe you could explain your 'reasoning' for your statement?
AND
Perhaps, even quote a reliable source to definitively show that:
Hitler was a secularist and that religion was NOT an accepted part of his Fascist state.
(I doubt that you are capable of a rational response.)
Ouch:
God was WITH them
A sound enough summary of realist Zionist intent, at least after Jabotinsky. But I still cannot get past PE's hypothetical itself to his conclusion that Jews would have run an apartheid state had they not been a majority. I simply can't envision much of a state at all, let alone sufficient Jewish power within it to establish an apartheid regime, had Jews been a minority. The threat of Jews achieving a majority at some point in the future would have insured perpetual civil strife once the Brits had gone, Jewish marginalization, and the ultimate absorption of Palestine into Transjordan or Egypt.
The only conceivable way this (Jewish minority regime) could have happened--unless someone here can come up with a scenario beyond my powers of imagination--is if we discount PE's "given" that Arabs would have continued to reject the large (but in 1948 still minority) Jewish presence in Palestine and instead submitted themselves to Jewish rule in the creation of a state. Eastern European Zionist idealists initially deceived themselves into believing such a thing was possible, but they were disabused of the notion well before 1948.
I am saying a Jewish apartheid state not only was unlikely but (unless I'm missing something) impossible.
"It would be misleading to give the impression that the persecution of the Protestants and Catholics by the Nazi state tore the German people asunder or even greatly aroused the vast majority of them... And even fewer paused to reflect that under the leadership of Rosenberg, Bormann and Himmler, who were backed by Hitler, the Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early tribal Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. As Bormann, one of the men closest to Hitler, said publicly in 1941, 'National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable'.
What the Hitler government envisioned for Germany was clearly set out in a thirty-point programme for the 'National Reich Church' drawn up during the ar by Rosenberg, an outspoken pagan, who among his other offices held that of 'the Führer's Delegate for the Entire Intellectual and Philosophical Education and Instruction of the National Socialist Party'. A few of its thirty articles convey the essentials:
5. The National Reich Church of Germany is determined to exterminate irrevocably... the strange and foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill-omened year of 800.
13. The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible in Germany....
19. On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf...."
[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L Shirer]
The 'religious' goals of the Nazis sound a bit like those of the French Revolution: abolish religion as we know it, but affect to become pagans. Of course no one literally becomes a pagan; paganism in modern Europe is a codeword for the abolition of religion.
Caucasian settlers in the Levant amounted to several thousand, hardly comparable to the hundreds of thousands of Jews who settled in the lands to the east of the Jordan river. Moreover, the Caucasians had no aspiration to sovereign statehood unlike the Zionist Jews.
[ Some off-topic notes: Firstly, the Circassians are not Europeans. They are from the Caucasus, an area to the east of Turkey and north of Iran, therefore Asia. Secondly, the Ottomans settled Circassians, Chechens and other peoples from the Caucasus all over the Ottoman empire. The Chechens are notable for having supplied a general who crushed the the PLO's Black September uprising in 1970 on behalf of the Hashemites. ]
"Anyway, I'm not sure why you're going on about minoritization when Jews never came close to making minorities of Arabs throughout Palestine."
??? Jews were settling in Palestine to found a homeland. Yes? Zionism was about a Jewish homeland. Yes? The British had promised a homeland in Palestine for the Jews. Yes? It's hardly shocking that such motives were interpreted as desires to found, ultimately, a Jewish state in which Arabs would be "minoritised". And the sudden presence of hundreds of thousands of Jews reinforced the impression.
"And as you've pointed out yourself, the Arabs who became a minority in Israel adjusted pretty well, all things considered."
Well, maybe if they had been given a window into the future they might have been comforted.
We are trying to explain Arab hostility to large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine. Yes? You explain it primarily in terms of some intrinsic hostility to Jews on the part of Arab Muslims. I explain it in terms of the fear and anxiety of fundamental changes in the way of life that are common to many peoples. Most people don't like to have their lives suddenly transformed, and most people don't like to suddenly become a minority in an alien state if they had been part of the dominant group before. So in the context of explaining such fears, it's irrelevant whether displaced Arabs could have taken other jobs.
"...But the fact is, there were better paying opportunities out there than tenant farming, in part because of the Jews, and Arabs were surely aware of this fact because their standard of living rose as they took advantage of it."
According to the Hope-Simpson report: "Arab farmers were suffering from severe economic difficulties. Many were tenant farmers who owed large amounts of money and lacked the means to ensure successful agricultural endeavors. Others were simply unemployed. The report indicated that the Jewish policy of hiring only Jews was responsible for the deplorable conditions in which the Arabs found themselves."
I am aware that life for Jews in Muslim lands was not utopia, but I am not aware that Jews in Arab lands, whether relatively late arrivals like the Sepharadim refugees from Iberia or the more ancient Mizrahim, experienced the sort of hostility that the European Zionists would encounter in Palestine.
Message # 1120: "I simply can't envision much of a state at all, let alone sufficient Jewish power within it to establish an apartheid regime, had Jews been a minority."
Why? The Jews won the war in 1948 did they not? That victory was not predicated on the demographic shift in the population of the areas held by the Jews. In other words, there was sufficient Jewish power.
After the initial Arab Islamic conquests, of course the Muslim Arabs were a minority in most of the conquered lands, though a ruling minority. However, in all Arab-conquered lands except the Maghreb, Arab Muslims became the demographic majority well before modern times. In the Maghreb, Muslim Berbers were, and continue to be today, the demographic majority, though always under Muslim Arab rule. In Spain, Arab Muslims were also a minority, ruling over Berbers and Spaniards. In other words, whenever Arabs have ever been a demographic minority, they have been so as rulers who themselves were recent migrants, NOT as a group whose ruling status or majority status was suddenly transformed by a demographic shift which made them into a minority.
The only exception is Palestine. In Palestine, the Arabs faced two prospects: (1) demographic "minoritisation" due to an influx of European immigrants, and (2) incorporation into an alien state. This was entirely a new experience. Being incorporated into the Ottoman or French or British empires did not alter the demographics of the territories in which Arabs lived. The creation of Lebanon, which empowered the Christian Arabs, constituted #2 but not #1.
I am not saying that the Arab response to Zionist settlement was the right response, just that it is a common reaction of peoples facing sudden 'minoritisation'.
No. My position is that Israel is a liberal democracy, somewhat less liberal than the countries of North America, Western Europe and Australasia, but a liberal democracy nonetheless. Also the values and norms upon which the democracy is based, are probably more fragile and subject to change than those in the three aforementioned regions.
"...Jews from Western Europe are the most important conceptual founders of Israel."
I thought the "conceptual founders of Israel" were predominantly Russian and Polish Jews, like Weizmann and Sokolow. Even Herzel was from Budapest. Western European Jews like Baron de Rothschild were important financiers of the Zionist project.
[ Forget French Jews for a moment. Most of them did not immigrate to Palestine. ]
Well, I don't agree that "educated" automatically means "liberal". If I am not mistaken, the majority of Jews living in Eastern Europe in the inter-war period had still been educated in the religious schools. If this is wrong, I would like to know what percentage of Eastern European Jews had received or were receiving a secular education, as opposed to a religious one, in the inter-war period.
Jews in the Soviet Union would of course have been receiving a completely secular education, but I reckon Soviet education was hardly a liberalising mechanism.
But, education aside, actual political experience is surely important, and I can think of no Eastern European country that had any kind of actual liberal democratic experience, with the exceptin of Czechia, not the greatest source of Zionist migrants.
Yes, that is true on the micro-level.One may think of Mount Lebanon, Jerusalem and of Coptic districts in rural Egypt (and, of course, of the European parts of the Ottoman Empire). But I cannot think of any instance where a Muslim majority was made into a minority because of population transfers.
I will admit your point is not implausible. However,
Message # 1113: "Again, given the conditions they face, Israelis act much like western Europeans would act in the same circumstances."
Well, the settlers did eventually give up on Algeria and the whites did eventually submit to majority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. An analogous action would be for the Israelis to annex the West Bank and Gaza and make their inhabitants Israeli citizens and accept the return of other Palestinian refugees.
Message # 1122
If I remember correctly, ironically Rosenberg was, at least, part Jewish.
Whether Hitler actually took 'paganism' seriously and would have really tried to establish a Nordic religion (or even some form of Nordic 'Christianity') is matter of conjecture. And, the 'pagan' conjecture is pushed by those who simply could not believe that Christianity could anyway be involved with Hitler's Germany.
Unfortunately and not unsuprisingly, the use of Christianty by Hitler is well recorded -- as well as his strongly pro-Christian comments.
It is interesting that Shirer glosses of the fact that Himmler was a practicing Catholic -- and simply lumps him with Borman and Rosenberg.
And, it is also unfortunate that history is usually written by those with an agenda.
Possibly, as Hitler's Germany becomes part of more distant history, a more objective look will be taken. Already, it is being noted that the regime was against smoking, alcohol being drunk by pregnant women; as well as pro both ecology and physical fitness.
The truth is out there....... But where. That is the question.
ANYWAY
Enough. Other things to do.
glosses OVER
Yes, well, Transient1a of course has no agenda, just as Transient1a is no tribal, nationalistic feelings about his ancestry.
Was Shirer some kind of evangelical Christian who had a stake in showing the Nazis to be weird pagans? Not as far as I know.
"We are trying to explain Arab hostility to large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine. Yes? You explain it primarily in terms of some intrinsic hostility to Jews on the part of Arab Muslims."
Not exactly. I do not discount at all that in the pre-state period there should have been some natural Arab reaction to having their backward, unprosperous way of life altered by outsiders. It is the intensity of the rejectionist Arab reaction (before the 1948 exodus) that seems out of proportion to the perceived threat.
All I am insisting on is that you take into account, when considering the vehemence and duration of the conflict over the establishment of Israel, the fact that Muslims could not abide being ruled by Jews. You refuse to do that. You call up extinct (and disputed) paradigms of Islamic tolerance of dhimmis to claim that Muslims really couldn't have objected that much to Jews per se, that they simply objected to being made minorities in "their own" lands by non-Arabs. But Arab tolerance of dhimmis, such as it was, had already begun to evaporate by the early 19th century, and not just in Palestine.
"I explain it in terms of the fear and anxiety of fundamental changes in the way of life that are common to many peoples. Most people don't like to have their lives suddenly transformed, and most people don't like to suddenly become a minority in an alien state if they had been part of the dominant group before. So in the context of explaining such fears, it's irrelevant whether displaced Arabs could have taken other jobs."
They weren't part of the "dominant group," they were serfs in an undeveloped swamp. They were as un-dominant as they could possibly be, in 1890 numbering a little over half a million in a territory the size of New Jersey! Arabs only gained such numbers in the major cities as to consider themselves a significant majority of anything after the Zionist expansion was well under way. (The population of Palestine more than tripled in the sixty years before 1947.) Before 1948 the vast majority of Arabs in Palestine were not displaced by Jews at all, they were simply competitors in the burgeoning colonial territory.
The issue is, in no small part, Islam. Always has been. If you want to say that Arab Muslims did not wish to have their right to supremacy over non-Muslims permanently removed by the imposition of Jewish rule, I can go along with that. (This issue was never strictly local; much of the antagonism toward Jewish statehood came from outside Palestine.) But don't frame the issue as some purely pastoral, generic land-loss matter. The fellaheen were not the people who drove the reaction against the nascent Jewish state. The wealthy, hypocritical elites who themselves had sold land to the Jews were, and their cause was legitimized for the street by notably anti-Jewish religious figures.
Islamic history and its relationship to majorities and minorites spans some 13 centuries, and you're talking to me about modern times?
Muslims have not always been the majority where they ruled, and the minorities were in various cases actually the majority, if considered collectively.
Of course, to fix that situation they were often expelled from territory or forcibly converted. Judaism sort of hamstrings itself, being reluctant to invite conversion, don't you think? The obvious solution to the Palestinian problem is to encourage the Pals to become Jews. Which, if land were their only concern, they would do in great numbers.
"Well, maybe if they had been given a window into the future they might have been comforted."
Not all Arabs in Palestine shared the rejectionists repeated failures of imagination.
This conceit is addressed in detail in the PDF link I provided of Bat Ye'Or's rebuttal to Mark Cohen on the same subject.
Power to repel attack from abroad, but not necessarily to contain it within Israeli borders.
There was also enormous loss of life on the Jewish side. This was a conflict that could not have been sustained forever. I think the long-term sustenance of the Israeli victory would simply not have been possible had there remained an Arab majority in Israel, since a rejectionist Arab majority would not have permitted the state to cohere and would surely have encouraged a repeat soon after of the '48 invasion from abroad.
You can't extrapolate from the quiescence of the existing Arab-Israeli minority that an Arab majority would have been subdued through apartheid.
This exceedingly well-documented book lays bare the false claim that Jewish settlers dispossessed Arab people from their land in Palestine. The examination of records from 1830 onward will shock most readers.
In the first place, Palestine's population barely grew for 250 years--rising from 205,000 Moslems, Christians and Jews in 1554 to only 275,000 in 1800. In the second, records from 1830, 1863, 1878 and 1893 and 1917, among others, demonstrate that when the heaviest Jewish immigration began in 1880, a large proportion of the 425,000 to 440,000 Arabs in Palestine were themselves recent immigrants.
Many came from Egypt: The 1831 invasion by the Egyptian Khedive, Ibrahim Pasha, forced Palestine fellaheen, urban dwellers and Bedouin to permanently flee Ottoman military drafts and taxes. The 1837 Great Earthquake and epidemics that followed further cut their numbers. In their wake came Ibrahim Pasha's Egyptian Arabs, who settled the empty land. In 1831 alone, 6,000 Egyptian Arabs settled in Akko. But the Egyptian Arab-Hinadi, Ghawarna tribes settled in the Beit Shean and Hula Valleys and in the Jordan Valley towns of Ubeidiya, Delhamiya and Kafer-Miser. In the Hula Valley, the Egyptian ez-Zubeids later sold their land to Jewish settlers from Yessud-Hama'ala. According to an 1893 British Palestine Exploration Fund report, Egyptians composed most of the population in Jaffa.
Arab immigration continued to rise through World War I, despite locusts, the Ottoman draft and more epidemics. Egyptian laborers, contractors and businessmen flooded the country. By 1922, the Moslem population had more than doubled to 566,311, including 62,500 Bedouins. The 1931 Mandatory government census counted 693,147 permanent Moslem residents, including 66,553 Bedouins. It also gave the natural increase of the population as 132,211--57,125 less than the absolute increase. Only illegal Arab immigration explains this contradiction, Avneri shows.
The book also carefully examines numerous historical descriptions of a desolate landscape, composed almost entirely of swamps and deserts, and sold to the Jewish people by absentee Arab landlords, appointed by the Ottoman government, at enormous profits. Dozens of sales are documented specifically, including some by the Egyptian el-Husseini family of Yasser Arafat.
Altogether, this book shatters the Arab claim of dispossession.
Out of proportion to what? It's not out of prorportion to historical experience, as I tried to indicate in Message # 1050 and subsequent posts.
"All I am insisting on is that you take into account, when considering the vehemence and duration of the conflict over the establishment of Israel, the fact that Muslims could not abide being ruled by Jews. You refuse to do that."
No! I have already acknowledged it. You merely won't acknowledge my acknowledgement. I said in Message # 1096: "I would agree that Arab Muslims could not abide the idea of being ruled by Jews". But I do not interpret this refusal as an intrinsic hostility to Jews. It is merely the reluctance of most ethnic groups which have had ruling or majority status in a land they inhabit, to suddenly become a minority in a new alien ethno-state. As for the "vehemence and duration of the conflict over the establishment of Israel", I see no reason to privilege it over the vehemence and duration of other ethnic territorial conflicts. You find it advantageous to see the Palestine conflict in isolation from similar conflicts.
"You call up extinct (and disputed) paradigms of Islamic tolerance of dhimmis....
I have read Bat Ye'or's Islam and Dhimmitude, and in no way am I calling up "extinct and disputed paradigms" of dhimmitude! Not at all. But the Arabs of Palestine wanted to drive the Zionists out. By contrast, Jewish dhimmis in Arab lands, while suffering constraints, humiliations and the occasional pogrom, were not driven out (at least until after the establishment of the state of Israel).
Where is the refusal??? It IS a kind of intolerance to say that you don't want to be ruled by those who do not belong to your "tribe". In the USA, there is a phenomenon called "white flight", the exodus of white residents from the cities precipitated by the influex of blacks into those cities. That surely reflects intolerance, whites not wanting to live among blacks or in cities governed by black politicians.
What I find problematic in your remarks is your inability to understand that my purpose, as evident in Message # 1050 and subsequent posts, is to show that Arab reaction to Zionist immigration was not something unique or extraordinary, but quite typical and precedented in human experience.
"But my point remains that Muslims historically accepted foreign rule, foreign immigration, and foreign domination by elites, no matter how extortionary, as long as those elites were Muslims."
Your point does not remain. I repeat: until the Zionist immigration into Palestine, there had not been a large-scale immigration of foreigners into Arab lands whose presence threatened to make the Arabs a minority under an alien state. The fact that Muslims accepted Ottoman rule is irrelevant, as the Ottomans weren't fiddling with the demographics of Arab countries. You simply refuse to recognise this vast and fundamental difference.
There are two instances of settlement activity by Europeans prior to the Zionist project: the French settlement in Algeria and the Italian attempts to settle Libya. Both met violent resistance.
My argument is, in part, about tribalism and ethnocentrism. The most wretched fellahin could see that his overlords in Jerusalem and Damascus spoke the same language, had the same customs, ate the same food, practised the same religion, looked rather alike, etc. The masses and the elites were not night-and-day different, as the British were in India or the Zionists who came to Palestine.
Message # 1139: "Why did Arabs not consider the Brits a legitimate authority? They weren't Muslims."
Well, regardless of whether the Arabs considered European rulers a legitimate authority or not, the fact remains that several Arab countries acquiesced to European rule without much resistance, as long as there was no settlement activity by European colonists and life was not dramatically changed by foreign rule. To wit, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco --made "protectorates" in the late 19th century -- had not seen violent hostility to French and British rule, unlike Algeria and Libya, both of which were subjected to colonial settlement. Both France and Italy both have long histories of bloody "pacifications" of these two countries and displacement of natives from land. In countries made protectorates much later -- Syria, Jordan and Iraq -- there was a lot of nationalist agitation, much of which originated among Christian Arabs, but not violent resistance movements. So it seems to me that the common thread is the presence or absence of colonial settlement activity and demographic changes.
The issue is Islam only in the very generic sense that inasmuch as most distinct cultural groups do not want to suddenly become a minority in an alien state, Muslim Arabs naturally wanted to be ruled by Muslim Arabs. If the Arabs of Palestine/Syria were all Christians, I would think the result would have been the same -- particularly since the earliest hostility to Zionist immigration came from Christian Arabs.
"But don't frame the issue as some purely pastoral, generic land-loss matter."
I don't think I have done that. Please, once again, consider the point of my Message # 1050, where I only mention dispossession in passing.
Message # 1138: "Further, not all people who naturally dislike being overrun by outsiders resort to brutally slaughtering them while...."
Well, name some salient cases to illustrate your assertion. I have posted several cases from different parts of the world to argue that how the Arabs responded to Zionist immigration was a transcultural norm, not the exception. Moreover, the fact remains that whatever shape or size the Jewish state was going to take, it was obvious that Arabs were going to live in it.
"In fact, where ruling authorities are either brutal enough to suppress such conflicts or else are considered legitimate by the native majority, half-century long fights over intruding minorities do not automatically occur."
I agree. But then you have the third party to thank for that.
Please reread Message # 1126.
Message # 1144: "Power to repel attack from abroad, but not necessarily to contain it within Israeli borders....You can't extrapolate from the quiescence of the existing Arab-Israeli minority that an Arab majority would have been subdued through apartheid."
The Jewish state was armed and the Arabs within Israel were not. Who says they couldn't have imposed their rule?
This is a Zionist article of faith but the view is far from universally accepted. Here is a review of Joan Peters's notorious book From Time Immemorial, by the Israeli scholar Yehoshua Porath, who disputes the article of faith enunciated by Andonly. An exchange of letters follows.
Some exerpts:
"Much of Mrs. Peters's book argues that at the same time that Jewish immigration to Palestine was rising, Arab immigration to the parts of Palestine where Jews had settled also increased. Therefore, in her view, the Arab claim that an indigenous Arab population was displaced by Jewish immigrants must be false, since many Arabs only arrived with the Jews. The precise demographic history of modern Palestine cannot be summed up briefly, but its main features are clear enough and they are very different from the fanciful description Mrs. Peters gives. It is true that in the middle of the nineteenth century there was neither a "Palestinian nation" nor a "Palestinian identity." But about four hundred thousand Arabs—the great majority of whom were Muslims — lived in Palestine....
