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Are people settling Iraq on the basis of having some pseudo-mystical claim to the land and displacing the current population?
Actually, the population in Iraq is being moved around, but that's based on myths not created by religion: the myth of the US "bringing democracy".
lol omg
+ YouTube Video
Unfortunately you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about, at all.
What I mean is, Israel already existed, just as Iraq, Iran, Syria and all those countries already existed.
Why are stupid arguments so hard to beat down? Why?
I know that Shlomo Sand has created quite a controversy with his book The Invention of the Jewish People, by arguing that there is little evidence the Diaspora occurred (he says the Romans commonly killed whole populations, but never expelled them) and that the scattered groups which call themselves Jewish actually have no common genetic heritage. So, I'm curious, is Shlomo Sand your source for this? Because according to Wikipedia, many of the claims made in his book have been directly contradicted by recent genetic studies:
This obviously doesn't support the apartheid Israeli political system, which I 100% fully oppose. However, arguing that Jews are not a distinct ethnicity is a separate issue. I personally don't know much about this particular debate, as is obvious from the fact that I'm quoting Wikipedia as my source.
Iraq was'nt a country until it was made one by Britain, as were many countries in the middle east. Jews lived in palestine centuries ago, but due to various factors many of them left, but centuries ago does'nt justify aparthied.
Ok, is Jewdeism a prostelatizing religion? Nope, can you be Jewish without believing in the faith? Yeah, because traditionally its considered an ethnicity, with a language and a culture (much like people who call themselves latino, even though they can be black, white, indigenous and everything inbetween). Christianity is not based on any language or culture, nor is it traditionally tied to an ethnicity, and it IS a protesalizing religion.
So, where am I wrong?
The fact is whether or not Jews lived in Isreal centuries ago is irrelivent to whats going on now, if that is a real argument, then we should give the united states back to the Natives and europeans should all get their asses back to Europe, or maybe have our own reservations. Or 1/8th of the world should move to Mongolia, considering they are decendants of Ghengis Khan and his empire. These are all things more recent than any of the disporas.
@M-26-7:
I'm not terribly interested in getting into the Shlomo Sand 'controversies' or the wikipedia "evidence", because most of it is cherry picked bullshit to support the Zionist narrative, and it isn't particularly relevant in this case anyway. For what it's worth, though, Israeli geneticist Raphael Falk has done good work demonstrating the arbitariness and ideological character of the presentation of these genetic tests - that the results and the presentation are two entirely different things.
Anyway, you can read the newsweek article on this particular study (which is what's being referenced in the wiki article you quoted) and get a pretty good sense of the slant in the presentation: http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/03/t...-children.html
But there is no debate over whether 'Jewish' is an ethnicity. The bottom line is that Jews are not a distinct ethnicity, and it is nothing new or controversial (except sometimes among American Jews who don't actually realize that all Jews in the world aren't Eastern Ashkenazim). Not even in Israel is "Jewish" considered an ethnicity, but rather, a nationality. This was also the view (i.e. 'Jewish' as nationality) among the Bundistn in Tsarist Russia - a premise that I completely reject (as did Lenin), but was nonetheless the general conception of "Jewishness" in the debates and polemics of the 20th century revolutionaries, but it made a bit more sense in that context because it was limited to a particular subset of Jews with a shared language, culture, and territory.
I think you are confusing two seperate questions. Whatever the genetic origins of Jews over thousands of years, it isn't the same as the question of ethnicity. Your ethnicity doesn't just change because of the results of a genetics study - ethnicity may be artificial, may be a social construct, but it nonetheless is still a bit more concrete than that. If an Irish immigrant to the US suddenly gets a genetics test done and learns that his ancestors thousands of years back weren't actually Celts (or whatever) he doesn't suddently change ethnicity, for example.
But all of this is getting away from the question - whether Judaism was a prosthelytizing religion at various points in history (and the baselessness of the "Diaspora" theory follows from that). Even the newsweek article reporting the supposed "refutation" of Sand's work concedes as much:
It is, again, really not a controversial point; it is pretty well-established.
Is it presently? No. But it was at various times in the past.
No, sorry, this is simply not true. It isn't "traditionally" considered an ethnicity, because it isn't an ethnicity, period. Most Jews with origins in Europe are Ashkenazim (those with origins in Eastern Europe had a seperate culture and different dialect from those with origins in Central and Western Europe, and are sometimes further specified as "Eastern Ashkenazim") - 'traditionally', their language was Yiddish. Those with origins in the Iberian Peninsular region are Sephardim, and 'traditionally' their language was Ladino. Those from the Middle East and North Africa are Mizrahim (there are many other ethnicities among Jews as well, but these are the primary three divisions). These are different ethnicities - different languages, different cultures, from different regions. 'Jewish' is not an ethnicity, let alone a singular, unifed ethnicity encompassing all adherents of Judaism. Arguments to the contrary are the product of ignorance and nothing more.
I don't understand what you're arguing here or what it has to do with the topic.
People often ask, why the obsession with Israel? As if to suggest: what's wrong with 40+ year of occupation of West Bank and Gaza? What's wrong with the brutalisation and demolition of homes in these two places? What's wrong with sending a radical minority(but now in the hundreds of thousands) to live right next to them?
When?
The Mosaic law does'nt talk about prosetalizing at all, why would it be in the past?
