Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about poor Helen Thomas, who I believe was probably just saying what everyone thinks and has therefore been made a scapegoat. Not that I really care, because we ought to share the scapegoat status once in a while. It’s the least we can do to dispel the stereotype that we are stingy, us irritating Jews.

Irritating enough, apparently – like the too-talented and bossy fame-hog Rachel Berry (Lea Michele) on Fox’s Glee – in our discovery of the written word, monotheism, modern physics, psychology, vaccinations, and the film industry, that every country that has ever “hosted” us has found it necessary to tell us to get the hell out, like Thomas did. (Ironically, the aforementioned Jewish character Rachel, in a particularly annoying moment in one episode, was told by classmates to move to Israel. I doubt the writers coordinated this telling joke – Jews do equal Israel in the eyes of the world, sorry J Street - with the State Department.)

Anywho. Helen, you know why we were in Germany and much of Eastern Europe in the first place? (And by the way, if I follow your advice, do you think the nice old ladies who got my grandmothers’ large houses and farms from the Nazis in what was once Czechoslovakia will kick the property back two generations? That would be cool because I’d love a vineyard and an agricultural estate.)

…We were in Germany and Hungary and Czechoslovakia and Russia (where we were regularly just plain killed by Cossacks), and also, for many centuries, Poland (ditto), cuz we were told to get the hell out of England, France, and Spain. (Or, you know, just plain killed by handsome and heroic fairytale knights.)

And you know why we were in Western Europe to begin with? Cuz we were told by the Greeks and the Romans – wait for it – to get the hell out of “Palestine,” where we had been living since the beginning of recorded history.

We also ended up in Babylonia (Iraq) and other Middle Eastern and North African countries, where we stayed as second class citizens for hundreds and hundreds of years, till the Arab world finally caught up with the pagans and the Christians in their hatred of the Jews. Amazing how the student has now far surpassed the teacher. But I digress.

(By the way, I am aware that the Arab narrative has us Ashkenazi Jews as descendants of the Khazars, but the actual facts have it different. See this new DNA study linking European Jews with their Middle Eastern counterparts, all stemming from one original population of Holy Land Jews predating Roman times. Never mind our own texts that say the same thing; I know they are inadmissible in the international courts of the mind.)

 In any event, there is no way around it: Jews being asked (usually not by old ladies on the White House lawn) to get the hell out of anywhere and everywhere is just the way it goes.

So it came to pass that about 200 years BCE the Macabees got sick of it and established a Jewish state in Palestine, within the Roman Empire, which lasted till about the time of Jesus (another Pesky Jew) and the destruction of the Second Temple.

And it also came to pass that Jewish settlers began arriving in Ottoman Palestine in the late 1800’s, after the Russians and the Poles made it clear that Jews were persona non grata in Eastern Europe. Palestine was as good a place as any to escape to, since it was the last place, about 2000 years before, that the Jews had a sovereign state (see above). Never mind Jewish liturgy and texts pining for Jerusalem, since I know these, too, are inadmissible in the international courts of the mind.

Anyway, nowhere else wanted European Jews any more than Russia did, not even America really, where there were very strict quotas, although the Americans, again politely, refrained from all the messy European killing, which was apparently in vogue until after Hitler. Besides, those Ottoman Turks, as now, were known around the world for their amazing human rights activism and the Jews were excited to see it first hand. (No, not really. But anyway…they were better than the Polish peasants. Unless you were Armenian.)

It is true that there were people in Palestine before the Jews arrived en masse (for there was always a handful of Jews that remained here….), not *A People*, but rather a group of assorted regional Arabs (think Native American tribes in North America…who by the way were treated much worse by the Colonialists…) who had settled the area with not much agricultural success and had endured various rulers over the millennia.

But when the *Jews* came back, it was suddenly necessary, once again, to tell them to get the hell out. There was no living side by side, even though that was an express Jewish desire right up until 1947/8, when the Partition Plan was summarily rejected by the Arab League, who started the war that Israel won. If keeping land you win in a war others provoke (when you wanted to make peace) is called occupation, Helen, the world’s axis of furious justice has a lot bigger fish to fry than shitty little Israel.

The Arab desire to kick the Jews the hell out of Palestine did not begin in 1967, and not in 1948. It began the moment the initial groups of Jews arrived and started to make the land flower and produce crops. That’s when the attacks on Jews began, and when the Arab world decided a new Jewish presence in the land would not do, back when there were about half a million Arabs and just under 100,000 Jews in the Holy Land, in the early 1900’s. 20% was too much, apparently, to bear. (The Hebron Massacre of 1929, where marauding Arabs killed nearly 70 Jews and wounded countless others, took place long before a single house was built over the Green Line.)  I can only imagine how awful it was – probably for both the Arabs and the British – when it became clear we were here to stay and grow to much further percentages. We are that annoying, what with trying to get rid of malaria and tuberculosis and everything.

At any rate, it seems that every time a Jewish minority starts to make a society too successful – so annoying!!!! – the indigenous people start to feel very uncomfortable, and tells them one way or another to get the hell out.

But now, alas, there is nowhere left for us to go, except the eternal place Ahmadinejad wants us to go, and Haniyeh and Nasralla, and Hitler before them, and Chemilniki before him, and Haman before him, and so on. And, I suspect, in her heart of hearts, perhaps Thomas and the likes of her, who, the pesky Jew Freud may have observed, seriously let her slip show.