"As all the research by historians and geographers of modern Palestine shows, the Arab population began to grow again in the middle of the nineteenth century. That growth resulted from a new factor: the demographic revolution. Until the 1850s there was no "natural" increase of the population, but this began to change when modern medical treatment was introduced and modern hospitals were established, both by the the Ottoman authorities and by the foreign Christian missionaries. The number of births remained steady but infant mortality decreased. This was the main reason for Arab population growth, not incursions into the country by the wandering tribes who by then had become afraid of the much more efficient Ottoman troops. Toward the end of Ottoman rule the various contemporary sources no longer lament the outbreak of widespread epidemics. This contrasts with the Arabic chronicles of previous periods in which we find horrible descriptions of recurrent epidemics — typhoid, cholera, bubonic plague—decimating the population".
"The Jews were amazed. In spite of the Jewish immigration, the natural increase of the Arabs—at least twice the rate of the Jews' — slowed down the transformation of the Jews into a majority in Palestine. To account for the delay the theory, or myth, of large-scale immigration of Arabs from the neighboring countries was proposed by Zionist writers. Mrs. Peters accepts that theory completely; she has apparently searched through documents for any statement to the effect that Arabs entered Palestine. But even if we put together all the cases she cites, one cannot escape the conclusion that most of the growth of the Palestinian Arab community resulted from a process of natural increase.....
"Since we are left with no sound basis for Mrs. Peters's figures for the population in the "Jewish-settled areas" in 1893, there is no need to account for the supposed quintupling of the Arab population in those areas by 1947; so dramatic an increase did not take place. It is true nevertheless that during the Mandatory period the Arab population of the coastal area of Palestine grew faster than it did in other areas. But this fact does not necessarily prove an Arab immigration into Palestine took place. More reasonably it confirms the very well-known fact that the coastal area attracted Arab villagers from the mountainous parts of Palestine who preferred the economic opportunities in the fast-growing areas of Jaffa and Haifa to the meager opportunities available in their villages."
Message # 1134
Was Shirer some kind of evangelical Christian who had a stake in showing the Nazis to be weird pagans? Not as far as I know.
As far as I can remember he ended up non-religious.
That his writtings in 1960, as judiciously chosen by you, adequately described the connection between German Nazism and Christianity may or may not be valid. And, it is just possible, Shirer -- although the data was impeccable -- did not, for a variety of reasons, draw the best conclusion.
And it is pointless to keep on claiming that your examples prove that Nazi Germany was secular or 'pagan' -- especially, when substantial evidence points to the the Nazis being particularly adept at using Christianity. And Hitler stating that he thought of himself as a Catholic.
As with many of your scenarios, they are future scenarios. All that can be described is maybe's. And trust to simplistic rhetoric suggest that they are in some fashion, known only to you, uniquely true predictions.
ANYWAY
Already the wheel turns:
The Enduring Allure of Hitlerism
A review of Hitler as Philosophe: Remnants of the Enlightenment in National Socialism, by Lawrence Birken. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995
A curious review of a more curious book:
Views on Race and Religion
Although he is endlessly castigated as "the most notorious racist of the twentieth century," Hitler's racial views were actually quite in harmony with mainstream 19th- and early 20th-century European thinking. "It should be obvious," writes Birken, "that Hitler possessed a 'classical' theory of race which dovetailed nicely with his classical notions of political economy."
>>>>>>>>>
Far from being aberrant or bizarre, his views on race were consistent with those of most prominent Westerners in the decades before the Second World War. And while Birken does not specifically mention it, Hitler's racial views were comparable to those of Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill.
Contrary to popular belief, Hitler never supported notions of breeding a homogenous blond "hyper-Aryan" race. Accepting the reality that the German population consisted of several distinct sub-racial groups, he stressed the German people's national and social unity. A certain degree of racial variety was desirable, he thought, and too much racial blending or homogeneity could be harmful because it would homogenize and thus eliminate superior as well as inferior genetic traits.
Hitler believed that "both conservative prudery and radical eroticism" harmed society, and he opposed birth control because it tended to lower the genetic quality of the society that practices it.
>>>>>>>>
While he was critical of Christianity, Hitler was no atheist. "The religion of Hitlerism was thus essentially a kind of deism," concludes Birken. Like Thomas Jefferson and other prominent early American leaders, Hitler equated God with "the dominion of natural laws throughout the whole universe." Thus, "for Hitler, national socialism was natural socialism."
Attitude Toward Jews
It is "of course, a great mistake to see anti-Semitism as a rejection of Enlightenment values," writes Birken. "On the contrary, the Enlightenment simply secularized rather than destroyed traditional Judeophobia." (No Western thinker was more outspokenly anti-Jewish than Voltaire, the great French philosophe, who regarded the Jews as "enemies of mankind.") The Enlightenment concept of social "fraternity," Birken writes, demands social solidarity, which implies that Jews, as an alien and self-absorbed people, cannot fit in.
Hitler's hostile attitude toward Jews, Birken writes, was neither irrational nor aberrant. He saw "Jews as the personification of a great lie": that is, while they pretended to be merely a religious community, in fact they constituted a self-selected national-ethnic group with international ambitions. Because he regarded the Jews as the enemies of all peoples, Hitler held that combatting Jewish power and influence should be the common duty of all nations -- a view that Birken calls an expression of "Germanic universalism."
What the hell does this mean?
I clearly label speculations as speculations, and conjectures as conjectures.
Message # 1161
I clearly label speculations as speculations, and conjectures as conjectures.
And so?
I do, and so do a handful of non-Jewish mideast scholars who have actually lived in the Arab mideast.
The record of historical experience is usually a selective endeavor.
You erroneously conflate two phenomena: not wanting to live in black neighborhoods and not wanting to be "ruled" by black politicians. The latter phenomenon has not been documented as "white flight"--as far as I'm aware, whites do not flee cities where blacks are elected.
But white flight hese days reflects in most any case you want to examine a failure of governance, black or otherwise, poor economic prospects, increasing crime, bad schools, and rising taxes. Whites do not typically flee cities when a black governor gets elected. They flee when their standard of living plummets.
You are describing, with regard to "white flight," not the understandable desire of people not "to be ruled by those who do not belong to [their] "tribe"", but rather an unreasoning distaste for the guy next door. That is racism, by which I mean the fundamantal loathing of the Other, and it is what has fueled white flight, not the election of blacks to office.
If you want to ascribe to that sort of gut loathing the reaction of the Arabs to the Jews in Palestine, OK, but I believe that buttresses my position better than it supports yours.
You and they are not being logical, given the patterns that are available for all to see, i.e., Arabs resisted violently when they were subjected to colonial settlement but did not do so when they were merely put under foreign administration or when migrants had no chance of founding an alien sovereign state in their midst.
Message # 1165: "The record of historical experience is usually a selective endeavor."
Well, the historical experience I cited was pretty diverse. If you think the Arab reaction to Zionist settlement was out of proportion to something, you should then state what that something is.
I'm sure white flight was not precipitated merely by the election of black politicians, but the election of blacks implies a fundamental shift in the urban population, which is what caused white flight. I do not know whether whites fled to the suburbs also in part because they did not trust black politicians to govern well, but I see no reason to rule that motive out a priori.
"If you want to ascribe to that sort of gut loathing the reaction of the Arabs to the Jews in Palestine, OK, but I believe that buttresses my position better than it supports yours."
I don't know why. I pointed out that a family resemblance exists between the phenomenon of white flight and the Arab hostility to Zionist immigration. The resemblance is in the fear and anxiety caused in the prior inhabitants by an influx of alien peoples into their midst. That's where the analogy really ends, because white flight takes place within a single nation-state where a new and separate sovereignty is not an issue, while for the Arabs the arrival of the Zionist immigrants portended a new nation-state altogether.
If you are compararing with white flight, then it is not only fear and anxiety, but repugnance. Nevertheless, I suspect your analogy is inapt. I agree with Amal Saad-Ghoryab that the anti-Jewish reaction of Arabs is, aside from the understandable nationalism of Palestinians, largely theological and stems not from a distaste for living near Jews (as with white flight from blacks) but an aversion to being governed by them that far, far overshadows the Arab aversion to being governed by Turks or Circassians in places of authority because Jews are supposed to be subservient.
You keep saying that it is natural for Arab Muslims to feel this way. I insist that it is not, since their extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread objection is not to other cultures per se (the Ottomans did so mess with Arab demographics--they did it constantly) but with Muslims being governed by non-Muslims. As you know, the very principle of rejecting governance by non-Msulims is enshrined in Islam.
If you want to locate Arab Muslim rejectionism in ordinary racism, fine, but I think it's more like Christian antisemitism (except that it applies lately not only to Jews) in that it has a religious framework as its foundational justification and thereby is magnified to the point of permanent, hopeless irresolution. God says so, therefore it's right to demand supremacy over interlopers on our conquered lands (which we conquered on account of God's will). More like Hindu nationalism and Jewish settler racism than a sor of haimisch aversion to being governed by "different" folks.
Arab Demographics Prior to British Governance: Dramatic Underpopulation
From the period of the Crusades to the beginning of modern times, the population of Palestine remained at a near constant level. This apparent stability is significant, as populations naturally tend to increase over time. It is estimated that there were 205,000 people living in Palestine in the mid-1500s. By 1800, the population had only grown to 275,000, reflecting about a thousandth of a percent of average growth a year. By 1890, still before any significant Jewish immigration, the population had made a slightly larger jump, to 532,000. But even with this increase, the 19th century growth rate was still a small 0.7% per year. By comparison, in the 1940s the Muslim growth rate in the Middle East was closer to 3.07%.
...Jewish settlers in the 1880s attempted to inhabit the Hula valley, but in some places child mortality rates were nearly 100% because of disease. ...
British Control: Population Shifts and the Beginnings of Growth
As a result of the construction of railroad lines that led to the sea, the population of Haifa tripled and that of Jaffa more than doubled from 1880 to 1910. But while the population shifted toward these areas, the overall growth rates for the country stayed low. According to British investigations, there were 689,275 persons in Palestine in 1915, about 590,000 of whom were Arabs. Given a population in 1890 of 532,000 (473,000 Arab), this still represents only a 0.8% per year growth rate.
While many Arabs may have fled to escape the draft, others were expelled by force. To defend against the British, the Ottomans, still nominally in control, expelled both Jews and Arabs from cities across the coast on the assumption that their nationalistic intentions could lead them to sympathize with the British invaders. This effort was massive: 28,000 Arabs were forced out of Gaza alone.
By 1922, however, just three years later, the Arab population had increased by 80,000 above the 1919 level. After the war had ended and Britain had taken formal control of the area (with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire), Arab population rates recovered quickly and significantly. Many Arabs took advantage of the improved economic conditions that resulted from British administration, and by 1922, the population of Haifa -- which had declined by 30% from 1915 to 1917 due to Ottoman expulsions -- had become greater than it was before the war.
The Zionists, also eager to take advantage of this economic growth, had hoped that the British government, the country`s largest employer, would hire Jews in construction. But the British preferred cheaper foreign labor, and in the period leading up to 1922 they employed 15,000 foreigners (mostly from Egypt and Syria) and only 500 Jews. Despite this low employment rate, the Jewish population continued to grow through immigration. The increasing numbers of these two populations would soon lead to a significant clash.
After years of relative stagnation, the few decades leading up to 1948 saw significant growth in both Arab and Jewish populations. Had the Arab population remained at its pre-World War I growth rate (0.8%) after 1922, one would have expected a population of approximately 785,000 by 1947. But there were in fact between 1.2 and 1.3 million Arabs in all of Palestine by 1947. What could have caused this sudden burst?
To investigate possible causes, it is important to examine where in the country the growth took place. Non-Jewish population growth rates were highest within modern-day sovereign Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip regions. These rates cannot be explained by higher birth rates alone. One major factor accounting for the unexpected growth was the potential for upward mobility that existed in the western cities. The wages of western cities were more attractive, no doubt bringing many people from surrounding areas. Port cities also offered greater employment opportunities, which helps explain the fact that there was a dramatic influx into Haifa and Jaffa relative to cities like Beit-Shean and Jerusalem.
Although this document would be repudiated only a year later, it reflects the widespread and strongly-held belief that the land`s resources could not be shared. Yet this belief was based on the assumption that the state of agriculture could not improve, an assumption that experience would soon prove false.
Another Piece of the Puzzle: Property Ownership
One of the major obstacles faced by Jewish immigrants who tried to purchase land prior to 1948 was the unique system of property ownership established in much of the country. In 1932, 117,869 dunam of land was held by absentee landowners. In most cases, tenant farmers worked the land, creating a dilemma for land purchasers. Even after buying the land from the ``real`` owner, the tenant farmers would generally remain in place.
``We think that the Jewish Companies are not open to any criticism in respect of these transactions. In paying compensation, as they undoubtedly did, to many of the cultivators of land which they purchased in the Plain of Esdraelon [Jezreel Valley] those companies were making a payment which at the time of the transactions the law of Palestine did not require. Moreover, they were acting with the knowledge of the Government.``
Despite this careful attention to the tenant farmers` reimbursement, Arab fellaheen often claimed that Jews had given them little or no compensation. In response, the British launched investigations into over 3,000 claims, of which about 2,500 were ultimately rejected. For the 600 or so claims that were accepted, the Development Department was required to provide 60 dunam of irrigable land or a cash settlement that would presumably allow the farmer to move to a city.
The immigration of Jews to Palestine was thus done both legally and ethically. But the local Arab elite`s complaints about Jewish immigration were not about legality anyway. These leaders claimed that the presence of outsiders would destroy the Arab nature of the country, a claim that can still be heard among Palestinians and pro-Palestinian advocates today.
Of course, the Arab leadership attempted to suppress this information, but it was brought to public attention by Lewis French, the first director of the British Mandatory Government`s Department of Development. The news of the Arab leadership`s hypocrisy eventually led to the collapse of the Arab Executive (the governing Arab body in the Mandate) in the early 1930s. It would not be until 1936 that another body of political leadership would come to exist, in the form of the Arab Higher Committee.
Husayni`s claim of 1300 years of uninterrupted Arab presence in Palestine is clearly a convenient simplification. Any statements about the demographics of Palestine before 1948 must recognize the country`s dynamic history. The first half of the 20th century was a period of sweeping changes for the land and all the people living on it -- Arab and Jew.
After remaining nearly stagnant for centuries, the population exploded in modern times due to improved infrastructure, agriculture, and immigration, both Jewish and Arab. As a result, from 1890 to 1947, in less than sixty years, the population grew from 532,000 to 1,845,560. The Arab population of Palestine grew more from 1922 to 1947 than it had over the previous 400 years.
You've said all these things before, and I have responded to them. But you don't respond to my responses. You keep repeating your previous arguments.
If the Arab rejection of Zionism was fundamentally theological [your word], then why did Arabs not greet Christian European rule with the same violent hostility in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Jordan as they greeted the Zionist settlers in Palestine? And why was it that the only instances in which the Arabs did respond with violent hostility to European rule, were when those Europeans settled or tried to settle colonists en masse in Arab-populated areas (Algeria, Libya, Palestine)?
Yes, it's true that Muslims would prefer to live under Muslim rule. But the very fact that Christians are also supposed to be subservient, but the Arabs acquiesced to being ruled by them everywhere except where European colonial settlement activity took place, fatally undermines your argument that it was being ruled by Jews per se that aroused Arab hostility.
And the Ottomans did not fiddle with Arab demographics, certainly not in any way comparable with the demographic shifts caused by Zionist immigration. If you are going to keep insisting otherwise, then you had better cite some other example than a few thousand Caucasians on the east bank of the Jordan.
"More like Hindu nationalism and Jewish settler racism than a sort of haimisch aversion to being governed by "different" folks"
No, it's not merely aversion to being governed by different folks. As I've said about a hundred times now, it's not alien government per se that matters -- otherwise the Ottomans or the British or the French (in Morocco or Syria) should have aroused violent hostility. It's the demographics! Sudden "minoritisation", especially when coupled with sudden incorporation into a new, alien state, is a cause of ethnic resentment almost everywhere and you just don't recognise it.
I must conclude that you did not read the remarks by Yehoshua Porath in Message # 1154 or the subsequent excerpts, because the remarks you have culled from the Harvard Israel Review do not adequately address Porath's argument.
(1) It is not disputed that the Arab population of Palestine increased in the Mandatory period, and increased faster than in the pre-Mandatory period. But Porath attributes this primarily to the falling infant mortality rate of Arabs. This was made possible by the improvement of medical conditions starting in the mid-19th century thanks to Christian missionary hospitals as well as Ottoman investments. Conditions improved even more under the Mandatory administration. Birth rates need not be higher when infant mortality rates are falling, in order for the population growth rate is to rise. So it is totally irrelevant that, as your HIR piece observes, "these [population growth] rates cannot be explained by higher birth rates alone". No kidding. Higher birth rates didn't occur. Rather, infant mortality rates fell.
(2) The fact that "Non-Jewish population growth rates were highest within modern-day sovereign Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip regions" does not mean the presence of Jews was responsible for it. Porath argues that the economic boom that caused Arabs to move from one part of Palestine to another in search of jobs, especially to the coastal areas, resulted from the establishment of the mandatory government. Unlike Porath, I would allow for spillover or multiplier effects from the Jewish presence, but the effects would have been limited by the fact that Jewish settlers did not hire Arabs or invest in Arab enterprises.
What dejexsterization can do for a thread.
But in a good way. Like those long, pleasurable excretions that make have made shitting into such a central, time-hallowed and socially venerated human activity for millennia immemorial.
Long, hard posts, full of content.
Pe is one of the excruciatingly few able opponents I have come across in this cyber-debate. His urgent need to make me feel nationally illegitimate springs, I believe, from the justified feeling he has of an impending cataclysm.
I'm meeting Gissin today, btw. He says the trip to Washington went very well and GWB was great, just like he hoped he would be. I'll try and milk more out of him today.
I thought the "conceptual founders of Israel" were predominantly Russian and Polish Jews, like Weizmann and Sokolow. Even Herzel was from Budapest. Western European Jews like Baron de Rothschild were important financiers of the Zionist project.
Zionism began as a notion of western Jews, but found its strongest support among Jews from eastern Europe.
Herzl was born in Budapest, but he was educated in Germany and his family lived in Austria. Like many Jews in the west, he thought of himself as a believer in assimilation -- until he covered the Dreyfus Affair for an Austrian newspaper. He then wrote -- in German -- his book on Zionism. Despite his birth in Budapest, Herzl was looked at by eastern European rabbis as a westerner, and despised for that reason. Even as poor eastern Europeans loved to listen to Herzl speak about his dream, their rabbis could not abide that a Jew who spoke little Hebrew and was not knowledgable about Jewish Law, would want to lead Jews back to the promised land.
Herzl also had several collaborators, almost all of whom were western Europeans or long-time transplants like himself. While most Jews in western Europe were happy with their lot, waiting to be assimilated, an important few became allies of Herzl's. Nathan Birnbaum, the leader of Viennese Jewish students organization, coined the word "Zionism". Two chief rabbis (in London and Vienna) were also important supporters. Max Nordau, who drew up much of the important program of Zionism was born in Hungary -- like Herzl -- but also like Herzl, had been a long-time Paris resident before he began to think about Zionism.
continued ... Nevertheless, what Herzl quickly discovered was that the dynamic of Judaism would not come from the westernized elites, but from the poor, huddled masses of the Ostjuden, a people of whom he knew nothing when he began his campaign. He discovered this first when he addressed an audience of poor Jews, of refugee stock, in the East End of London. They called him 'the man of the little people', and 'As I sat on the platform...I experienced strange sensations. I saw and heard my legend being born.' In eastern Europe, he quickly became a myth-like figure among the poor. David Ben Gurion (1886-1973) recalled that, as a ten-year-old boy in Russian Poland, he heard a rumour:'The Messiah had arrived, a tall, handsome man, a learned man of Vienna, a doctor no less." Unlike the sophisticated, middle-class Jews of the West, the eastern Jews could not toy with alternatives, and see themselves as Russians or even Poles. They knew they were Jews and nothing but Jews -- their Russian masters never let them forget it -- and what Herlz now seemed to be offering was their only chance of becoming a real citizen anywhere. To Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), then a second year student in Berlin, Herzl's proposals 'came like a bolt from the blue'. In Sofia, the Chief Rabbi actually proclaimed him the Messiah. As the news got around, Herzl found himself visited by shabby, excitable Jews from distant parts, to the dismay of his fashionable wife, who grew to detest the very word Zionism. Yet these were the men who became the foot soldiers, indeed the NCOs and officers in the Zionist legion; Herzl called them his army of schnorrers.
continued...