What I'm arguing is that the ancient Isreal has no bearing on the modern State of Isreal.
Your right, but they share traditions, they share Hebrew as a religious language, not to mention the genetic evidence. Atheists with a Jewish background will identify as Jews, what does that mean? Do atheist people with Christian parents identify with christianity?
As to the Sephardic, Ashkernazim and middle eastern Jews, yeah, they lived in different areas, so theres going to be differences, but they identify with each other as Jews, which is beyond the religion (the mosaic law), which means they identify with each other ethnically.
As I know; jewish people immigrated frrom Europe to Palestine accoring to the zionist idea that Palestine belongs to them. Argentina was also a country that could be a jewish state. 1948 was Israel an own state, the UK, US and a lot of countries voited yes for israeli indepedency.
USA is the biggest pro-Israel. A lot of western coutnries are very liberal and bourgeois. Maybe that is an explanation.
Because palestinians are oppressed! Their houses are always in threat of being demolished, israeli soldiers occupies their country who belongs to just them. Have you ever typed "Israeli soldiers" in Google Pictures or Youtube?
Socialism has always been on the oppressed peoples side, it has always standed for equal rights for everyone.
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
Also the military industrial complex, being liberal and bourgeois does'nt explain it, its also the jewish lobby in the US, as for the rest of western countries, they don't support Isreal as much as the US, but they fold in to pressure from the US a lot of the time. It also has to do with the cold war, many in the middle east were becoming revolutionary, and since Isreal was essencially created by the anglo-american power, it became the defacto base for America to combat soviet influence.
historically that is false.
also jews and samaritans converted to islam/christianity back in history [in palestine ; )]
Last edited by freepalestine; 12th August 2010 at 12:55.
Ok, how so, this is new to me.
I'm hearing from a pro-Israeli that Israel was called Isarel from 4000 BC til Rome changed it's name around 132 AD. Any truth to this ?
I'm looking but getting conflicting reports. Most of it is based again on Biblical references, which i'm not going to take as fact and evidence ....
I think Rome did call the whole Levant region "Palestina" (and that was the name of the Roman province created there; although later they changed the name to Judean Province and Syria Palestina respectively) while obviously the Hebrew tribes called it Israel when they were in control of that geographic area (in different assorted kingdoms, etc). The Byzantines called it Palestina (again) both the geographic and administrative sense and this name carried on in different linguistic variation (Filistin, et.al). The word Palestine comes from Philistines and before the Romans it only refereed to an area (roughly similar to modern day Gaza strip) controlled by Philistines.
"My heart sings for you both. Imagine it singing. la la la la."- Hannah Kay
"if you keep calling average working people idiots i am sure they will be more apt to listen to what you have to say. "-bcbm
"Sometimes false consciousness can be more destructive than apathy, just like how sometimes, doing nothing is actually better than doing the wrong thing."- Robocommie
"The ruling class would tremble, and the revolution would be all but assured." -Explosive Situation, on the Revleft Merry Prankster bus
The thing is - how the fuck does that matter?
4000 year old claims should not be used to legitimise modern politics. Most political entities which have existed do not exist today.
Blood-fixation on whose ancestors was living on a land is sooo pre-500 AD.
I agree it doesn't matter...but they asked if there was a truth over the name changes and I gave a reply.
No need to shot the messenger.
"My heart sings for you both. Imagine it singing. la la la la."- Hannah Kay
"if you keep calling average working people idiots i am sure they will be more apt to listen to what you have to say. "-bcbm
"Sometimes false consciousness can be more destructive than apathy, just like how sometimes, doing nothing is actually better than doing the wrong thing."- Robocommie
"The ruling class would tremble, and the revolution would be all but assured." -Explosive Situation, on the Revleft Merry Prankster bus
Jacon (the biblical patriach of the Isrealites) was'nt even around in 4000 BC, so that makes no sense.
you don't just have to read shlomo sands book .nothing he said hasnt been mentioned before. n.b. the judeans never left palestine
Well there is the archeology and the religious texts.
The book of Genesis ends with the story of Jacob going down to Egypt with his family. The first chapter of Exodus tells how the seventy members of Jacob's clan evolved into a large people, cruelly enslaved by the kings of Egypt. The enslavement is presented in the Bible as a crucible which forged the nation of Israel. Oppressed for several centuries, the Hebrews suffered until Moses, of the tribe of Levi, brought up Pharaoh's household, led them to freedom in the name of God, an omnipotent deity unknown to the Hebrews prior to their liberation.
Then the story is presented in Exodus involving the ten plagues of Egypt, drowned Pharaoh's army in the red sea and the revelations on Mount Sinai (Gods commandments). The first commandment is the essence of Jewish monotheism: "I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me" (Exodus, 20:2-3). But the historical validity is controversial. Some scholars stress the lack of Egyptian evidence testifying to the enslavement of the Israelites. Other scholars, however, claim that it is highly improbable that a nation would choose to invent itself a history of slavery as an explanation of its origins.
Obviously the Orthodox tradition accepts the biblical account literally. There are scholars who seek to explain the miraculous events in rational and natural terms. For example, they refer to an ancient Egyptian text containing the stories of Ipu-wer, recounting a series of disasters which befell Egypt - floods, drought, slave, rebellions and invasions.