Chaim Weizmann is important because he was the first to bridge the gap between east and west. Educated somewhat in the Jewish religious tradition in Russia, he could be taken seriously by the eastern European Rabbis. But Weizmann left Russia as a young man, studied in Berlin, and became a British citizen in 1910, giving him important cachet in the west.
My point was not that French Jews made up a considerable portion of Jewish immigrants to Israel, but that Jews in general -- no matter where they were from in Europe -- were generally more liberal than their gentile counterparts from the same country.
Well, I don't agree that "educated" automatically means "liberal". If I am not mistaken, the majority of Jews living in Eastern Europe in the inter-war period had still been educated in the religious schools. If this is wrong, I would like to know what percentage of Eastern European Jews had received or were receiving a secular education, as opposed to a religious one, in the inter-war period.
I'm using "liberal" in the loose sense of "tolerant" and "ability to share power", not that Jews in Russian and Poland were educated to be democrats.
continued... The central puzzle of Israeli politics is how democracy has been maintained at all, given the lack of democracy in countries of origin, the deep internal divisions, and the permanent state of war. At least part of the answer lies in understanding Jewish political traditions. The Zionist movement was, in large degree, a revolt against Jewish history. But inevitably Zionists were influenced by an extensive Jewish experience of self-government in the East European shtetl. This experience involved political institutions that were voluntary, inclusive, pluralistic, and contentious. It was also a closed system, facing a hostile external world and not equipped to deal with non-Jews as a group. It was marked by the necessity of bargaining, lack of defined hierarchy, proliferation and influence of organized groups, and the reality of power-sharing, rather than undiluted rule of the majority. These patterns of behavior have much in common with what contemporary political scientists call "consensus" democracy, in contrast to the more common majoritarian model.
continued...
Jews from the Soviet Union shouldn't matter as much since those educated in the Soviet system shouldn't have made a large impact on the Jewish state's demographics by the time the political system in Israel was set up in 1948.
PE "Well, the settlers did eventually give up on Algeria and the whites did eventually submit to majority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. An analogous action would be for the Israelis to annex the West Bank and Gaza and make their inhabitants Israeli citizens and accept the return of other Palestinian refugees."
That's one possible analogy. Another one includes the basic line that both sides now claim to support: the foundation of two separate states. The central thesis of this paper is that Israel's political culture is mixed, and contains both democratic and non-democratic traditions. Liberal democracy in Israel was built on religious opposition to arbitrary rule, on pluralism in the Jewish tradition, on the practice of self-government in the Jewish communities of the diaspora, on the quasi-federalism of the Zionist movement, on the voluntarism of the Yishuv, and, finally, on the liberal and social-democratic Weltanschauung of the founding fathers of Zionism. On the other hand, the existing tendencies towards authoritarianism originated in the higher law tradition of religious Orthodoxy, in the absence of civil rights as a basic value in the ideologies of all major political camps, and in the oligarchical-secretive patterns of thought and behavior imported from autocratic and revolutionary Eastern Europe.
Nevertheless, immigration soon became the issue. It was the point on which Arab resistance increasingly concentrated. Nor was this surprising, since the Jews resisted the British desire to develop representative institutions as long as they were in a minority. As Jabotinsky put it, 'We are afraid, and we don't want to have a normal constitution here, since the Palestinian issue is not normal. The majority of its "electors" have not yet returned to the country.' As it happened, this vulnerable argument was not put to the test, since the Arabs, for their own reasons, decided (August, 1922) not to co-operate with British policy either. But they knew from the start that Jewish immigration was the key to ultimate Jewish political power and their agitation was designed to stop it.
I agree with you that the Jews would not have founded an inclusive democracy if a majority of Arabs remained within their prospective state's borders. However, I'm not sure I would go so far as to say the Jews in Palestine would have founded a state that practiced apartheid on a permament and legal basis. If they had, the state probably would have gone the same way that similar European models did from 1960 to 1990.
My cite of Dowty was to support my comment that European Jews were more liberal, in general, than their gentile counterparts from the same countries. This included the Jews from eastern Europe -- which had no liberal traditions --as well as those from the west. This helps explain the mystery of why mainly eastern European Jews with mainly eastern European Jewish leaders could choose a political model for their new state not far different than what was found in London.
I'm open to other explanations. But I couldn't find anything to support some of the more obvious ones. Were the founders of Israel influenced by the model of Great Britain because of the British mandate? Were they influenced by the fact that two of the three great powers to come out of WW2 were democracies (Great Britain and the U.S.) while the third great power (Russia) they knew well enough to steer clear of?
These seem plausible, but I didn't find anything to support them.
No, I agree with it, particularly in light of your citation about the shtetl political culture. I am just not sure to what this particular strand of your argument pertains.
Message # 1187: "It also shows why you will have a hard time explaining how most Jews who immigrated to Israel before 1948 were not "liberal", and yet the Jewish state still ended up with the democratic system that it did."
Note that I have never said that pre-1948 Jewish immigrants to Palestine were illiberal (see Message # 1092). I acknowledge that Eastern European Jews were more liberal than other Eastern Europeans. (Though that begs the question of why Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Lithuania, with almost zero prior democratic experience, have succeeded as democracies since their liberation in the late 80s/early 90s.) I merely expressed disbelief that Eastern European Jews could be as liberal as, or more liberal than, Western Europeans. And "more liberal than Western Europeans" has been the implicit argument of the others here, since they believe Israel would have been a majoritarian democracy even if there had remained an Arab majority within the confines of the Jewish state after 1948 war. It was Weizmann who, after all, had said the Zionists wanted an Israel as Jewish as England was English.
No, I agree with it, particularly in light of your citation about the shtetl political culture. I am just not sure to what this particular strand of your argument pertains.
[addendum] But the issue was never about whether non-Jewish Eastern Europeans were more liberal than Jewish Eastern Europeans. The comparison was between Western European settlers and Eastern European Jewish settlers of Palestine.
Why not just look at the actual electorate in Israel? More than 20% of the Israeli electorate (but more than 25% if you examined only the Jewish electorate) vote for religious (i.e., orthodox) parties. I won't go into the character of the small right-wing nationalist parties because that might steer us toward yet another tangent. But it's safe to say that these religious parties represent a highly influential illiberal element totally absent in the political culture of Great Britain and other western liberal democracies. These religious parties are often key coalition partners and influence policy out of proportion to their numbers.
But there was no such mystery being discussed.
For the record:
I agree that norms in Israel to support liberal democracy are not as strong as in England.
I agree that part of this may have to do with the religious foundation of Israel, and the countries of origin for the majority of Jews.
But I think we are in agreement that the most important reason for the difference between a Great Britain and Israel is not the religious foundation, but the security requirements of Isael and the fractious political system of Israel which hands potentially great power to some minority parties.
The "mystery" I mentioned refers to the "puzzle" that Dowty talks about in Message # 1187
Well, in Message # 1063 I did mention Israel's extraordinary security situation, and I agree this would affect the political culture. But I'm not sure whether it is a more important reason for the difference between Great Britain and Israel than the apparent political norms of some parts of the Israeli electorate. After all, the security situation has nothing, presumably, to do with the fact that a quarter of the Jewish electorate in Israel votes for Orthodox parties. I'm also unsure how much weight to assign to the two factors.
Well, one-state solutions are analogous with one-state solutions, and two-state solutions are analogous with two-state solutions.
In Rhodesia, white settler-rulers of course eventually just acquiesced to majority rule (one-state solution), after decades of defying London's attempt to grant independence to the native majority.
In South Africa, the solution the National Party advocated was a two-state solution, i.e., a partition of South Africa into a native-majority republic and a republic in which Europeans and Asians (and, in some proposals, the coloureds also) would be the majority. Of course this never came to pass, and eventually a one-state solution was implemented.
In the case of French Algeria, the preferred solution of the political right, the centre and the moderate left, as well as the European colonists in Algeria, was to simply incorporate Algeria into the French Republic. (Today, Martinique, French Polynesia and French Guiana are integral parts of the French Republic, just as Alaska and Hawaii are states of the union.) European colonists in Algeria had already been voting for representatives in the National Assembly in Paris anyway; it was only a matter of extending the franchise to the natives. But the natives did not accept this solution (ironically, they are now flooding France...).
Between 1948 and 1967, Israel was largely spared the problem of the native majority because most Palestinian Arabs took flight from what is now Israel. But the issue came to the fore again after 1967. The two-state solution is more akin to what the National Party proposed in South Africa.
Every analogy works only so far and then breaks down under unique details in each situation. Just because we agree that there are a couple of similarities between what white settlers did in three different areas and what Israel would have done had its situation been roughly the same, doesn't make a convincing argument that Israel now needs to follow some common example created by those three in some other area. Is that, in fact, what you are arguing? I can't tell.
No, that is not what I'm arguing. Even as a non-Jew, I think the right of return is a ridiculous proposal and a one-state solution (in which Israel would annex the West Bank and Gaza and grant citizenship to its inhabitants) even more ridiculous.
I was just pointing out that white South Africans had nowhere to go (like the Jews of Israel, and unlike the almost 2 million Europeans in Algeria, who absconded en masse to France), and greatly feared various calamities, ranging from mere chaos to outright massacre, should they give up minority rule. But they gave it up anyway. I wonder if Zimbabwe is now causing them to regret the decision.
My grandmother, who came to Palestine/Eretz Israel in 1932, if I remember correctly, from Besserabia, told me that the Jewish youth in her area were basically of two kinds: the Zionists and the socialists (if you were both, you counted as a Zionist, I think). The Zionists had their youth movements which steered people like my grandparents to Palestine. The non-Zionist socialists faced towards the Soviet Union instead of Palestine.
I assume she was talking about the 'enlightened', non-traditional Jewish youth, and ignoring those who remained religious. However, my guess is that under a certain age, the Zionists and socialists were a majority, at least in certain parts of eastern Europe.
It's discussions like these that make one addicted to this place.
Note on the demographic issue. Ando's quote in Message # 1170 and following has it that Palestine's Arab population increased from 635,000 in 1922 to between 1.2 and 1.3 million in 1947.
Then it says: Had the Arab population remained at its pre-World War I growth rate (0.8%) after 1922, one would have expected a population of approximately 785,000 by 1947. But there were in fact between 1.2 and 1.3 million Arabs in all of Palestine by 1947. What could have caused this sudden burst?
In fact, this burst isn't by itself out of the ordinary. If you do the numbers, you get that a population increase of such proportions corresponds to an annual rate of growth of around 2.7%.
In the preceding post, the same source says:
But even with this increase, the 19th century growth rate was still a small 0.7% per year. By comparison, in the 1940s the Muslim growth rate in the Middle East was closer to 3.07%.
So, the general ME pop. growth rates in the 1940s was 3.07% (weird decimal accuracy there). That wouldn't seem to make an annual growth from 1922 to 1947 of 2.7% abnormal.
PE is right in his remarks on the relative role of mortality and fertility in modern demographic change. The general pattern is that first mortality falls, then, lagging a generation, fertility starts to fall, as people adjust to the higher rate of child survival. This process is known as "the demographic transition" and is characterised with very high rates of population growth.
Of course, to see whether this phenomenon was at work in Palestine, one would have to know the data on mortality development which I don't have to hand.
But according to Yehoshua Porath, Professor of Middle Eastern History at Hebrew University, whom I quoted earlier, infant mortality is definitely responsible for the rise in the population growth rate of Arabs in Palestine before 1948.
"In fact, this burst isn't by itself out of the ordinary. If you do the numbers, you get that a population increase of such proportions corresponds to an annual rate of growth of around 2.7%. "
Between 1948 and 2002, the Arab population of Israel grew at an annualised rate of 3,4% per annum. And I'm sure no one alleges immigration to be the cause of that !
Editor's Note: In 1994, following the abduction and murder of his 19-year-old son Arik by the terrorist group Hamas, Yitzhak Frankenthal founded the Bereaved Families Forum -- an organization of 190 bereaved Israeli parents, Palestinian and Jews, who lost their children during army service or in an act of terrorism. The organization, also referred to as Parent's Circle, promotes peace and coexistence through educating for tolerance and compromise. The group recently set up a free service to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to talk on the telephone.
............
AlterNet: What motivated you to found the Bereaved Families Forum? What do you hope to achieve through this organization and its efforts?
Frankenthal: After I lost my son, Arik, I came to understand that he was not murdered because the murderers knew him. He was killed because there is no peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This is why we are ready to make reconciliation and not ready to go for revenge. And if we can do it -- when we have lost members of our families -- everyone can and needs to do it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Many people respond to grief and loss by seeking vengeance. Why have you chosen reconciliation instead?
I am also looking for revenge. Revenge for me is making peace.
The murderers killed my son because there is no peace. And I am angry. I am very angry that we are in this terrible situation and people are not ready to listen. People have a lot of hatred, a lot of fear. What they need is to talk to each other. For example, recently we set up a telephone program, where Israelis and Palestinians can call each other. Now, 22,851 people have talked one with the other because of this. That would be 600,000 people in the United States in terms of the percentage of the population here. That is really unbelievable -- the need for Israelis and Palestinians to talk to each other.
......................
Today, Oct. 17, is the death anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin.
Do you think his assassination destroyed hard-won progress towards peace and reconciliation -- especially when we look back at how much the situation has deteriorated since then?
Of course and no. What do I mean by that? I think no one person can stop the peace. But what the murderer of Rabin did is not only kill him but also the thousands of people who have died since then because we did not achieve peace. I think peace will come. It is not a question of idealism. We are living with a million people, sharing the same land. We need to be clever enough to recognize the picture in front of us.
www.jewishinternetassociation.org.
And www.palestinefacts.org.
Far from displacing the Arabs, as they claimed, the Jews were the very reason the Arabs chose to settle in the Land of Israel. Jobs provided by newly established Zionist industry and agriculture lured them there, just as Israeli construction and industry provides most Arabs in the Land of Israel with their main source of income today. Malcolm MacDonald, one of the principal authors of the British White Paper of 1939, which restricted Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel, admitted (conservatively) that were it not for a Jewish presence the Arab population would have been little more than half of what it actually was. Today, when due to the latest “intifada” Arabs from the territories under 35 are no longer allowed into pre-1967 Israel to work, unemployment has skyrocketed to over 40% and most rely on European aid packages to survive.
It's got maps! 
And quotes from Twain! And others:
What happens when this claim is compared with the personal observations of the following recognized authorities? In 1738 Thomas Shaw observed a land of "barrenness…. from want of inhabitants." In 1785 Constantine Francois de Volney recorded the population of the three main cities. Jerusalem had a population of 12,000 to 14,000. Bethlehem had about 600 able-bodied men. Hebron had 800 to 900 men. In 1835 Alphonse de Lamartine wrote, "Outside the city of Jerusalem, we saw no living object, heard no living sound.. .a complete eternal silence reigns in the town, in the highways, in the country . . . The tomb of a whole people."
In the original mandate
Year Pop Increase
1800 246000
1890 432000 0.6%
1915 590000 1.2%
1931 693000 1.1%
After Jordan was detached
1922 591000
1945 1100000 2.7%
In post-67 Israel
1967 390000
1996 1100000 3.3%
This morning, I see that -- in some mysterious way known only to the Internet Angel -- my post 1209 has been reposted twice: posts 1211 and 1212.
I guess, along with this one, they should be removed.
I have granted two out of three wishes, which ain't bad.
But there is another rejoinder. The Caucasians settled by the Ottomans in the Levant were refugees from the North Caucasus, victims of Russian imperial deportation, much as the Sephardic Jews from Spain who settled in Arab lands were refugees of Spanish expulsion. Another instance of refugeeism was the flight of Armenian and Assyrian Christians into Syria-Lebanon during the First World War and its aftermath. Most of these victims of Ottoman deportation from Anatolia settled in Syria-Lebanon and their descendants remain there today.
None of the three cases of refugee settlement in Arab lands -- Sephardic Jewish refugees from Iberia, Muslim Caucasian deportees, and Christian Assyrian & Armenian deportees -- engendered [to use Andonly's words] the "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread" hostility that the Arabs of Palestine showed toward Zionist immigrants in Palestine. This was so because in none of the three cases were the Arabs threatened with demographic "minoritisation" and incorporation into a new alien state.
But let me emphasise that I did not mean to say, once the European rulers showed up at their doorsteps, the Arabs lay on their stomach in submission with their limbs splayed à la chinoise. The Arabs did resist European rule at first. In Iraq, there was an uprising against the British in 1920, which the British duly crushed. A Berber rebellion to European rule had to be crushed by French and Spanish troops in Morocco. In Egypt, there was the 1919 revolt against British rule. The French had to crush various rebellions in the 1920s in Syria, including a big one by the Druze. (But the Druze, like the Kurds and the Afghans, are a quarrelsome, fiercely independent mountain people who have never taken kindly to any outside power which tried to rule them. The Druze have revolted against everyone: Arab rulers, Kurdish rulers, the Ottomans, the French, the Syrians and the Lebanese. )
But none of this ever amounted to what Andonly has called "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread" hostility, which the Arabs showed toward the Zionist immigrants. The European powers suppressed the revolts and introduced some institutions of self-government; and, for the most part, the Arabs acquiesced to European rule until after the Second World War.
All the same, the commonality between Ottoman and European rule was that neither fiddled with the demographics of Arab lands. Where that did occur -- such as in Algeria and Libya where the European rulers settled, or tried to settle, European colonists by the hundreds of thousands -- the Arabs did resist with enduring, endless and uniquely widespread violence.
As for occupation by the British and French: occupation by a stronger power is not nearly as humiliating as being shown to be utter doofuses by getting kicked out of your own land by a small group of relatives who are obviously far more talented than you are at virtually everything they do. I can see why Israel has become such an obsession for the Arabs.
No wonder you're blowing up buses full of people. You're dead and you know it.
Matthew White's Website
A brilliant site!!!! (The owner is currently seeking employment.)
Note how the statistics vary.
Mid-Range Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
# Israel (1948 et seq.)
* Israel has been almost continuously at war throughout its existence. Here's the tally:
* Wars:
1. War of Independence, 1948
o S&S:
+ Israel: 3,000
+ Egypt: 2,000
+ Syria: 1,000
+ Jordan: 1,000
+ Iraq: 500
+ Lebanon: 500
+ TOTAL: 8,000
o Eckhardt: 8,000
o B&J
+ Jewish military: 4,000
+ Jewish civilians: 2,000
+ 8,000 Arabs
+ TOTAL: 14,000
o WPA3
+ Israel: 6,000
+ Arabs: 15,000
+ TOTAL: 21,000
o 5 March 1991 AP
+ Israel: 6,200
+ Arabs: 2,000 regular soldiers + thousands irregulars
o WPA3
+ Egypt: 1,650
+ Israel: 189
+ UK: 22
+ France: 10
+ TOTAL: 1,871
o 5 March 1991 AP
+ Egypt: 2,000-3,000
+ Israel: 172
+ UK, France: 82
+ TOTAL: 2,254 to 3,254
o Hartman:
+ Egypt: 2500-3000
+ Israel: 181
+ UK, France: 32
+ TOTAL: 2,713 to 3,213
o Eckhardt: 1,000 civ. + 3,000 mil. = 4,000
3. Six Day War, 1967
o S&S
+ Egypt: 10,000
+ Syria: 2,500
+ Jordan: 6,100
+ Israel: 1,000
+ TOTAL: 19,600
o 5 March 1991 AP
+ Egypt: 11,500
+ Jordan: 6,094.
+ Syria: 1,000
+ Israel: 777
+ TOTAL: 19,371
o Hartman
+ Egypt: 10-15,000
+ Syria: 1,000
o WPA3
+ Arabs: 4,000
+ Israel: 983
+ TOTAL: 4,983
o B&J
+ Israel: 700
+ Arabs: 25,000 "casualties"
o Sachar, A History of Israel from the Rise of Zionism to Our Time, which would be 1996
+ Israel: 759
o S&S:
+ Israel: 368
+ Egypt: 5000
+ TOTAL: 5,368
o 5 March 1991 AP: 721 Israelis
o Eckhardt: 50,000 civ. + 25,000 mil. = 75,000 (1967-70, incl. 6-Day War)
5. Yom Kippur War, 1973
o WPA3
+ Egypt: 5,000
+ Syria: 3,000
+ Israel: 2,812
+ Other Arab: 340
+ TOTAL: 11,152
o B&J
+ Egypt: 5,000
+ Syria: 3,000
+ Israel: 3,000
+ Iraq: 200
+ TOTAL: 11,200
o Sachar:
+ Egypt: 7,700
+ Syria: 3,500
+ Israel: 2,552
+ TOTAL: 13,752
o Eckhardt: 16,000
o S&S:
+ Egypt: 5,000
+ Syria: 8,000
+ Israel: 3,000
+ Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia: 401
+ TOTAL: 16,401
o 5 March 1991 AP
+ Egypt: 15,000
+ Syria: 3,500
+ Israel: 2,569
+ Iraqi: 125
+ TOTAL: 21,194
o Israel: 6,800-11,100
o Egypt: 23,700-40,000
o Syria: 5,000-11,500
o Jordan: 7,100
o TOTAL: Adding the above gives us 43,000 to 70,000 military (and up to 51,000 civilians, but we only have Eckhardt's estimates on this.) Other estimates for the total:
+ CDI: 125,000 deaths (1948-97)
+ Ploughshares 2000: >100,000 in 1948, 1967, and 1973 wars. Plus, 12,000 people, including 500 Israelis, during 1978 and 1982 invasions of Lebanon
* Civil Strife:
o Israel vs. Palestinians:
+ SIPRI 1997: 13,000 killed (1948-96)
+ B'Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in The Occupied Territories [http://www.btselem.org/Files/site/english/data/Total_Casualties.asp] 9 Dec 1987-31 Aug 2001 (cross-ethnic killings only)
# Palestinians
* Security forces: 102
* Civilians: 1943
* TOTAL: 2045
# Israelis
* Security forces: 193
* Civilians: 383
* TOTAL: 576
# TOTAL
* Security forces: 295
* Civilians: 2326
* TOTAL: 2621
# 28 May 1992 [Glasgow] Herald: since Dec. 1987
* 904 Palestinians k by Israelis
* 88 Israelis k by Palestinians
* 473 Arabs k by Palestinians
* TOTAL: 1,465
# 9 Dec 1992 Irish Times: since Dec. 1987
* 1,121 Palestinians k by Israelis
* 103 Israelis k by Palestinians
* 535 Arabs k by Palestinians
* TOTAL: 1,759
+ 2nd Intifada:
# 1 Oct. 2001 Chicago Tribune: about 650 Palestinians + 170 Israelis since 28 Sept 2000
# Ploughshares 2000: >1,500
ZNet Commentary
How To Shut Up Your Critics With A Single Word October 23, 2002
By Robert Fisk
Thank God, I often say, for the Israeli press. For where else will you find the sort of courageous condemnation of Israel's cruel and brutal treatment of the Palestinians? Where else can we read that Moshe Ya'alon, Ariel Sharon's new chief of staff, described the "Palestinian threat"
as "like a cancer -- there are all sorts of solutions to cancerous manifestations. For the time being, I am applying chemotherapy."
Where else can we read that the Israeli Herut Party chairman, Michael Kleiner, said that "for every victim of ours there must be 1,000 dead Palestinians". Where else can we read that Eitan Ben Eliahu, the former Israeli Air Force commander, said that "eventually we will have to thin out the number of Palestinians living in the territories". Where else can we read that the new head of Mossad, General Meir Dagan -- a close personal friend of Mr Sharon -- believes in "liquidation units", that other Mossad men regard him as a threat because "if Dagan brings his morality to the Mossad, Israel could become a country in which no normal Jew would want to live".
You will have to read all this in Ma'ariv, Ha'aretz or Yediot Ahronot because in much of the Western world, a vicious campaign of slander is being waged against any journalist or activist who dares to criticise Israeli policies or those that shape them. The all-purpose slander of "anti-Semitism" is now used with ever-increasing promiscuity against anyone --people who condemn the wickedness of Palestinian suicide bombings every bit as much as they do the cruelty of Israel's repeated killing
of children -- in an attempt to shut them up.
The University of North Carolina is being targeted --apparently because freshmen were required to read passages from the Koran --along with Harvard where, like students in many other US universities, undergraduates are demanding that their colleges disinvest in companies that sell weapons to Israel. In some cases, American universities -- which happily disinvested in tobacco companies -- have now taken the step of blocking all student access to their records of investment.
Lawrence Summers, the Jewish president of Harvard, has denounced "profoundly anti-Israel views" in "progressive intellectual communities", that are -- I enjoyed this academic sleight of hand -- "advocating and taking actions that are anti-semitic in their effect if not their intent". Mr Said himself has already described all this as a campaign "to ask students and faculty to inform against pro-Palestinian colleagues, intimidating the right of free speech and seriously curtailing academic freedom".
Our own John Pilger made a programme for Carlton Television called Palestine Is Still The Issue. I have watched it three times. It is accurate in every historical detail; indeed its historical adviser was a left-wing Israeli academic. But Carlton's own chairman, Michael Green -- in one of the most gutless statements in recent British journalism -- announced that it was "a tragedy for Israel so far as accuracy is concerned". Why Mr Green should want to utter such trash is beyond me. But what does he mean by "tragedy"? Is he comparing Pilger to a suicide bomber?
Have Mr Pipes and his chums put the names of these good men and women on their hate list? You bet they haven't. Because all of them are Israeli scholars at Israeli universities. I wonder why we weren't told about this.
hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
As for your assertion that Israel has a a corrupt, war hungry government that has people in very high places advocating genocide is so wrong it is hard to know where to start.
Genocide is the stated policy of many of the groups attacking Israel. Fatah, Hezbollah and Hamas are bent on the destruction of Israel and the Jews. They have been targeting and attacking Israeli civilians in a terror campaign for decades. Despites claims to the contrary, the attacks have not been in response to Israeli occupation. The attacks date back to the very creation of Israel. The attacks are an attempt to destroy Israel's very existence.
There is a profound difference between targeting civilians and the unintentional taking of civilian lives in pursuing a military goal. This is especially true when those civilians are being used as human shields in violation of international law.
How can you claim Israel is "war hungry"? That is absurd. Israel is under constant attack. Not only is its military under attack. Its civilian population is under attack. We are horrified in this country because we have a sniper in the DC area killing people. Israelis are consistently under sniper fire from Palestinian militants and hundreds of Israelis have died as a result. This is in addition to the suicide bomb attacks, and the shelling over the border from Lebanon.
The Israeli right has a way of dealing with internal critics: they are "self-hating Jews". To be self-hating is of course a psychological abnormity. Ergo, such people are mentally unstable and their opinions don't count.
don't fuck with me today--I'm not in the mood. Nothing is lost on me. I have said several times that the Israeli people are in a hell of a situation just as the Palestinians are. But if you are going to sit there and act like there aren't high ranking people in Israeli government advocating something coming very, very close to genocide than you are a liar and your credibility on the issue is nil.
And once again it comes back to the issue of those who have a government and those who don't.
And you know JJ, a decade ago during the last ridiculous inflamation of war in Palestine/Israel, the Palestinian civic committees (I forget the word for them at the moment) worked to reduce suicide bombings and to build little community governments to help stabalize their corner of things and what did the Israeli government do? It outlawed them.
I happen to have a great deal of sympathy for the people on both sides of this war, but that doesn't mean that Israeli or Palestinian leadership is beyond reproach. The fact that the Israeli government has the tool of systematic oppression (by the mere fact that it is a government), means that it does have a higher standard to uphold. That's the nature of government.
Pelle,
unfortunately their opinions do count because they have power and control and influence. it's why those of us who are stuck in the US have to counter the mentally unstable nits who run this country.
Stalin had an uncompliced way of dealing with dissenters: a bullet in the back of the head. During the milder regimes of Chrustjov and Bresjnev, the preferred method was to put them into mental asylums.
Maybe this is a course of action you should propose to your fellow Etaimists. It would fit well with Israel's humanitarian tradition. After all, these professors and other intellectuals who don't understand the true interests of the the state of Israel are sick, unable to think clearly, probably brainwashed by the perfidious Europeans. They need care and rehabilitation in order to reassume their rightful role in Israeli society.
You misread my post.
As I have said in previous posts, I have no doubt that there are people in the Israeli government considering options like the resettlement of Palestinians beyond the Jordan river. I am sure there are people who have considered even more extreme measures. The salient point is that these are not official positions of the Israeli government, and anyone who is familiar with Israeli history would realize that these will never be official positions of the government.
The IDF has gone to extremes to avoid civilian casualties among the Palestinians. They went door to door in Jenin to root out militants. They could have carpet bombed the refugee camp, but they didn't. Instead they put their own troops at risk to preserve Palestinian lives. That is not the action of a government bent on genocide.
Palestinian terrorists continue to target innocent civilians. This immediately eliminates any possibility of a moral equivalence between the two sides. The international community should be universal in its condemnation of targetting civilians, but for some reason when it comes to the Palestinians targeting Israelis they are silent. Arafat and the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah should be arrested as war criminals, but no one even suggests this.
There is a simple solution. The Palestinians can stop killing civilians and accept the existence of Israel. When they do that they will be able to establish their own state. Until they do that they condemn themselves to their current situation.
apologies, I forgot my sarcasm goggles when I was reading your post. I tripped over my own bent nose. I've gotta trim that thing.
JJ,
of course it makes no difference that there are people with power who are talking genocide because that's not the official position. You are so right, why didn't I see that before?
OK. No hurt.
Here is map of the Middle East.
If you look carefully you can just make out where Israel is. It is that little sliver of land just northeast of Egypt and west of Jordan. Do you also see those rather large countries surrounding Israel? Those are Arab countries. Palestinians are also Arabs. These have governments and wealthy individuals who are either overtly or covertly aiding the Palestinians in their fight to destroy Israel.
I know you have the tendency to favor underdogs. Well the underdog in this fight is Israel, not the Palestinians. If Israel isn't vigilant in its own defense, no one else is going to do if for them. They can't afford to take risks because their very existence is in jeopardy every day.
So spare me your outrage at Israel. Spare me your woefully uninformed accusations of genocide. Show me some outrage over the Israelis citizens who have been targeted for genocide and who live in terror every day of their lives.
I do have outrage about suicide bombings, and at those who have expressed genocide wishes upon Jews. However, I am adopting your attitude and not considering it a real threat unless it's an official position of the Palestinian Government.
I've wondered that too, and also whether the country's AIDS crisis, the way it is being turned into a racial issue, and its ultimate economic effects may prompt whites to leave. I think I read somewhere also that South Africa has been experiencing some "white flight" in recent years, in the form of brain drain.
The following is from an SA discusion board. It was so vehemently and defensively denied by others in the group (who could produce little supporting data for their arguments) that I can't help sensing it must have hit a nerve:
The knee-jerk reactions from South Africans to the originator of this thread are an indication of the mental state of the residents of that country. South Africa's murder rate is the highest or close to the highest in the world .
Some 27,000 people are murdered in incidents of violent crime annually , hundreds of thousands more are seriously injured . Very few of the culprits are ever brought to book .
Rape is the National Sport , 1 Rape is reported every 26 seconds YEP , you read that right , every 26 SECONDS .
These crimes get reported to undermanned and demotivated cops, 25% of whom are functionally Illiterate , YEP they cannot read or write. Another 25% are HIV positive .
On top of that , many serving Policemen are themselves being investigated (still on duty) for SERIOUS crimes.
Residents of South African suburbs live behind maximum security , steel bars on doors and windows , razor wire ,electric fences, attack dogs and armed response .
Oh and of course many have firearms as well.
Although I have traveled extensively never have I felt so threatened as in South African cities . Outside those cities was definitely better but still one had to be especialy wary.
South Africa has some beautifull tourist destinations BUT only has a pitiful 1.5 million tourists per year , that figure is inflated by Mozambiqueans, Zimbbweans etc. who come into SA as tourists and stay ilegally.
In essence it is a bloody dangerous place to visit , do so at your peril.
Yeah, but this is part of the point. The Jews have been comparatively restrained from brutally crushing the Pals by their own moralistic self-image and the expectations of Israel's foreign supporters--upon whom the country has perpetually been dependent. If Europe disabused the Arabs of Christian dhimmitude, Israel has never accomplished this for Jews. One would think this would have changed after Lebanon, which was fairly brutal, but the religious contempt for Jews has only grown.
On the other hand, several Arab or Muslim states' regimes have come to accept Israel's existence, probably because the cost of failure to defeat Israel in war has been high. Syria, Iraq, and Iran, however, are not among them, and not one of these states has suffered "minoritization" at the hands of Jews.
Or it was so becaue the immigrants remained subservient, taxed and ghettoized, or else were protected by an extremely powerful, potentially brutal, governing authority. When did the all-out assault on the nascent state of Israel begin? As soon as the British withdrew.
"Many Arabs of Palestine objected to the founding of a Jewish homeland in Palestine because it required that some of them were made into an ethnic minority on their own soil."
Yes, some of them, not all of them, and not five countries full of Muslims with no real connection to Palestine. Anyway, I'm sure the Palestinian fear of the possibility of transfer by 1947 or so was more significant than the fear of "minoritization," since the former might have cut Pals completelely out of the developed part of the Palestinian economy that would become Israel, as well as uprooting them. Yet the Arabs in general reacted to the establishment of Israel--a ridiculously small chunk of territory, initially--as though it were a cancer that threatened to take over the entire Arab homeland.
These ideological matters do not fall into what I take to be your definition of "minoritization," a bland term that does not explain but further obscures racial and sectarian strife, and paints all violent and extreme reactions to colonization as generic. But if the prospect for being governed by a minority rather than your own group is not objectively worse than what you've had before, isn't the fear of "minoritization" largely a form of xenophobia?
Well, ethnically the Serbs were already a minority in Bosnia, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Your use of the term "minoritization" begins to puzzle me. There's political minoritization, cultural minoritization, economic minoritization, religious minoritization, ethnic minoritization, and fear of one or more forms of minoritization ocurring as a result of immigration. Of these, most are reasons to fight viciously and relentlessly only if you despise (or can be induced to despise) your opponent. But if you don't, your only concerns worth precipitating a conflict over are economic minoritization and dispossession.
Both were undoubtedly factors in the Zionist enterprise, but less so than in other colonial endeavors, whereas the anti-Jewish reaction has been much more visceral and broader than te reaction to other colonialists, spanning the entire Arab and Muslim world. This discrepancy is explained in terms of unreasoning hatred, not rational fear of "minoritization".
Both, obviously. But in all instances of unusually violent rejection of newcomers to a territory, the newcomers are despised. To follow your analogy concerning white flight in the US: as I've said, when the phenomenon has occurred in the US it has had multiple causes. But if we're talking about flight from neighborhoods (as opposed to cities, where the cause is primarily economic and I'm sure has absolutely nothing to do with the election of black officials, since such elections themselves suggest whites already must be acclimated to living as a political minority among blacks--there has been no white flight linked to the elections of mayors such as Sharpe James, John Street, or Willie Brown), white flight occurred overwhelmingly where blacks moved in, even in very small numbers.
In the fifties and sixties, one black family was enough to send whites on a block packing--or worse. Yes, whites were concerned that their neighborhoods would be "taken over." But those concerns were far less visceral, less violent in their expression, and simply produced less white flight when the newcomers were not black. Yes, Asians and Hispanics have faced racism in the US and had a hard time integrating in some places. But over a few decades, they have integrated. Asians in particular provoke essentially no white reaction. In fact, their presence in a community, like that of Jews, is often a sign of economic prosperity and good educational standards, both of which middle-class whites are eager to share in. By contrast, the prolonged, violent, visceral rejection of blacks in the US has been unparalleled, except possibly by the white working class rejection of Amerindians in parts of the west.
Regardless, the influx of Zionists was undoubtedly accompanied by development, both agricultural and industrial, and the Arabs who were born into this environment benefitted from it. The newcomers were not dragging down the economy. Whether Arab numbers in Palestine increased in response to immigration or reduced infant mortality, they increased. Arabs were not fleeing in response to the Jewish presence, they were staying to get a piece of the new and improved pie and to simultaneously push the Jews, who were in large part responsible for baking it, away from the table. Yes, Arabs were dislocated from their traditional existence, but it wasn't a prosperous existence to start with; the opportunities brought on by development must have been obvious, since all indicators suggest the Palestinian Arabs prospered as a result of them.
Which official position? The one Arafat tells us or the one he tells his people. The destruction of Israel is the stated position of Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and several other terrorist groups. There are no similar groups in Israel launching terror attacks against Palestinians in order to drive them from the West Bank and Gaza.
The "Palestinian Authority" has done little to reign in these Palestinian groups and is thereby giving its tacet approval to their actions. Beyond that, Israel seized thousands of documents from the PA detailing their support for terrorists within their own organization.
On the other side of the equation, there are some members of the Israeli government discussing the possibility of resettlement. And from this you conclude there is a moral equivalence between the two sides. If I didn't know better, I would swear you were joking.
I will try this one more time. Israel has been the victim of random attacks on its civilians ever since its creation. Israelis cannot remember a time when they could go about their business and not fear for their lives. It is understandable that a lifetime under that kind of pressure would lead some people to consider extreme solutions.
On the other side, Palestinians do not have to live in constant fear of random attacks against civilians. Israel only launches attacks after its civilians have been hit. Even then Israel goes after military and militant targets, not civilians.
He might be interested to learn that Hizballah has been set up in a largely Shiite community South America for some time now, at the lawless junction of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.
For some reason I had always assumed the Hizballah bombing of that Agentinian synagogue a while back was accomplished via a one-time incursion from a distance. But it wasn't. It was very much a local attack.
The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Path 
EXCELLENT!!!
But don't paint the Israelis helpless martyrs. In the last year or so they've given as good as they got. The Palestinians know it, and those who are exhausted, who would prefer a peaceful solution, or who simply have no say in the matter deserve not only our sympathy but whatever help can be offered short of imperiling more Israeli lives.
Despite the latest attack near Hadera--which, like the previous bus bomb attempt could realistically be said to have been directed at the soldiers on the bus--Israel's repressive tactics, demolitions, assassinations, and extraordinary internal security efforts have stemmed the tide of suicide bombings.
It's urban warfare, and just now, Israel is not the party most battered. That could change, of course. But this war has more than one set of victims.
The argument doesn't make much sense. (1) Israel did rout the armies of 5 Arab states in 1948, a disabusing of dhimmitude at least as great, surely, as the British suppression of the Iraqi revolt in 1920. (2) The Arabs in Syria and Iraq (where there was serious initial resistance against European rule) and the Arabs in Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (where the resistance against European rule was much less serious) acquiesced to European rule. By contrast, the resistance in Algeria and Libya could not be stamped out at all no matter how brutally the Europeans behaved, the reason being that the Europeans were settling colonists in Algeria and Libya.
What had Iraqis and Syrians and Egyptians to do with "minoritization" by Zionists? Nothing, other than their Islamic and pan-Arabic ambitions and their shared contempt for Jews, whom they surely considered a pitiful non-civilization. "
Well, you must surely recall the argument we've had about Arab/Muslim antisemitism as a manifestation of ethnic conflict. That is how I explain the wider Arab & Muslim hostility to the Zionist enterprise. At some point the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine became internationalised as an ethnic conflict. After 1948, it also came to be seen as a wider sectarian conflict. It is entirely typical of such conflicts, that the co-ethnics and co-religionists of the Palestinian Arabs should side with them in "tribal" solidarity.
Zionism helped create Arab nationalism to begin with. It's possible the emergence of Arab nationalism might have been delayed were it not for the Zionist project.
This was true of the Sephardic Jews with their dhimmi status and Ottoman protection, but not of the Armenian and Assyrian Christians who settled in Syria upon their deportation from Ottoman Anatolia. The latter are not ghettoised and they remained in Syria after the French left.
"When did the all-out assault on the nascent state of Israel begin? As soon as the British withdrew."
Yes, but what you called "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread" hostility toward Zionists was manifest in riotings and terrorism well before the British departure, as you well know.
I have disputed your analysis of "these ideological matters" because they are unnecessary for explaining the patterns of Arab resistance and acquiescence.
The Zionist enterprise has two things in common with French Algeria and Italian Libya: all three threatened Arabs with (1) mass colonial settlements; and (2) incorporation into an alien state. In all three cases, Arabs responded with resistance which was "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and widespread".
The counterexamples you have cited lack these two elements. The Ottomans did not settle colonists by the hundreds of thousands in Arab lands; nor did the Europeans in Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, or Lebanon. Arabs acquiesced to European rule with relative ease in those countries where the Europeans did not attempt to settle colonists. Christian dhimmis who were refugees from Ottoman Anatolia did not inspire the sort of hostility that the Zionists inspired in Arabs, because they never threatened to create an new ethnostate.
By the way, I never denied xenophobia. The question has only been whether this xenophobia is generic, or something very distinctive to Arab Muslims. It's generic. There are no elements unique to the Zionist-Palestinian conflict which require non-generic explanations. Both in its causes and in its its racialist rhetoric, the Palestinian conflict conforms well to transcultural paradigms of ethnic/tribal/sectarian conflicts over territory.
I'm getting at one of the basic causes of the Bosnian war. The Serbs had dominated Yugoslavia. The Muslm- and Croat-instigated secession of Bosnia-Hercegovina from Yugoslavia threatened to make the Serbs of Bosnia a minority in a new, alien state. This fear caused the Bosnian Serbs to revolt. Hence the attempt to physically "attach" Bosnian-Serb territory with the Republic of Serbia by clearing Muslims of the intervening territory.
A large influx of culturally different peoples often makes the prior inhabitants anxious. When these demographic changes can have political consequences, such as if the newcomers intend to create a separate sovereign ethno-state, then the prior inhabitants usually turn hostile to the newcomers.
Sometimes the same "minoritisation" can be accomplished by a change of international borders, rather than by an influx of newcomers. An important example is the Bosnian civil war.
I agree. That's why I allowed for the possiblity of "spillover" effects in Message # 1179. But how much of the infrastructure created by the Zionists did the Arabs actually benefit from, and how much from the British-created infrastructure? You have more assumptions than hard truths on this score.
"But my excerpt also explicitly states that the British refused to hire Jews in construction and DID employ a substantial number of foreigners: "[T]he British preferred cheaper foreign labor, and in the period leading up to 1922 they employed 15,000 foreigners (mostly from Egypt and Syria) and only 500 Jews." I don't know why anyone here would assume they all went home."
No one does. But 15 000 is a drop in the bucket compard with the aggregate increase in the Arab population. The point is not that some immigration from outside Palestine could not have taken place; rather, it is not necessary to posit immigration to account for the increase in the Arab population between the mid-19th century and 1948.
I quoted Porath to give evidence against that the widespread belief that the Palestinians are not truly indigneous because many, or even most, of them came as immigrants to Palestine spurred on by Zionist economic activity.
I said, today, Hawaiians have no grounds for complaining. My point was that there are separatists who are spoilt brats -- such as the Basques, who have cultural autonomy, full civil rights, and benefits of positive discrimination -- and then there are separatists with serious grievances. I just wanted to know which separatist group in the world finds itself in a situation comparable to the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories, and does not resort to terrorism to some degree. My larger point was, given the difference in behaviour between the Palestinians of Israel and the Palestinians of the OT, the latter are responding to different incentives and constraints.
But I should never have brought this up because I have been studiously trying to avoid discussion of recent events, which never go anywhere and always turn acrimonious, and to stick largely to the discussion of historical topics.
Like I've told you guys, Israel's roads, bridges and bus stops are full of posters and grafittos calling for an expulsion, and the next elections will probably be a landslide for the right and extreme right. I saw a bumper sticker today that said 'only the idiots have remained lefties', and that pretty much sums up the situation. Even the Rabin memorial-cum-guilt cult stickers are mostly gone.
Keep talking in here, though, if it makes you feel good.
I wondered why you do that. I never would have thought it was to avoid a fight.
I understand that anger management classes are available. You might want to consider attending them.
Wuss.
My larger point was, given the difference in behaviour between the Palestinians of Israel and the Palestinians of the OT, the latter are responding to different incentives and constraints
Funny you insist on calling Israeli Arabs that when most of them don't call themselves that.
But the Arabs in 1967 went to great pains to convince themselves that this rout was due to (nonexistent) support from the US! Arabs still believe the Big Lie--I'd wager they believe it pretty much to a man. The populations of the five defeated countries you mention, to this day, like to think a final big war with Israel would be a good idea, if only the US could be persuaded to leave Israel to fail. No, the disabusing of dhimmitude is far from complete.
Honestly, you have only to read what gets translated by MEMRI, or take a look at the rhetoric found on Arab message boards to see that, even beyond all justifiable hatred and fulmination, the pervasive attitude of Arab Muslims toward Jews is of contempt for a vile people who have, by unholy means, exceeded their natural place in the world. (The most recent online discussion I lurked in between a Jew and a Hamasnik descended, after some fairly protracted and well-informed back and forth on both sides, into a perfectly hilarious fallback argument by the Hamasnik: you see, in reality, the Jews provoked the Holocaust.)
PE, you presume you've found this single causative factor--"minoritization"--explaining extreme, vicious, unending violence. But you cannot rule out ideology as the factor which wildly enflames and protracts such conflicts, merely by demonstrasting that in some cases, with certain characteristics, it doesn't operate.
I can't compare all examples of European dominion in the mideast with you because I'm not familiar with enough of them and I don't know enough about their details. But despite your endless citations I frankly don't trust that you do either, or that you have not ignored the details that don't support your thesis.
I think it's likely that the fear of "minoritization" is not what determines the ferocity of the reaction to colonialism. In reality, the fear of being ruled by distant foreigners is not always less pressing than the fear of being ruled by a new majority in your midst. (It may be worth pointing out at this point that the Jews never achieved a majority in Palestine anyway, and would scarcely have had one in Israel but for the fact that the Arabs fled, significantly because of their own hysterical propaganda.) More important in your equation should be the obvious fact that where there are colonies, there are civilians to attack. That is, the controlling power can be hurt literally where it lives, and may be induced to pull its own punches in order to avoid worse blows, which leaves it open to further assault and ultimately defeat. The reaction of natives to colonization then is premised in part on anticipation of the possibility of defeating noncombatants, something that is not possible when one is occupied only by bureaucrats and armies.
If you have enough colonists relative to natives, the natives' anticipatory victory can be proven wrong. But in the mideast, Jews are quite seriously outnumbered. Yet they're well armed and have hung on, defying the Arab-Islamic expectation that they should falter because, according to Muslim-Arab doctrine, they should be inferior.
Fairly contemptuous, yes? And it has been that way since Abdul Hamid, who may not have cared much for the French and the British. But he could not disrespect them.
I find it odd that none of this registers with you. All you see is justifiable Arab rage induced by "minoritization".
At some point? PE, it was internationalized from before there was a state, it just wasn't yet internationalized outside the mideast.
And by the way, I do remember our prior conversation. You never succeeded remotely in convincing me that the virulent hostility to Jews of Muslims in Indonesia and Pakistan was but a "natural" reaction in sympathy to the Palestinians or merely an extension of "understandable" anti-Americanism brought on by American provocation. These explanations are part of the truth, but the rest is that Islam has become antisemitic (and anti-American) because it is politically convenient for Islamist imperialists.
You're really reaching. How exactly did Herzl approaching the Red Sultan, hat in hand, "create" Arab nationalism? Arab nationalism had its genesis in a reaction to Turkey and the western powers, not the pitifully supplicant Jews, ready to pay in hard cash and loans for a homeland in Palestine. The Jews did not "help create" Arab nationalism in any meaningful sense. Now if you want to say the Zionist project after, say, 1939 exacerbated it, fine, but that's a more complicated story.
"It's possible the emergence of Arab nationalism might have been delayed were it not for the Zionist project."
Well, Arab nationalism by some accounts began emerging as early as 1870. Speaking more conservatively, it emerged in 1908 alongside Ottomanism, but I'm not sure how you come to the conclusion that the Zionist project's nonexistence could have stalled the emergence of Arab nationalism. The realistic prospect of a Jewish state did not really exist before the British occupied Palestine in 1917. And anyway, your supposition concedes implicity that Arabism would have developed in any case, Jews or no Jews.
The Armenian and Assyrian Christians migrated to a country where there were already large numbers of Christians. The Christians of Syria (esp. if one includes Lebanon in Syria) have not exactly had uninterruptedly smooth relations with Muslims over the last 150 years. But some extra Anatolians--who cared?
'Yes, but what you called "extreme, endlessly violent, enduring, and uniquely widespread" hostility toward Zionists was manifest in riotings and terrorism well before the British departure, as you well know.'
I do indeed, and it does not prove your point that a significant part of the motivation behind those extremes was not an unreasoning hatred of Jews. When I say "uniquely widespread," I mean, for instance, Iraq. You have not addressed why it is that the people of Iraq, Syria, and Egypt logically feared they would be "minoritized" by the establishment of Israel. Minoritization is, after all, a local experience. I could see Jordan having had problems with the creation of Israel, especially since it shares a long border with Israel. But Jordan has always been the least of Israel's problems. In fact, Jordan was the only entity I'm aware of that established secret relations with the nascent state.
A.) You have denied xenophobia implicity repeatedly, putting the word is quotes every time you referred to my use of it.
B.) I never said xenophobia was distinctive to Muslims. I simply said Arab Muslims were xenophobic. I said also that hatred of Jews is provided for in Islam, making a sound basis for an antisemitism out of all proportion to the Jewish provocation of establishing a state. You insist that this sort of thing is not anomalous in the history of bitter colonial conflicts; I can only laugh, and think of the prevalence of attacks by Arab Muslims on Jews far from Palestine, on the lunacy that claims Jews control the US and thereby the world, on the insane vilification of Jews throughout the Muslim world that has its antecedent in the 1930s. As you have argued yourself, Israel just isn't that big a problem, objectively speaking, for the larger Arab--let alone Muslim--world.
"I have disputed your analysis of "these ideological matters" because they are unnecessary for explaining the patterns of Arab resistance and acquiescence."
They are indispensible to understanding the character and history of this particular conflict between the Arabs, virtually all of Islam, and Jews.
The hard truth is that without Jewish immigration there would have been no economic boom, no comparable improvement in farming, and less of a leap in Arab fertility.
"But 15 000 (Arab foreign workers hired by th British) is a drop in the bucket compard with the aggregate increase in the Arab population."
Sure is. But that figure is for 1922 only. Between 1917 and 1947 a total of more than 140,000 Arabs (foreign or Palestinian) were employed by the Brits in Palestine. According to Howard M. Sachar in "A History of Israel," between 1922 and 1946 "approximately 100,000 Arabs entered the country from neighboring lands. The influx could be traced in some measure to the orderly government provided by the British; but far more, certainly, to the economic opportunities made possible by Jewish settlement... by opening new markets for Arab produce and new employment opportunities for Arab labor." Arieh Avneri, in "Claim of Dispossession," estimates the number to have been 100K as well. (This figure is nowhere near Joan Peters' inflated claim which, I will again point out, I never referenced.) Assuming they stuck around, 100K foreign Arabs over 22 years probably produced a decent chunk of the Arab population. The Arab population between 1922-48 went from around 590K to 980K--an increase of about 400,000. Assuming these figures are accurate, 1/4 of the increase was immigrant. What proportion comprised their children surely depends on a variety of factors--there may have been many, there may have been few.
This all didn't happen just because the British were in charge. It was made possible as well by Jewish immigration. It is true that there was recorded by the Brits some unemployment of Arabs--e.g., stonemasons and camel and donkey drivers--that resulted from Jewish industries and autos replacing traditional lines of work. But this was far outpaced by the simple fact that the Turks were no longer conscripting young Pal men to go fight over in Yemen and Anatolia. (The Brits, I should in fairness point out, noted this as a factor presumed to positively affect the rate of natural population increase.)
It is true nevertheless that during the Mandatory period the Arab population of the coastal area of Palestine grew faster than it did in other areas. But this fact does not necessarily prove an Arab immigration into Palestine took place. More reasonably it confirms the very well-known fact that the coastal area attracted Arab villagers from the mountainous parts of Palestine who preferred the economic opportunities in the fast-growing areas of Jaffa and Haifa to the meager opportunities available in their villages.
The coastal area had several main attractions for the Arab villagers. They found jobs in constructing, and later working in, the port of Haifa, the Iraq Petroleum Company refineries, the railway workshops, and the nascent Arab industries there. They also took part in the large-scale cultivation of the citrus groves between Haifa and Jaffa and found jobs connected with the shipment of citrus fruits from the Jaffa port.
"I said, today, Hawaiians have no grounds for complaining. "
But the point is, they did intially, and they opted to back down. And as a result, they wound up with "no grounds for complaining".
A poll conducted two years ago found that 70% of the Arabs with Israeli citizenship call themselves Palestinians (i.e., "Palestinian", "Arab Palestinian", "Palestinian Arab" or "Israeli Palestinian"). By contrast, only 11% of them called themselves "Israeli Arabs".
The times are a-changin'. This is a summary of the latest survey of Israeli Arabs. Twice as many Israeli Arabs call themselves thus than two years ago. As for the rest, I'm not sure what this means really:
one-third define their national identity as “Palestinians or Arab citizens in Israel,” one-third use various combinations of “Arab” and “Palestinian,” and 22% “Israeli Arab.”
Weird situation.
But I simply cannot imagine God putting that clown Bibi at the head of our government in these dire times. He's got too much style for that.
These outposts are defended by politicians with proto-fascist tendencies who have never before penetrated the inner circles of government in such force. Why fascist? Because people like Effi Eitam fit the specification of this European concept.
(By Gideon Samet, self-hating Jew writing for Haaretz)
"Self-loathing gay man" is how the Board of Supervisors President, and ultra-leftist wack job, referred to me in response to a letter of mine published in the SF Examiner.
A good and an easy insult.
this coming together of the fundamentalist Right and hardline Zionism is natural, because they share many hatreds. The Christian Right has always hated the United Nations, partly on straight nationalist grounds, but also because of bizarre fears of world government by the Antichrist. They have hated Europeans on religious grounds as decadent atheists, on class grounds as associates of the hated 'East Coast elites', and on nationalist grounds as critics of unconstrained American power. Both sides share an instinctive love of military force. Both see themselves as historical victims....
Finally, and most dangerously, both are conditioned to see themselves as defenders of 'civilisation' against 'savages'
Anatol Lieven, London Review of Books 10/02/02
three letters...starts with W....mmmm..
OOHH I Get it
WAR!!
Do I win a prize...
a defining characteristic of politicians with proto-fascist tendencies
Really.
Maybe you should tell him personally...
Anatol Lieven may be reached through The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
I'm sure he'd welcome your sage advice
But love him or hate him, there’s no denying his influence on the way outside observers have come to see the Baltic nations.
Anatol Lieven studied history at Cambridge University, and in 1988 joined The Times of London to cover the Afghan war. From 1990 to 1992, he reported for The Times from the Baltic states, and later from Moscow and Chechnya. In recent years, he has been a senior researcher at a London-based think tank, and he recently accepted a position with the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C.
BalticsWorldwide
OK?
Endgame Afghanistan
Anatol Lieven, Independent, October 14, 2001
Opinion
A quick victory may wreck the long-term goal
Anatol Lieven, The Times, October 13, 2001
Interview
Interview with a Pro-Taliban Businessman
Anatol Lieven, Peshawar, Pakistan, October 12, 2001
Interview
Interview with Commander Abdul Haq
Anatol Lieven, Peshawar, Pakistan, October 2001
Opinion
Russia and Realpolitik
Anatol Lieven, Financial Times, October 3, 2001
Opinion
After the Attacks: America's New Cold War
Anatol Lieven, The Guardian, September 28, 2001
Opinion
The Roots of Terrorism and a Strategy Against It
Anatol Lieven, Prospect, October 2001
Opinion
New Enemies Demand New Strategies as the Cold War Ends
Anatol Lieven, The Times, Sept. 13, 2001
Opinion
Morality and Reality in Approaches to War Crimes: The Case of Chechnya
Anatol Lieven, East European Constitutional Review, Spring/Summer2001
Opinion
Caucasus and Central Asia Ten Years After the Soviet Collapse
Anatol Lieven, EurasiaNet, August 21, 2001
Visit the Carnegie Moscow Center website at www.carnegie.ru.
I think Lieven diagnosed your own malady Biener, when, speaking of being taken to lunch by some Bush right wing neo-cons shortly after the so-called "inauguration", he had this to say of their and your worldview:
Two things were particularly striking here: a tendency to divide the world into friends and enemies, and a difficulty verging on autism when it came to international opinions that didn't coincide with their own
Idiot savants, morons and proto-fascists....
If you want a little hint about how I see things, the woman in my life is a left-wing, liberal Democrat, and while we may disagree on some political issues, I have a deep respect for her opinions and her intelligence. You see, I am able to disagree with her and love her at the same time. Wrap your brain around that.
I agree, it was low of you.
Andonly: I will answer your posts later. I've grown weary of our topic and I need a short break from it.
He's rather understanding of the Russian position, while rightly critical of the army's brutal role in Chechnya. But the world should avoid preching to the Russians. It will be years, he concludes, before Chechen extremists and Russina hardliners are exhausted sufficiently to think about compromise; meanwhile, there's no one the Russians can seriously negotiate with.
The editorial is subscription only, but I will dutifully type it out if anyone here (other than Jexster) wants to read it.
The fascinating thing is that one could write exactly the same article about Israel and the Pals.
No problem. I'm sure I'll recipocate the hiatus some other time.
You guys are probably getting bent over Jexstron's silly jackboot caption, not Lieven's comments per se.
Then by the time of the second Chechen War, Lieven had done a volte-face and was accusing critics of Russia's Chechen policy of being "bigoted Cold Warriors" and "Slavophobes".
From FOX.
Tee-hee!
I think you are far too forgiving towards Anatole. I don't think he was only referring to radical Israeli settlers. He was talking about the alliance between the Christian Right and Israelis. I don't see that as being limited to a few hardline radicals.
What I found particularly offensive was that he claimed hatred as the motivating force for both groups. I have no love for the Christian Right in this country, but I know enough about them to know that in this case they are motivated by religious beliefs. The Zionists are motivated by something a bit more basic: survival.
By Anatole claiming the Zionists are simply motivated by hatred, he trivializes their cause and the profound losses they have suffered. He is substituting insults for analysis. It is true that many Zioninsts feel an intense hatred toward Palestinians, but that is a normal human reaction to decades of indiscriminate killing of civilians.
Anatole may not be as brain dead as he appears. He may just be intellectually dishonest. Either way his writing is a waste of space.
More idiocy.
Does your ass ever get chapped from talking out of it too much, Biener?
There is a sizeable and politically powerful element in Israel who are motivated--if not by hatred--then by a messianic zeal to make the West Bank Palestinien-frei. This is not done out of a desire to make Israel more secure, but from a desire to establish control over "biblical" Israel. Unfortunately for Israel's long-term security, and the Palestian short-term existence, many of them live in West Bank settlements.
Among the things that they have recently done:
Prevented Palestians from harvesting olive crops on Palestinian-owned land;
Driven the inhabitants of at least one Palestinian village from that village;
Assaulted IDF forces attempting to keep the peace in the above-mentioned instances;
Urged IDF forces tasked with dismantling settlements that even the Sharon government recognizes as illegally set up to disobey their orders;
All of this information is found in Israeli media reports, and it is slowly filtering into the American media.
How the Israeli government responds to these actions will say a lot about Israel's future. Suffice it to say that had Palestinians been the ones throwing stones at IDF forces instead of settlers, there would have been a shooting incident, with Palestinians dead and wounded.
One of your favorites devices in left/right arguments has always been the use of a whipping boy - a person or entity which, ostensibly, is "on your side" - Newt Gingrich or Tom Delay, or the NRA, for example - but with whom you will take issue at the drop of a hat in order to prove your independence of thought on this or that issue. This is a perfectly valid device - I have no problem with it.
But lately your whipping boy has been the Christian Right. I take particular issue now because in Message # 1338 you claim to "know enough about 'them' to know they are motivated by religious beliefs".
I submit that you know next to nothing about the Christian Right. If you did, you would know that their increased support for Israel has nothing to do with hatred for Islam, or any "religious beliefs". To the extent that it is motivated by "religion" (whatever that means) - this has everything to do with the fact that the current pandemic of Islamist murderousness happens to have two targets: Jews and Christians.
You see?
We now share an enemy. But that enemy has declared war on us - not the other way around.
It's nice to see you and jexster finally agree on something.
Be that as it may, I have to tell you that you know absolutely nothing about what the Christian Right believe. There is of course a fringe element of end-timers whose beliefs and positions with regards to Armageddon shift with the winds, and if you ever try and nail one of them down, you will find that their beliefs are informed more by 'The Late Great Planet Earth' and the National Enquirer, than by the Bible. These people are a tiny minority of conservative Christendom.
And your reading - your understanding, JJ, is obviously as narrow as theirs. Your present views have always been shaped by your past arguments, and that is why you compulsively flaunt your ignorance.
The majority of Christian conservatives support Israel because they fear Islamists and, post 9-11, identify more closely with Israelis.
I have no problem with that sort of support, however transient it may be. The fundamentalists can go hang, though. They only encourage the worst of settler mentality and give fuel to the Israeli far right, which threatens to ruin any Israeli state most Jews would care to live in.
You've been fixing too many holes in the roof lately. I think you're just trying to pick a fight with JJ.
So really, you don't think Pat Robertson's beliefs wrt Armageddon are important politically?
You know, people don't have to be religious for religion to shape their world view and actions. Mof, the most 'dangerous' kind of people are people who used to be religious. Because they have been empowered by being modernized, but still have religion in them on a subconscious level, shaping the way they see themselves and history. I'm thinking specifically of the early Zionists. You see, religious Jews dreamed about returning to the Holy Land but they didn't have the political tools and the activist realism to actually go and do it. But it was the enlightened, non-religious Jews who formed the Zionist movement and got on the boats and planted their stakes in Palestine, reinvented themselves, became farmers and soldiers etc.
So it doesn't matter so much if people go around saying they believe in End Times. Because even the ones that don't, still have all those concepts swimming around in their heads. And they are the ones who make policy, in the end.
Next time try to learn something instead of trying to cover your ignorance with bluster and insults.
Most Jews voted for the right in the last election (for PM), and in the next elections, a lot more will. So don't speak on the Israeli majority's behalf.
Labor has bolted the government just when a war is coming on. I wonder if they'll get more than 13 seats in the next erections.
So really, you don't think Pat Robertson's beliefs wrt Armageddon are important politically?
This is where I think JJ gets hung up.
Listen - I'm a very Conservative Christian. I attend all kinds of conferences, etc, with alot of other CC's. I can assure you - guys like Pat Robertson (especially Pat, matter of fact) are effectively marginalized within the ranks of the Christian Right. No one even mentions them, Pike -they're like the Kennedys' retarded sister.
You see, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, et al...these guys are like the bogeyman. They would get absolutely no press if lefties and anti-Christians would ignore tham, because most actual Christians do ignore them.
As for the "end times" -since long before 9-11 - the standard response within the ranks of mainstream Christian Conservatism to claims by the end-timers that "all the signs are there" has been to direct them to the part in Revelation where it says that no one is going to know when -that he will come like a thief in the night, and that is downright presumptuous - maybe even blasphemous - to try and pre-empt scripture with such prognostications.
Biener watches an episode of 60 Minutes and is an expert on the Christian Right.
I saw that junk, Biener.
Please...any other time, you'd be railing against the obvious bias that is the trademark of that show.
Tally-ho!
Even the dumbass Swede agrees with me.
That should tell you something.
Please. Last election's results were the work of the Pals. Next election's result will be too. I wouldn't get cocky if I were you; they might finally wise up this time.
This, however, is a righteous analysis, which I've also advanced but in relation to other matters, such as the secular European antipathy toward Israel.
FWIW, there are some conservatives here who don't immediately dismiss all liberals as idiots. Just as there some liberals who think similarly of conservatives. It is the knee-jerk reactionaries who make it difficult for all of us. Welcome to the Mote.
You can drop the newby act, btw.
BTW, what makes you think Candice isn't a newby?
Al D In a post you welcomed me and mentioned if I was a Liberal not to fear there were many friends to be found on theMote. So where are all these liberals?
We killed them. We didn't know you were coming.
Don't mind joe, he's usually a great guy. I think he was trying to tell you to feel right at home.
But they missed me. And they're afraid of Cellar Door and Jex won't sit still long enough for anyone to get a bead on him.
Welcome to the Mote, Candice.
BUILD A SHINING, BRAND-NEW, PALESTINE, ON A HILL ON THE EAST BANK OF THE JORDAN; AND THEY WILL COME--TO WORK, TO GET EDUCATED, AND TO PROSPER IN THEIR OWN STATE.
THERE WILL BE A HIGH-SPEED MONORAIL TO EAST JERUSALEM--ROUND TRIP FREE.
BUILD IT NOW! THE WORLD NEEDS IT!
Yes, we have liberals here.
For instance, Cellar Door is a liberal.
jexster is a liberal, at least part time.
godlessclif, who occasionally has appeared, is quite liberal.
Snowowl is a proud liberal.
Betty is very liberal.
Ivan Osokin is very liberal, but I haven't seen him post for a week or two.
sakonige is pretty liberal, but perhaps 'tribal' would be more accurate in her case.
As you can see, it's virtually a liberal jamboree here, if you look a little.
I see that even PE admits that Lieven's opinions are rather inconstant as re the Chechens.
Lieven is susceptible to Leftist propaganda, not nearly as perceptive as he believes he is and he shows it.
It's about the least evanescent support Israel has had among non-Jews.
I think joezan has the most credibility on the subject at hand wrt the marginalization of Robertson, etal among CC's in general.
Try to be polite about swallowing your disappointment, JJB, Andonly, etc.
FOLLY IN MOSCOW, TYRANNY IN CHEHNYA
By Fawaz Turki:
"Truth be told...
"Truth be told, it wasn't Communism that defined Russia. An ideolgy is a strategy of insight implemented by people.
Russia as a culture and a polity was the totalitarian state of the Russian character, whose origins predating Czarist times, is beyond recall."
-------------------------------------------------
Noteworthy how Turki and his employer often rail against anti-Arab Muslim caricatures in Western media. Yet, they do likewise to their perceived enemies.
Regretfully, they have allies in The Washington Post Editorial Board and elsewhere, who misrepresent the situation in Chechnya in a manner of the hypocritically warped claims to that territory becoming "independent," of which it's unable to successfully do on its own (through no fault of Russia) as recent history clearly shows.
THE RUSSIANS & SERBS ARE RIGHT!
FOLLY IN MOSCOW, TYRANNY IN CHEHNYA
By Fawaz Turki:
"Truth be told...
"Truth be told, it wasn't Communism that defined Russia. An ideolgy is a strategy of insight implemented by people.
Russia as a culture and a polity was the totalitarian state of the Russian character, whose origins predating Czarist times, is beyond recall."
-------------------------------------------------
Noteworthy how Turki and his employer often rail against anti-Arab Muslim caricatures in Western media. Yet, they do likewise to their perceived enemies.
Regretfully, they have allies in The Washington Post Editorial Board and elsewhere, who misrepresent the situation in Chechnya in a manner of the hypocritically warped claims to that territory becoming "independent," of which it's unable to successfully do on its own (through no fault of Russia) as recent history clearly shows.
THE RUSSIANS & SERBS ARE RIGHT!
FOLLY IN MOSCOW, TYRANNY IN CHEHNYA
By Fawaz Turki:
"Truth be told...
"Truth be told, it wasn't Communism that defined Russia. An ideolgy is a strategy of insight implemented by people.
Russia as a culture and a polity was the totalitarian state of the Russian character, whose origins predating Czarist times, is beyond recall."
-------------------------------------------------
Noteworthy how Turki and his employer often rail against anti-Arab Muslim caricatures in Western media. Yet, they do likewise to their perceived enemies.
Regretfully, they have allies in The Washington Post Editorial Board and elsewhere, who misrepresent the situation in Chechnya in a manner of the hypocritically warped claims to that territory becoming "independent," of which it's unable to successfully do on its own (through no fault of Russia) as recent history clearly shows.
THE RUSSIANS & SERBS ARE RIGHT!
Why can't Connie read?
Message # 1345, Andonly: "Biener, I think Zan is right on this one. The Christians who support Israel because they anticipate the rapture any day now are a small minority whose importance has been overplayed lately..."
Why can't Connie read?
Message # 1345, Andonly: "Biener, I think Zan is right on this one. The Christians who support Israel because they anticipate the rapture any day now are a small minority whose importance has been overplayed lately..."
Concerned: Lieven's opinions about Chechnya changed for a very good reason -- only an idiot could be pro-Russian during the first Chechen war and only an idiot could be pro-Chechen during the second Chechen war. So his inconstancy was a virtue, not a vice.
"I'm Lieven, on a jet plane."
This doesn't belong here but I wonder what marj will say about this.
Wonder why so many people conflate the methods advocated with the goal?
Wrt the Pope and his attitude toward Hinduism, what's so unique about it? Probably most people who are halfway committed to their religious beliefs would claim that the rest of the world would be better off if they shared them. Plus, how 'bad' is missionary work and proselytization, really? Not very. I don't particularly care whether anybody converts to Catholicism, btw.
The governors of Alabama, South Carolina, Arkansas, Georgia, and Mississippi announced today that they have made a disturbing discovery in their states.
Apparently, a small number of Al Qaeda terrorists have become romantically involved with local redneck girls. The result is not pretty and the governors now have the sad task of reporting the emergence of a new race: Islamabubbas.
So far, only a smattering of actual births have been reported but Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition is hard at work trying to isolate and seal them off. To date, the Coalition has identified the following offspring:
Mohammed Billy Bob Abba Bubba
Mohammed Jethro Bin Thinkin Bout It
Mohammed Rubba Dub Dubba Bubba
Bobbie Joe Bubba Amgood Atat
Betty Jean Hasbeena Badgurl
Linda Sue Bin There Dunthat
Not surprisingly, the Coalition believes they all seem to have sprung from one couple: Mohammed Whoozyadaddy and Yomamma Bin Lovin.
You're only noticing this lately?
Well, yes. Did I miss something in marj's posts or links? I confess I don't read every single word on every single post.
Iac, I didn't realize the link was so obvious that the guy would just link to kahane.org and not have to explain anything.
Not exactly fair - With Bibi in the FM job, it will be easier to keep Bush in line, deflecting world attention from the Israeli Right Wing's religious hard liners and their plans for the West Bank to their US radical confreres and their plans for World Empire.
Well I see no reason to cower in embarrassed silence or meekly "explain" anything.
Kahane Tedzek!!! That's what I say. And why is it so important to say these righteous words?
KAHANE TZEDEK WHY ARE THESE WORDS SO IMPORTANT
Years before most Jews saw the problem, there was a solution, a Torah solution, the solution of driving them out, and the warning if we didn't was there for everyone to see and read:
"AND IF YOU WILL NOT DRIVE OUT THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND FROM BEFORE YOU, THEN THOSE THAT YOU LET REMAIN OF THEM SHALL BE THORNS IN YOUR EYES AND THISTLES IN YOUR SIDES AND SHALL TORMENT YOU IN THE LAND WHEREIN YOU DWELL" (BAMIDBAR 33:55)"
The Lie of the Land and A FINAL Solution!
"...is it not the Kahanists who are arrested for the crime of holding a memorial for the greatest Jewish leader of our time? Is it not the Kahanists who are banned from making Aliyah to the homeland? Is it not the Kahanists who are criticized by every segment of the population, called names that I cannot repeat here, (this also includes many Jews from Yesha)..."
I really wonder if the left can put together an equally powerful bloc.
Niccolo Caldararo
Abstract
The current debate on the nature of fundamentalism is outlined in this paper. Ethnohistorical materials are used to define the origins of this concept and to describe the function and structure of such movements in past societies. The relationship of identity, religion and global economy and hegemony are discussed as formative elements of fundamentalist movements. Some prospects for the future are presented.
From the text:
One can certainly argue a species of Spencerian organismic evolution (Spencer, 1885) and trace a cycle from Rome’s rise to world domination and defeat of her Eastern contenders to America’s domination of the current political stage. One can even see parallels in the outline; a period of romanticism for the virtues of rustic life after its destruction by war and monopoly (see Virgil’s Bucolics and Georgics and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, etc.), and the struggle to pacify an unruly corner of the world beset by fanaticism and civil war (Palestine in both cases). We then could argue that it is the rise of complexity in society and the reduction in the traditional affections and duties which bind people into traditional community, which stimulates fundamentalism. This also was the theme of Ibn Khaldun’s, The Muqaddimah. The fanaticism which beset the Roman Empire is aptly described by Julian Augustus (better known as Julian the Apostate) and demonstrated by St. Augustine.
>>>>>>>>>>
Another parallel is that in 70 C.E. there were more people of Jewish extraction living outside Judea than within its borders, as is true today. Many of these people had become Hellenized, and in Judea the globalism of the Roman Empire threatened the idea of traditional life producing a violent response. What is different, other than the technology, is that the Roman state had no interest in the continued existence of Judea. Its main concern was to maintain the undisturbed transit of wealth through the Near Eastern corridor. ............ But Rome crushed several rebellions in Judea, each led by more fanatical sects, each punctuated by acts of terror on both sides. However, the legitimacy of these sects to speak for a religion and a people has never been clear (Kahle, 1959; Schonfield, 1965). Diaspora or the complete removal and resettlement of peoples was a common policy of the Roman Empire and utilized by the Byzantine emperors later. It was a radical act of pacification and secondarily promoted integration. The struggle between tradition and assimilation in Jewish history is paralleled by that of the Basque.
Assassins .......... who held to a belief similar to the transmigration of souls, especially when one had killed in the service of the Grand Master. According to Steven Runciman (1962), murder in the interests of religious belief already had a long history among the orthodox sects of Islam by this time. Islamic and Christian rulers failed to defeat them, even Saladin was forced to make an accommodation. Their fortunes waxed and waned until the arrival of Hulagu Khan and the Monguls, during his conquest of Persia and Syria every castle and village they controlled was reduced to dust according to Gibbon.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
It is interesting that the rule of terror caused by individual fanatic belief rooted in a subservience to one man could be destroyed by the fanatical mass of the hordes rooted in their mass hysteria of murder. It seems to be the alpha and omega of human, and in a way, primate behavior - the small group and its control dynamics vs. the mass in hierarchical execution. The key consideration, however, is the role: were the Assassins guardians of purity or contenders for power? This is a constant theme in Nagata’s discussion of Malaysia and it certainly plays a major role in any analysis of the secular regimes of Turkey and Algeria and their internal conflicts. But Nagata clouds the issue by her several references to the Luddites in her argument that fundamentalists do not reject technology – Medieval robed men using computers is her image – when she perhaps is trying to convey a more comprehensive rejection of the world like that of the Anabaptists who Luther found extreme in their faith.
.......... At the same time Burckhardt describes how the Renaissance borrowed from Islamic traditions ideals of nobleness, dignity and pride exemplified by such heroes as Saladin. In fact, according to Burckhardt, Italian tolerance of the period was patterned after a perceived concept of Islam, but that it was a rejection of religion given the sordid history of sexual crimes, violence and materialism produced by the clergy, which led to the social revolution that made the Renaissance possible.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
.............
Freedom has no place in religion, but subservience does and this is what I think really fuels the fundamentalist engine and is the source of human despair today. ........... Firth, Nagata and Armstrong all are generally in agreement that the essence of religion is rooted in an identity which is essential to human community and functions to give meaning to life.
We must regard the change in the West which will be brought about by the images and explanations of what is Islam, Arabic and most of all, Fundamentalism. A new means of translating ideas exists, and a rain of these ideas in images and words has covered the globe since 9/11/01. The transformation of our world is on. Will that transformation be followed by a new Pax Romana, a new Renaissance or the terrors of a world war of religions embraced by a culture of war? Can the struggle for identity and justice tolerate a world of differences?
This is major trouble for the coalition and, I suspect, Ben Eliezer's opening salvo in the Labor primary campaign. We may, indeed, be in for national elections sooner than planned.
The "this" links to an article about the evacuation of an outpost on shabat.
I believe Sharon will come out the winner in the Likud primaries, but I'm not objective. He's outmaneuvered Bibi quite masterfully the past few times they were up against each other, it was actually fun to watch. Hopefully, too, the war will happen sometime soon. If the current UN-watching drags out for too long, he could have a problem. But I simply cannot see God allowing that clown Bibi to run the show here at such a critical, millennial time. This is all such high historic and strategic drama: putting Bibi at the helm now would be like replacing Ronaldo with Mr. Bean at the World Cup final or something.
I asked you a question on one of the million threads on the competing forum but you never answered.
His decision to hold early elections exudes confidence and leadership, and I think he's quite a man, even if he is slightly overweight. I figure he still gets a hard-on every month or so, though I doubt he's seen it without the aid of a mirror in the past few decades.
Striking imagery.
But what about Labour? Isn't God going to intervene on their behalf?
And, why is the election set at such a far point in the future as February? Is Sharonaldo hoping that any Iraqi war will help him score?
I always found the Jewish custom of burying people immediately after their demise significant because it seems to go well with the restlessness so prominent in the Jewish soul. But apparently the same doesn't apply to a government which loses its parliamentary basis.
The thread list advertises a post #1414 by joezan, but I don't see it although it says I am displaying "Messages 1315 - 1413 out of 1414" on my screen. What will happen when I post this, I wonder.
Nope. At least that's what the voice on His 800 number says. Labor is expected to become very small. Shinui, the anti-haredi party, is expected to grow, as is the Likud.
And, why is the election set at such a far point in the future as February? Is Sharonaldo hoping that any Iraqi war will help him score?
Prolly. Plus, it's the furthest point the law permits. The law says 90 days max from the moment elections are announced.
This morning's FT relates he was demanding in exchange for agreeing to do the Foreign Minister post not only early elections but also the expulsion of Arafat and an official nix on Pal statehood.
Sounds like a platform to me. And if he dropped these demands now, be sure they'll get worked into the broader Likud program one way or another, before or after February.
Looks like Netanyahu is so far out-manouevering Sharon, Pike, not the other way 'round. Now all we need is a great big suicide attack with lots of casualties, and Bibi will have an additional edge to beat.
To put others in the picture, here is our exchange in the other place (because I am by nature merciful and compassionate I will not reveal your moniker over there).
Pelle:
I fear we are watching the beginning of the end of the sionist dream of an open, democratic society based on humanitarian values.
Rustler:
Can you be more specific?
This was at the time when Sharon tried to get Lieberman to shore up the coalition. Now I guess we'll have to wait and see how things play in February, but I'm still pessimistic.
Like, "militant potato," or conversely, "milquetoast potato," or possibly "the millionth potato".
What's the latest on the row with Russia? (See International)
Svelte, but brilliant.
sto - we make a good team. How about you find a good Danish publication for me to write for, you translate - I make some extra krøners on the side and you inject your boring Nordic life with some interest?
Ando - what is your moniker Over There?
*Especially lately, not always.
Ynet's readers seem to agree that Bibi has won this round, becoming FM and getting early erections. However, it's not over till the fat guy sings. If there's a war and Arik does some Arikistic things, and Bibi gets the job of explaining them, it will become obvious again who's good at what.
Plus, putting Bibi in as FM is, after all, a magnanimous and inclusionary move (it's also one job Bibi can actually be good at). Sharon has been very inclusionary, pro-unity, and people appreciate that. Bibi was always being divisive - that was part of why so many people hated him.
Oops.
And don't forget we have Moufaz in the mix, too.
Well, that explains a lot. Not.
Agreed. And from what I'm hearing, Ben-Eliezer/Ramon/Mitznah doesn't stand a chance for PM.
The other thing is, Bibi's not quite as smart as he thinks he is. He gets carried away a bit by his own rhetoric.
"And don't forget we have Moufaz in the mix, too."
I haven't forgotten at all.
******
My moniker at TPW is Mayimadom. I think I've used it only once or twice.
******
I'd been thinking for a while now that the rightward swing in the US since 9-11 would be inevitable, but I was hoping it wasn't, almost reflexively.
As usual, I'm not sure whether hardlinish developments are ultimately that awful for international politics vis-a-vis the US or Israel. But internally, domestically, they herald teeth gritting for both countries. The sooner we get past perpetual threat mode and our foreign power struggles minimize, the better for our well being; the years ahead are going to be bad, I'm afraid, especially for anyone who hasn't already got theirs.
It's going to be interesting to see what happens in Turkey, by the way. An optimistic view would be that liberal Islamics running a secular Turkey successfully would serve as an example to Iran, which even now is forging quiet anti-Saddam links to the US.
In the long run, especially if Saddam is deposed and power relationships get realigned, all this could redound to the benefit of the Pals and Israelis in resolving their conflict. Maybe.
The proper Hebrew is mayim adumim: mayim is a plural form.
As for what's to come: I can't predict economic stuff well, but I think Israel will at least wind up with the WB&G, and though it will be much more isolated in the world than it is now, you may see a sort of community of hardline anti-Muslim countries emerging. Like - we may be embargoed by the Arabs, but India will trade with us, etc.
Plus, there will be all that water and real estate freed up in the WB&G, and an influx of rich American Jews too. We won't even need US aid anymore (maybe).
But if I thought Sharon was going to use Gulf War 2 as a smokescreen for expelling the Pals - I've thought again. He doesn't seem to be going in that direction at all right now. I think he'll use the war as a smokescreen for expelling Hairy and some of his cadres, and maybe for a couple thousand incarcerations. Then I imagine we'll get bogged down in there pretty badly, and Hairy will be traveling all over the world again. I imagine there'll be very heavy world pressure on us to withdraw from the WB&G, especially after the US has punished Iraq.
But eventually we'll expel them, I figure. Maybe the Pals will overthrow Abdullah post-GW2 and then we'll expel them from the WB&G? I don't know. I just don't see us withdrawing from there.
But a Middle East without Saddam - that'll be something, won't it? I can't begin to imagine it.
Btw, Saddam gave an interesting interview to an Egyptian paper a few days ago that I didn't see quoted anywhere, except on Israel's Ynet. One could almost sympathise with him: he sounded sane. He said he didn't have any illusions that he could defeat the US, but that the US invasion would not be a picnic.
But unfortunately for propriety Mayimadumim does not sound weirdly off-kilter the way Mayimadom does. I'm pretty sure if you know no Hebrew, Mayimadom sounds only ambiguously un-English, like it could mean or be derived from pretty much anything. Almost a dinosaur, almost a whore, almost having something to do with ancient South American civilizations or possibly the mothers of disappeared Argentinians.
That's gubmint.
"Plus, there will be all that water and real estate freed up in the WB&G, and an influx of rich American Jews too. We won't even need US aid anymore (maybe)."
Rich American Jews? Dream on. If the right gets much more of a stranglehold on Israel than it's got already, your brain drain will more than compensate for the trickle of US Jews willing to go settle in the WB. And Gaza! Well, I can just see the flood of rich Angelenos named Cohen and Lipshitz and Mersky surging toward Gaza to get a handful of the good life.
I've already explained my anti-semitism in the US as a result of anti-Israelism theory here. You and others will come here out of necessity, not some kind of right-wing ideology. And we will be the ones deciding where to settle you.
You see - we (Izzies) control you (diasporites). Not the other way around.
This could only be said by someone obsessed with who controls what. Such obsessions do not enslave those who are actually in control of something.
A similar dynamic must have been animated in San Francisco just recently, when it lost its Olympics bid to New York. Anyone who has ever lived in the SF Bay Area knows how obsessed Bay Areans are with NY. It burns them no end that SF, a city a fraction the size of NY, is not considered on a par with Manhattan in terms of art and culture. In an ordinary month, regional hacks can't go two weeks without comparing SF to NY, always judging NY to be inferior in some respect. I bet their asses are even more chapped now.
To put a finer point on the analogy, American Jews are not sitting around wondering whether we control Israel or Israel controls us. Nor are we planning to be driven out of the US. It ain't Germany half a century ago, much as you might wish otherwise, Pike.
I don't think I'm obsessed with controlling you. I'm just amused that we can manipulate things pretty easily to force you to get your butts (and dollars, and know-how) over here and help make this place better.
And I do resent the fact that you live as diaspora Jews because I don't believe in the diaspora Jew existence. I hated it as a kid and I don't think I could live with it now either.
You don't, huh? What am I then, an American moneybags wraith?
You lived in one part in the US, for a short time, as a kid. Well, things vary from location to location, you're a grownup now, and times have changed. I think you would not have much trouble these days finding a place in the US to live where you did not feel like you were sheltering in someone else's territory among people unlike you.
Unless he wanted to.
I'm amused you think you've acomplished all that without help from fate, oil, and Muslim fundamentalists.
Rustler
Please give us a brief profile of Amram Mitzna, the most likely nex Labour leader.
Ah - but imagine if he had cut one post of yours into half! That would be impressive, non?
Bientot? (what does that word mean, btw?)
Fate, schmate. You're in our hands. I'm offering you a house in Nablus, but I want a date on that leather couch providing you're decent-looking and have no STDs, and your husband can be disposed of. But my offer will go down in value the longer you procrastinate.
Pelle:
Mitzna's right up your alley.
He's a turd. Labor is going down surer than that whore who got arrested with Hugh Grant did.
Maybe. I'm too heavily invested in my present life and I'm not uprooting it, is all I know. I'm hoping adversity will turn into godspeed, as it sometimes does.
'Godspeed' is a great word, though I think I am misusing it. 
Dances with Devils:
How Apocalyptic and Millennialist Themes Influence [the]Right Wing
This extensive overview provides an introduction to the way in which apocalypticism and millennialism influence a variety of right-wing political and social movements, especially in the United States. If you are looking for an explanation of why so many on the Christian Right are so strong in their support of the state of Israel and its policies, this is a good place to start. Here is the beginning of the article:
The approach of the year 2000 stimulated widespread discussion of apocalyptic fears and millennialist expectations. Often lost in the discussion is the important ongoing role that specific types of apocalyptic and millennialist thinking play in shaping the demonization, scapegoating, and conspiracism used by various right-wing political and social movements.
A remarkable number of myths, metaphors, images, symbols, phrases, and icons in Western culture flow from Christian Biblical prophecies about apocalyptic confrontations and millennial transformation. The Bible's Book of Revelation contains warnings that the end of time is foreshadowed by a vast Satanic conspiracy involving high government officials who betray the decent and devout productive citizens, while sinful and subversive tools of the Devil gnaw away at society from below.
In William Safire's latest column he makes a reference to "Bibi, from a legendary family". What makes Bibi's forefathers legendary?
I donno, this forum is 3/4 dead yet TPW is somehow more of a women's kafeeklatsch (sp?) than anything else. I've got one foot here, one foot there, and my balls are hanging over the Atlantic.
the first Gulf War). 
Well, they've caught the fuckwad who sent out the fuckwad who shot these kids dead in their home in Metzer.
His name is Muhammad Naifeh. A relative of his is, according to Ynet, a well known nuclear physicist who lives in the US. Isn't that a comforting thought, now?
JERUSALEM --(AP) Israeli troops yesterday tracked down the suspected ringleader of a deadly Palestinian shooting at an Israeli kibbutz, arresting him in the West Bank town of Tulkaremhouse.
An Israeli human rights group helped arrange the surrender of Mohammed Naefe, who Israel says planned the attack Sunday on Kibbutz Metzer, a communal farm. Five people were killed, including a mother and her two young sons. The suspected gunman, identified as Sirhan Sirhan, 19, remains at large.
These guys are former Russian professional soldiers who volunteer to help guard the settlements. They have years of combat experience in antiterror operations in Chechnya, etc. behind them, yet the IDF has refused to enlist them because they are over 28. So they volunteer on Saturdays.
This is what soldiers should look like, basically.
Let me tell you, the IDF is a sissy army and Israel is a sissy country. There is no fight in the Jews. They are wusses. They get killed like flies yet they persist in blaming themselves. Look at where I live, Harish: our neighboring kibbutz, Metzer, is hit by an infiltration attack, kids murdered at home. Do we have a fence yet? Nope. Is someone checking the cars entering at the gates? No siree-bob. It's like people want to get killed or something.
Will Hebron parts be pulverized in retaliation for the massacre? No. Maybe some bulldozers will do some demolition work, maybe not. The attack is the direct result of the agreement reached between Ben Eliezer and the Pals, to withdraw the IDF from the wholly Arab parts of Hebron that were under its control.
What will save this sissy country? Nothing short of a major disaster, a near-death experience, I suspect. We'll see what happens when the US moves in on Iraq, is all I can say.
I'm worried.
What didn't you like about being a "diaspora" Jew?
Basically, that I wasn't in control of my own destiny. I found that the American Jews I grew up alongside conformed, more or less, to the stereotypes. Those that didn't were on their way out of the Jewish fold anyways.
I didn't like having a nickel rolled past me in the dining hall. I didn't like the extra meanings the word "Jew" resonated with. I liked the fighting Jew, the proud Jew, the Israeli.
Ah, erections. 
'Give me a little more echo'.
They have a visitor, or maybe it is one of their own, who has been honking his horn like mad for the past 20 minutes, waiting for someone to come out.
It is Shabbat morning. Yet nobody will dare come out and tell the guy off.
So am I really in my own country?
If Sharon puts together a coalition with Labor and Shinui (mainstream conservative anti-haredi economically liberal), and maybe Sharansky's party.
This is probably what Sharon wants, and most of the public would suck his toes - with the cheese and everything - if he pulled it off.
I was born and raised in Manhattan, NYC, and did not live in "Jewish" neighborhoods. Whatever anti-Semitism I experienced was more of the "I didn't know you were Jewish," sort; quickly apologized for, and not repeated (It did color my perceptions of those who came out with those statements). I was fortunate in being a big kid, who looked intimidating, in an edgy, urban sort of way.
I spent a lot of time rebelling against the suburban materialism of my cousins and classmates in high school and college. I loathed the nasal accents, skin-tight polyester shirts, and leisure suits that so many had/wore (the 1970s were really a nadir of fashion, weren't they?). I did not become Bar Mitzvah at 13, in part because of this.
I rediscovered observant Judaism, not by making Aliya (for some reason, I have never wanted to go to Israel), when I started a family nine years ago. Became Bar Mitzvah a year ago.
It would be an interesting philosophical discussion whether Jewish existence is better suited for living in other countries (emancipated, of course) or ruling its own country. The history for the latter is IMO not good, and if the current (third) experience is anything to go by, it looks to be repeating itself.
Please pardon a naive question from a rural southern goy, but how does the observation, "I didn't know you were Jewish," hint of anti-Semitism?
I'm not sure I get the part about skin-tight polyester and leisure suits. This was a Jewish thing? Kids and college students wore leisure suits? Please explain.
I'm not sure I know what a leisure suit is, even. It's one of those things I can never remember, even if I've been told.
The polyester makes me think of a certain striped shirt I used to have in high school. But aren't most t-shirts really skin-tight polyester, to some degree? 
Col. Dror Weinberg is credited with the tough antiterror action that kept the Hebron area quiet for so long. He opposed the withdrawal from the Arab parts of Hebron negotiated by Ben Eliezer. 
1st Sgt. Igor Darovsky 
1st Sgt. David Marcus. 
Lt. Dan Cohen.
Rest in peace.
— JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Abba Eban, a former Israeli foreign minister and one of its best known diplomats, died on Sunday at the age of 87 in a hospital near Tel Aviv, an Israeli Foreign Ministry source said.
It followed antisemitic statements told to who they thought was a fellow "goy."
OK, I think I understand the polyester and leisure suit thing now.
It would be an interesting philosophical discussion whether Jewish existence is better suited for living in other countries (emancipated, of course) or ruling its own country. The history for the latter is IMO not good, and if the current (third) experience is anything to go by, it looks to be repeating itself.
I don't think so. You think we're going down? What's your scenario?
[A] Put on your [E] yalmulka, [D] here comes [E] Hanukkah..
It is in the way it is said. It usually implies, "You seem so normal" although few people actually say those words. What I heard growing up was "You're Jewish?" said with more than a touch of incredulity. My response was generally, "Yes, we have our horns removed at birth." That usually ended the conversation.
You've snatched the 1492 post - the year in which the seeds of Sephardic Judaism and the USA were sown.
What news? I heard the IDF would get Patriots from Germany...Are they really effective or more of a feelgood weapon?
In Jenin on Friday, a military operation to arrest a Palestinian militant erupted into a fierce gun battle in which Israeli soldiers shot dead an 11-year-old Palestinian boy and a senior United Nations worker.
The death of the aid worker, a Briton, has caused considerable friction between Israel and the United Nations, which continued today when the military released recordings of a telephone message the man, Iain John Hook, 54, reportedly left with an Israeli civil official only minutes before he died.
In the message, a man identifying himself as Mr. Hook said young Palestinians "have knocked a hole in the wall, which I'm not at all happy about."
"I'm trying to keep them out," he continued. "I will just keep my people pinned down in the corner until I hear from you."
The military released the conversations apparently to bolster its claims that Palestinian gunmen had been firing on Israeli troops from inside the small United Nations compound. The military has said it fired on Mr. Hook, mistakenly believing he had a gun or grenade in his hand. Several accounts say he was carrying a cell phone and was working to evacuate two dozen employees.
United Nations officials have strongly denied any intrusion into the compound, saying again on Tuesday in a statement in New York that "at no time" did gunmen get inside. They also say Israeli soldiers delayed an ambulance sent to evacuate Mr. Hook by as long as 25 minutes; the military denies that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/27/international/middleeast/27MIDE.html
Chave a chappy chanuka
"6 Israelis Die at Polling Station; Sharon Wins"
Happy We-Whupped-The-Apollo-Kissing-Assyrians'-Pork-Sucking-Asses Week.
I popped in to say hello to you, but were you around? Noooooooo!!
Let me know what you think about the latest Israeli retaliation supposedly nabbing 9 PLO terrorists. 
Israeli Army Attack Kills 10
Two U.N. workers are among the dead as gunbattles erupt in Gaza refugee camp. – Associated Press
This is an estimate by Thomas Stauffer, a consulting economist in Washington. For decades, his analyses of the Middle East scene have made him a frequent thorn in the side of the Israel lobby.
For the first time in many years, Mr. Stauffer has tallied the total cost to the US of its backing of Israel in its drawn-out, violent dispute with the Palestinians. So far, he figures, the bill adds up to more than twice the cost of the Vietnam War.
And now Israel wants more. In a meeting at the White House late last month, Israeli officials made a pitch for $4 billion in additional military aid to defray the rising costs of dealing with the intifada and suicide bombings. They also asked for more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to help the country's recession-bound economy.
Considering Israel's deep economic troubles, Stauffer doubts the Israel bonds covered by the loan guarantees will ever be repaid. The bonds are likely to be structured so they don't pay interest until they reach maturity. If Stauffer is right, the US would end up paying both principal and interest, perhaps 10 years out.
more......
Ten years ago, there was strong dispute in every circle and near-consensus in US political circles that there was even such a thing as a Palestinian people.
Today, the US's still-unreleased blueprint apparently calls for a state by 2005, and even Ariel Sharon is calling such a plan reasonable and realistic.
What does it tell you that when "consensus has swung decisively to the two-state solution in the last year," the Palestinians still refuse to negotiate in good faith? It should tell you that Palestinians are only interested in a one-state solution. That one state being Palestine.
I have repeatedly informed you that I do not like responding to your banal, totally blinkered, views on this topic.
It is tiresomely clear that you were issued your opinions those 10 years ago (I'm being charitable) and you have and will refuse to see any of the mountain of evidence that the rest of the world (including the Israelis and Palestinians) is using as a basis to move forward. Facts, recent history, polls, mean nothing to you as you continue to parrot your tired and nonsensical line.
Do you agree with the Bush adminstration's vision of a two-state solution?
There is an offer on the table for an independent Palestinian state. I am not optimistic the Palestinian leadership will take the steps necessary to secure peace.
Israel chooses between two army men—a hawk passing for a moderate and a dove on horseback
Make a Mitzvah, Vote Mitznah!!!!
Paid For By United Torah Judaism of SF - Union Made
A good answer, but not a realistic one. I cannot imagine which would be more repugnant to the parties involved, the settlements remaining or Israeli settlers being subject to Palestinian law.
I know it's early but since this is the first clearly defined contest, I'm curious about the polls. Maybe some of our Israeli friends can be helpful.
I just saw a trailer this morning on CNN which defined the oncoming contest as I stated.
I understand, but Israelis cannot expect to live in Palestine and not be subject to Palestinian law. I understand also that Palestinians may not want them there, but unless they are willing to abandon all land held by Palestinians in Israel, they can't expect Israelis to abandon land in Palestine.
It may not be realistic, but it the fair solution. Fair solutions seem to have no place in the Middle East. If they did, there would have been peace there long ago. Peace will only come now at extraordinary cost.
A better reason to read Israeli papers for news from the region than to depend on CNN for it.
the polls I've read don't show any real change in Labor's (un)popularity since Mitzna moved in. If you take the way Sharon is talking and the fact that Ben Eliezer's camp in Labor is still strong, that would point towards another unity government after the elections. Meanwhile, however, leftie columnist Nahum Barnea has written a piece calling on Mitzna to stay in the opposition, in order to build up some credibility for his party again. Barnea cited a poll that gave Labor something like three measly percent among youths, and Meretz an embarrassing 0.5%
I'm e-mailing you to no avail. Can you e-mail me?
If you don't intend to return to active duty as host I suggest this thread be subsumed into International whence it originated.
RustlerPike,
I hope that the holidays are peaceful for you and your country. I'm out of here until after the New Year.
Correlli's Mandolin (sp) but I seldom read fiction. Of the books I mentioned, I would say The Closed Circle-An Interpretation of the Arabs. 
Israeli Troops Quit Bethlehem Amid Christmas Gloom
O come, Desire of nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease,
and be thyself our King of Peace
The NYRB has this excellent, thoughtful, article on what has gone wrong wrt Israel/Palestine. I highly recommend it.
The finale:
The nature and details of such a compromise have been known for years: the partition of a country over which the two national independence movements have clashed for almost a century now. The bazaar diplomacy of the past ten years has clearly been counterproductive. The so-called "incremental" Oslo peace process was abused by both sides; by relegating the most difficult problems to the very last stage it encouraged both sides to cheat. When force did not work, there was a tendency to believe in using more force, which led, as we are seeing, only to another dead end. The search for secure borders—even when it did not involve the domination of one people by another—was carried too far. No border is ever deemed absolutely secure before it seems absolutely insecure to the other side and so makes the next war inevitable.
The vast settlement project after 1967, aside from being grossly unjust, has been self-defeating and politically ruinous. "We've fed the heart on fantasies,/the heart's grown brutal on the fare," as William B. Yeats put it almost a century ago in a similar dead-end situation in Ireland. The settlement project has not provided more security but less. It may yet, I tremble at the thought, lead to results far more terrible than those we are now witnessing.
TEL AVIV, Israel Jan. 5 — (AP) --
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in downtown Tel Aviv on Sunday, killing at least 15 bystanders in the first such attack in an Israeli city since November.
About 30 people were wounded in the double blast, several of them critically, police and rescue workers said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which came three weeks before Israel's Jan. 28 general election. In the past 27 months of fighting, Palestinian militias have carried out scores of bombings in Israel.
Latin Patriarch: Leaders Who Cannot Make Peace Should Step Aside"
And what about GOD himself? Should't he step aside too?
Robert has a good question. Where is RP?
In a further blow to the Israeli right, the Supreme Court overturned a ban on two prominent Arab candidates for parliament in the January 28 election, a move that could bring more Arab voters to the ballot box.
Mitznah He's Your Mitzvah!
"scandal".
One thing is clear, the Likud is now more vulnerable than a few weeks ago, and polls show Mitzna's party climbing to near neck-to-neck status. If this trend continues till the election you may well see the government needed to pull off the required two-state peace deal. How excellent the turn of events has been.
I understand that the biggest gainer, if elections were held today, would be an "agressively secular" centrist party. This would not be optimal from my point of view, but a huge step up from the status quo nonetheless, and immensely helpful to the parties outside the rightist stranglehold on the processes for withdrawal from the illegalities Israel commits in the occupied territories.
Israel and Palestine will make a political settlement in the next year. There, you have it in a nutshell.
Wishful thinking on Banks' part.
This a.m. I heard (on NPR) exactly what Wombat heard: that the Likud losses will be spread amongst several smaller parties, most of which are hardline, and that Mitznah's party doesn't really stand to gain many seats - although the net effect would indeed be that Sharon and Likud are weakened.
But it's still weeks till the elections -a lot can happen...like, say...a war in Iraq.
Sharon is not in any danger of being "out". His party will merely be weakened (maybe), so he can still give orders.
vonK:
I'm not sure if this is what you are asking JJ about, but Pike has posted extensively about the Pals living - and owning property - in both his former Green Line settlement and the one he recently moved to. In fact, I take it that they are the dominant community/culture in his town.
"Haifa - Israel's San Francisco...beauty, hills, and a place where Arabs and Israelis get along"
M I T Z V A H
I
T
Z
N
A
Surveys Monday in the Israeli dailies Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv showed Sharon's right-wing Likud party forecast to win up to 33 seats in the 120-member parliament.
Just last week, the Likud's predicted victory was whittled down to as few as 27 seats on news Israeli police were probing an allegedly illicit loan to Sharon to fund his 1999 campaign.
Israeli political commentators said some voters appeared to have rallied around the ex-general after the head of the Central Election Committee pulled the plug on a speech Sharon gave on Thursday night to respond to the allegations against him.
Mitzna for Prime Minister
I recently had a very pleasant dream. A nice Christmas present, in fact. Amram Mitzna, the mayor of Haifa and leader of the Israeli Labor Party, wins the parliamentary election of next January, which in turn causes Norman Podhoretz and William Kristol to accuse Israelis of anti-Semitism and to demand that George W. Bush send in the Marines. Alas, then I woke up.
It is not going to happen—the victory of Amram Mitzna, that is—not that it will stop Podhoretz and Kristol from shouting foul whenever possible. Mitzna seems a hell of a fellow. He has a history of discord with Sharon, asking to be relieved from his command in 1982, claiming he had no confidence in Sharon as defense minister in charge of the Lebanon invasion. His finest hour as mayor was two years ago when he stood alone to address an angry mob of Israeli Arabs in Haifa. It was the beginning of the second intifada, with clashes all over Israel in which police had shot 13 demonstrators dead. The crowd had turned ugly, and the police tried to stop him. He nevertheless went out, addressed the demonstrators, and they dispersed peacefully. His message was “We have lived together in the past and will do so in the future.” Hear, hear!
Mitzna’s bravery is clear: 57 years old, he served for 30 years in the army, was wounded three times in one day during the Six-Day War, and commanded the Israeli forces in the West Bank. No peacenik he. His plan for peace is simple: there can be no military solution to the Palestinian uprising, and the only prospect for peace is to withdraw from the land occupied in 1967 and to dismantle most of the Jewish settlements there.
What I find very depressing is the inability of samurai warriors like those mentioned above to comprehend that occupation does not work. It never has in the past, and never will....
Samurai Warriors, Beltway Prussians, Liberty U Tsun Tsu's, ChickenHawks, Christian Fundies Who Want to Kill Jews..
Allons a Baghdad...Let's ROLL!
The Fat Butcher of Beruit's days of busting heads are numbered.
Ha'aretz reports "Labor: No to a Sharon gov't
By Yossi Verter 
Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna visiting a south Tel Aviv neighborhood yesterday.
(Photo: Alon Ron)
"The Labor Party is today expected to announce what is being called its "doomsday decision" - it will not join any coalition led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon under any circumstances, and that includes the much touted Likud-Labor-Shinui secular bloc favored by Shinui leader Yosef Lapid.
This dramatic decision has been discussed for several weeks, since the new party chairman Amram Mitzna has consistently asserted he would not sit in a Sharon-led government. But the list Mitzna heads includes several party leaders who favor a unity government - including all the former ministers in the outgoing Sharon government.
However, with the polls yesterday showing Labor still stuck at the 20-seat mark, while Likud has crept back up to more than 30 seats, discussion has turned to action, especially since a poll commissioned by Haim Ramon shows Labor gaining at least four seats - from Shinui, Meretz and possibly Arab parties - if it declared unequivocally it would not join a Sharon-led government.
The thinking behind the Labor Party announcement, which will be made at a news conference today with all the party leaders behind Mitzna, is that Labor could not join a government headed by Sharon, who is tainted by corruption scandals ranging from vote-buying in the Likud central committee, to the illegal primaries campaign contributions in 1999, and the so-called Greek island affair, in which Sharon's son was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by David Appel, the Likud activist turned businessman.
The colder political calculation is that the public is overwhelmingly against a narrow right-wing religious government that will be Sharon's only alternative if the rightist bloc wins a majority in the Knesset, and that either the constraints of such a coalition - or a police investigation - will quickly bring down the government."
Lockup was nice: they spruced the cell up some since I was last there (when I kicked my wife's door some, back in September), and the toilet area is now a real nice stainless steel type job with an actual door separating it from the cell.
Meanwhile, my (threat) charges for the door incident and a previous M-16 incident you all may remember were dropped, and replaced with a charge of damaging property, which I confessed to and got a 750 NIS fine for.
The other charge, regarding the Arab who claimed I took his sign down, has also been dropped, after reaching court and everything.
>>>
Turns out the conviction rate for criminal cases in Israel is a whopping 90% - compared to less than 50% in the US (but apparently, similar figures in some EU countries.
I've seen the system at work: the workload is way too heavy, so they've turned it into an assembly line (the way things work in Israel since forever, in virtually all fields). It is simply understood that everyone confesses. In return, the state plea bargains with them abnd gives everyone reduced sentences. The fact that I insisted on maintaining my innocence was viewed with horror and incredulity by the prosecutor and judge, who really didn't know what to do with me.
Welcome back...do you plan to stick around much?
Marzel is a violent, snorting, fat settler, a Kahanist, whom I know very well from the time I was a 20 year old IDF Radio Reporter in the Territories driving a car with Peace Now stickers on it, and Marzel was calling me every other night to inform me about some fence he had brought down or a new caravan that had been brought into Tel Rumeida. I spent quite a few sleepless nights driving to and from Hebron to cover this or another silly "death to the Arabs" demonstration or provocation by Marzel's guys.
Besides being all the stuff I mentioned above, Marzel is also a nice, good hearted guy, and there was always consensus about this among us leftie reporters, back in those days.
As for the "unity" scenario: Mitzna is expected to take a thorough drubbing in the poll. That will mean he has to choose between leading Labor to the opposition - and probably losing his leadership position soon after - or becoming a minister and thus maintaining his status. Guess what he'll choose?
The excuse for the u-turn he'll have to make is ready, too: "true, I promised not to join a Sharon government. But what is the alternative, folks? Look at the right wing, people. A party advocating expulsion of the Palestinians has gained 10% of the Knesset. Will we we be able to live with ourselves, knowing we forced Sharon into these guys' arms?"
I dare you to find a post by me from the first week or so after 1/1/03. Maybe ten days even.
As for sticking around: what are the prospects of this place becoming democratic? At least TPW lets you create your own threads and highlights. It's no more of a democracy than this place, as far as top level administration is concerned, but there's a good deal less state control of what is posted and what subjects are broached.
The part that made me feel good was that he was a spendthrift who couldn't help but splurge once in a while. I'm pretty bad at staying within my budget, I guess, but I don't think that necessarily makes me worse than anyone else.
Anyhow, Friedman's latest reminds me of when I was saying, a pretty long time ago, that there would eventually be talk about Israel looking for a leader, to which Pelle replied with Israel sucht ein Fuhrer. Remember, Pelle?
Behold an Israelite in whom there is no deceit
"... every social group - be it national, religious, ethnic, or whatever - is marked by enormous heterogeneity. Because of this, communities or nations should never be the subject of any sentence. That is, >The Poles< don't do anything - specific individuals or subgroups of Poles do. >The Jews< aren't marked by any attitude. Specific Jews are. And it follows that >The Poles< are not responsible for Jedwabne: a specific and identifiable national and racial and religious ideology was responsible for driving a specific group of Poles to violance."
Quoted from: Brian Porter, Explaining Jedwabne. In: The Polish Review. Vol. XLVII, 2002, No. 1, page 25.
My question is: does this dring never end?
Welcome back to the land of the free, so to speak.
I think you must be right about Mitznah coalitioning with Likud when it gets to that. As Yonna the Israeli cell phone salesman says, imagine Mitznah himself got elected. Who the hell would he govern with if he didn't join hands with Likud? A government of half the electorate (speaking optimistically) has no mandate.
But Sharon will surely win. what's fascinating to me is this prospect of sidelining the religious parties. One thing I've feared for years about this protracted battle with the Pals is that it would wind up funneling more and more power to the religious right, until secularists started fleeing the country in droves and the only Jews who wanted to live in Israel would, if they were Muslims, be Islamists.
But the right and the religious have not really grown so much closer in Israel, and it now looks like they are eminently separable. It's a very interesting phenomenon, certainly from an American standpoint, since in this country right-leaning politics is virtually always connected with religiosity.
Perhaps the same relationship holds in Europe.
You have a good point there. Of course, with Israel and Judaism, there is a unique historic twist - Zionism vs. galutism - which made religion and nationality near-polar opposites for quite a while there. Even now, the non-Zionist, often anti-Zionist religious outnumber the Zionist ones, though there is a marked shift in the direction of nationalism. Many of the haredis seem to be in the process of leapfrogging over Zionism straight to nationalism. Baruch Marzel is a prime example of this new phenomenon, and he is now about to enter the Knesset.
But that's the thing about the Jewish state: that it was created out of a markedly anti-religious movement, in very unique circumstances which make any return to the old religion in the State of Israel pretty impossible. The State would have to completely change its DNA, or the religion would.
What do you mean by 'galutism'?
I thought Zionism was Jewish nationalism, but you make a distinction. Clarification?
galut is Ivrit for diaspora. the term refers to all things typically diaspora-Jewish, basically.
I thought Zionism was Jewish nationalism, but you make a distinction. Clarification?
Well, you're not wrong, but Zionism was originally the belief that the Jewish people need to establish their own country, at a time when they didn't have one. It was a belief that we needed to settle this land and to change ourselves from urban Woodie Allens into farmers and fighters. It was also a belief that the old Jewish religion had it all wrong. It's true that, since the late 1960s, the leading Zionist movement is a religious one, but the settler group has always been a minority within the orthodox Jewish population and the rabbinical establishment. And they have made a point of not wearing the black orthodox garb, but rather jeans and regular shirts and sandals, and a knitted cap rather than a silken one.
>>>
Also, all of the parties in the Knesset from Meretz rightward are considered Zionist, but the haredi parties are not. So you can be an ardent Zionist (anti-galut, anti-
So Marzel, essentially, is not a Zionist. He has nothing against the ways of the galut. He dresses like a galut Jew and prays like one. He does not buy any of the Zionist prophets' theories about the creation of a "light unto the gentiles". He just wants a halakha (that's Jewish sheri'a, basically) state. He's skipped over all of the theory and just goes for the practice.
But of course, the only place a Marzel can exist is in Hebron, which was captured by Zionist soldiers, and the only way he can exist is with the Zionist soldiers guarding over him.
I'm not sure this makes sense to you. Perhaps these distinctions are not really as meaningful as we Israelis think they are.
Here's a wonderful story from the Darwin Awards:
5 September 1999, Jerusalem - In most parts of the world, the switch away from Daylight Saving Time proceeds smoothly. But the time change raised havoc with Palestinian terrorists this year.
Israel insisted on a premature switch from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time to accommodate a week of pre-sunrise prayers. Palestinians refused to live on "Zionist Time." Two weeks of scheduling havoc ensued. Nobody knew the "correct" time.
At precisely 5:30pm on Sunday, two coordinated car bombs exploded in different cities, killing three terrorists who were transporting the bombs. It was initially believed that the devices had been detonated prematurely by klutzy amateurs. A closer look revealed the truth behind the explosions.
The bombs had been prepared in a Palestine-controlled area, and set to detonate on Daylight Saving Time. But the confused drivers had already switched to Standard Time. When they picked up the bombs, they neglected to ask whose watch was used to set the timing mechanism. As a result, the cars were still en-route when the explosives detonated, delivering the terrorists to their untimely demises.
Now, will the Democrats get upset?
Read this for more on the contradictions.
Well, sort of.
He's the unsurprise loser.
Yes they are.
Television projections showed Sharon could win a ruling but shaky majority in parliament with a right-wing, ultranationalist and religious parties, but such a coalition could harden his already tough line against the Palestinian uprising.
Labour Party leader Amram Mitzna, who also lost votes to the self-styled centrist Shinui party, conceded defeat in a telephone call to Sharon soon after voting ended and the two agreed to meet for talks.
Flag-waving Likud supporters burst into song and screamed "Ariel, Ariel" at the party's headquarters. Downcast Labour supporters gasped in dismay as the television projections were shown on a big screen at their headquarters.
The Iraq war will be a very convenient backdrop for defection. Who knows? Maybe Mitzna will even change his mind when he feels the heat on him for losing the election so badly.
1569. jexster - 1/14/03 12:24:54 AM
Doesn't matter whether Mitzna wins...Likud's vote will be sharply down, his star rising as he changes the question in Israel...
The Fat Butcher of Beruit's days of busting heads are numbered.
(hi-lights mine)
He seems to feel that his party's heavy defeat is his responsibility. Sure, they were effectively the only opposition to the outgoing government, they should have picked up support from the discredit of Labour... Maybe with a better advertising campaign...
Nah. Sometimes the voters are just wrong.
Frankly, I have no idea. Right now everyone is bickering and laying down impossible conditions. But I think the war in Iraq will change everything. If Shinui and the NRP can find a way to sit together...
If not, let there be a right wing coalition.
Matter of fact - I'd say that when he assembles his coalition, that means the war is a few days away.
26 January 2003
St Philip's Church and Ahli Arab Hospital sustains direct hit by guided missile
There is broken glass everywhere; on the floors, covering the tables, covering papers, on beds. The Christian leaders of Gaza have gathered to offer their support and condemn the bombing of St. Philip's Episcopal Church, located within the Ahli Arab Hospital compound. The Church is in the center of the hospital complex, and surrounded by buildings flying the Red Cross and Anglican flags.
From then on it's a rant about how the media plays up dv murders of women - though these are exceedingly rare in Israel - yet when a woman kills a man, the media actually takes her side. Then it tells the story of a woman who killed her husband and was released to 'house arrest' by the judge, and another case that happened the other week, where a woman attacked her husband by ramming her GMC truck into his car several times (with him inside it) - and wasn't even arrested.
Part 2 was this Friday: this time I ranted about why Israelis aren't allowed to possess handguns, due to femmie lobbying and manipulation, and said how this was causing more Israelis - including women - to die at the hands of terrorists.
The guys at 'Arutz 7' said there had never been as many readers' responses to an op-ed piece. This is the English version of A7 but my column dudn't appear there.
Meanwhile, my Flash film is scoring over 20,000 visits a day and I was quite overwhelmed by this.
You may have misunderstood. This thread is not about you. 
Sami Al-Arian, holding daughter Lama, 6, center, with son Abdullah, 19, left, daughter Laila, 18, foreground left, daughter Leena, 14, center, wife Nahla, center right, and son Ali, 9, foreground left, pose for a photo with presidential candidate George W. Bush and wife Laura in this March 12, 2000 family photo in Plant City, Fla. Others, extreme right, are unidentified.
Eight Palestinians were reported to have been killed, including a pregnant woman and a child, when Israeli tanks, backed by helicopters, entered the camp at Bureij, in central Gaza.
I wonder why something similar hasn't been done with Saddam Hussein. Surely those used as human shields in the last Gulf war have a case against him.
Pray for the Israelis. They are in the vaguard of civilization. 
Palestine gets a Prime Minister at last
Widely regarded as the architect of the Oslo peace process, he accompanied Mr Arafat to the White House in 1993 to sign the Oslo Accords.
Referring to the current intifada, Abu Mazen has called for a halt to armed attacks on Israeli targets to avoid giving Israel a pretext to destroy the last vestiges of Palestinian autonomy.
Now Arafat can start fading into insignificance, and progress will be eventually possible.
This is a prediction, but I don't see the Palestinians ever achieving statehood until they demonstrate their ability to create a civic society among themselves, first, and toward their neighbors, second. A society that not only tolerates the most brutal thuggery and murder, but celebrates it, does not deserve to be given the trappings of sovereignty like a gift from on high, for that would only be a disaster in the making.
Perhaps this will fall into place once Arafat is gone and the Palestinians have leaders who will prepare them for peace with Israel. And perhaps they will be persuaded by the fall of Saddam (and, eventually, their bag men in the Iranian mullahcracy) that their faith in murderous dictators is misplaced. But right now, I'm less than hopeful.
wabbit,
My understanding is that the PG1 human shields have sued the Iraqi government, and are in a dispute with the U.S. Govt. (read "State Department") over the collection of frozen Iraqi assets.
I'll try to find the article.
This goes to show, LadyChaos, that there are two sides to every coin. Terrorist or freedom fighter? That depends on your preconceived view.
There is never, never any excuse for deliberately murdering civilians.
A positive step. Once the Palestinians start developing their own infrastructure, chances increase for a stable settlement between Israel & the Palestinians.
For more details: http://www.msnbc.com
An Israeli couple who entered the Church of the Nativity on Saturday and threatened to blow themselves up was apprehended, according to the Bethlehem mayor.
An American peace activist has been crushed to death by a military bulldozer as she and other activists tried to prevent the destruction of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army in the Gaza Strip.
The dead woman was identified as 23-year-old Rachel Corrie from Washington DC.
According to fellow activists from the International Solidarity Movement, Ms Corrie was sitting in the path of the bulldozer which simply ran over her.
The group of foreign peace activists was attempting to stop two bulldozers and an Israeli tank which were tearing down Palestinian buildings in the town of Rafah which sits on the Egyptian border.
Damn. It really sucks when that happens.
Rachel Corrie 1979–2003
It is with the heaviest of hearts that I inform you that Rachel Corrie was killed on Sunday, March 16, while trying to stop a bulldozer from tearing down a building in a refugee camp in Gaza. Rachel, a senior at Evergreen, was most recently a student in “Labor and the Environment,” “Common Ground,” “Local Knowledge” and a contract entitled “Public Art and the Middle East Conflict.” She was not enrolled this quarter. Rachel was known to many in the Olympia community. She grew up here and graduated from Capital High School. She was actively involved in many area activities. Rachel is described by faculty and staff as a shining star, a wonderful student and a brave person of deep convictions. Rachel will be remembered at a gathering sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement at 7 p.m. on Sunday, March 16, at Olympia’s downtown Percival Landing. We have been in contact with and extend deepest condolences to the Corrie family. We are in the process of contacting the many faculty members with whom Rachel worked. As more information about memorial services becomes available, we will share it with you.
Vice President of Student Affairs Art Costantino March 16, 2003
You're standing in front of a disempowered serf's home about to be destroyed (the easy part is that you can imagine this anywhere in the world that elite 'rose thorns' are trying to crush peons), and there are three bulldozers approaching; one driven by a Likud right-wing nut, one driven by a neocon right-wing nut, and one driven by an oil corporation CEO wing-nut (because there is also oil behind the peon's house).
The question is which of the bulldozers do you risk blocking, and bonus points are awarded for identifying which of the bulldozers will use either of the other two dozers to get the oil if one dirver hesitates to run you over.
If you can answer this puzzle correctly you escape from being run over by the dozer, and you have solved the question of who's driving the real bulldozer toward WWIII in Iraq (and won't stop for even a hundred thosuand childrens' bodies).
The killing of an American woman peace protester Sunday by an IDF bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, was a "regrettable accident," a spokesman for the the IDF said...."She waved for bulldozer to stop and waved. She fell down and the bulldozer kept going.
You're a scumbag. 
I didn't think it possible that anyone could sink as low as you could in those recent posts.
Israel has reported the capture of a Palestinian teenager sent on a suicide mission meant to kill hundreds of people.
Officials said the Palestinian target was a home for 180 orphans and homeless children in Jerusalem. They said a 17-year-old Palestinian from the Bethlehem area of the West Bank was sent with a suitcase filled with explosives to blow up the school.
"In Lebanon, the French selected the Christians as the ruling elite and created deep resentment among Druse, and Shiite and Sunni Muslims."
"... a Shiite, who was very happy about what Israel had done. He grabbed my arm and said, `Don't forget to leave.' But we did. There is just no such thing as an enlightened occupation.""
Perhaps the lesson is not in the leaving, but in the administration. Had Lebanon had democratic elections, the majority population would have had a voice, had control.
"Things turned nasty for Israel when it helped engineer the election of Bashir Gemayel, a Christian ally, as president. Begin pushed him to recognize Israel as one of his first acts, something he resented terribly."
So then our lesson is not to put a Sunni in charge of post-war Iraq? Not to demand they at least 'thank' the U.S. for getting rid of Saddam (the equivalent of 'recognition' I guess)?
I think we can learn from this history lesson. On the administering-afterwards front.
But again, the more of our allied troops die getting rid of Saddam...the less inclined I am to just...leave.
"Shiite militias, financed and armed by Iran and Syria, had great success in fueling this popular resentment."
These two nations 'won' when Israel left Lebanon. So of course they learned that terrorism, wins.
Whatever happens in post-war Iraq..I hope Syria and Iran learn a different lesson than Lebanon offered them. Whatever beginnings of democracy we start in Iraq..even if Syria and Iran don't like it completely...they should work with it..not against it.
Terrorism, and states that support it...are on their way out. A new lesson.
As you note I have installed myself as host, but if Rustler wants it back I won't have any problems with that.
So quite likely Sharon got stiffed by his cabinet and fragile majority. A significant minority in Israel, particularly among the settlers, is prepared to go to great lengths to prevent any sell-out of the settlements :
IDF sources said they are also concerned about a
recent upsurge in violence against Palestinians
by some of the outpost residents. Over the
weekend dozens of the "hilltop youth," as the
radical settler fringe is known, gathered in an
outpost near Yitzhar to fight off an expected
evacuation effort. When the army never
materialized, they rampaged through the nearby
Palestinian village of Inbus, burning property
and stealing cows. The army has returned the
stolen cattle.
(above quote from Haaretz
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