Let me make it clear: I know that Israel has made mistakes over its 62 years, some clumsy and inept (was there no intelligence regarding the terrorists aboard the Mavi Marmara?!?), and some borderline immoral. But none worse than every other democracy on earth has also done, and most much better than the large majority of the UN rogue nations which condemn Israel daily have done…daily. There is MUCH to improve in the way we govern, I will be the first to say it. I will also be the first to say that various Jews of the Bernie Madoff and Greed-is-Good-Goldman-Sachs ilk make me want to crawl under a rock. I know that the world is only waiting for these guys to emerge in order to pin their crimes on all of us, even though everything they do is in direct contradiction of actual Jewish values.

But let’s be honest: the international community’s human rights crusades on behalf of the Palestinians are just the latest Crusades, and the ones who REALLY suffer are not the Jews or the Israelis but the poor occupants of the Third World who are ignored while the enlightened First World castigates the Jews… and yes, of course, the Palestinians, who are kept in misery *by their own leadership* in order to provide the polite Jew haters with a media club to beat them with.

So here’s the thing: We are not going anywhere this time, Helen. We totally get it: Ya’ll pretty much hate us. It’s just the way it is, like a natural law. Nothing we can do – not giving away pieces of Palestine / Israel (witness our evacuation of Gaza in 2005, and handing over the keys to army bases and greenhouses- a new economy! Food for the children! – which were summarily torched as property of the infidels); not donating billions annually to global charity,  nor discovering a cure for Polio or the Theory of Relativity, or writing revered legal and religious texts, or co-founding Google, or manufacturing the microprocessor in the majority of laptops that spew Jew hatred to the Internet, or founding Christianity itself, or championing women’s rights and gay rights in the US and helping to bring about a *human rights revolution* in America in the 60’s, …None of those things will absolve us of our real sin: Existing and overcoming.

I’m really sorry they told you to get the hell out of the White House, Helen. It really wasn’t your fault that you thought you could say what you said. It’s not like it’s a secret: That’s what people think.

But this time, seriously. Getting the hell out is not in the cards. We’re just sick of moving all the time.

I know. Irritating.

Editorial Note: Despite the expulsion of the Jews after the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt, there was never a time when Jews did not live in Israel. Also, prior to the Zionist influenced immigrations, there were a number of smaller religiously motivated waves of immigration to Israel.

About the author

sarke

285 Comments

  • My God, I wish I could rant so well. I am going to post this link everywhere I possibly can.

  • This was amazing. Made me laugh and cry. Made me proud to be a Jew and also resolved to continue my support of Israel.

  • Helen, I thought this bout of bile spewing was a result of growing very old and alone. However it seems to have been a long festering problem for you. Well, you’ll always have that smiling picture of you and BO to enlarge and frame – maybe he will sign it too.What a sad note to go out on – I think your career was already over. Not to worry – there will be lots of festive Washington hostesses that will clammer for your presence.

  • I do believe I’m in love. (My mom will be so happy when she hears its a Jewish girl… the internet stalking thing may put her off a bit.. you never can please mom)

  • Actually, German Jewish communities (i.e. communities on now-German soil) are the oldest known in Central and Northern Europe with trade connections with Trier going as far back as 4,000 years. Just thought I’d throw that bit of patriotism in.

  • um…tx guys! and yeah, what themiddle said. but really -so nice 2 hear ppl can be moved by words.

  • okay, well, I’m guessing that themiddle knew I was just kidding and playing along… but the fact you know she has a husband is a little weird. I’m just saying.

    anyway, good writing, was all I meant.

    • JD, I know she has a husband because she has written about her family on this here blog, Jewlicious.com, before.

  • Absolutely fabulous sarke. I think this is probably the best single piece I’ve read on the issue yet, and I’ve read a hellofalot. Great job girl!

  • Kol ha-kavod; excellent column. But one small comment about a major error / omission: since when were the Maccabees the founders of the first Jewish state in Land of Israel/Palestine? What about the monarchy Saul and David and Solomon et al ca. 1040 bce on, and the somewaht anarchic and decentralized presence in the days of Joshua and the judges and Samuel (ca. 1300 bce)?

  • YC – tx – u r correct of course. But I tried to stay away from the very ancient / Biblical – I believe it, but I didnt even need it. I wanted this to work on a semi-broad, semi-secular level – not as God’s ancient chosen people who were promised / given the land, but as people who repeatedly needed it – and earned it through sweat and tears (and, as you and I might say, God’s help. But go sell that.)

  • Wow. Balanced and well-honed. I get so tired of people assuming that if one defends Israel, one defends all that Israel or any one Jew has ever done wrong and has no feelings at all for the Palestinian people. You nailed it Loushon…I wish I could rant like this. (non-Jew, friend of Israel)

  • Absolutely fabulous! To be laughing out loud alone in my apartment while nodding my head (and quite aware that both could be signs of insanity if viewed through my window), you said exactly what I think but oh so much better! Thank you for your insight, your humor, your passion, and your writing!

  • Thank you very much for such wonderfull
    story. This is the best I’ve read so far.

  • Excellent article – Kol Hakovod

    So well said it is a shame our so called PR (Hasbara) outfits in the UK don’t have the ability to produce such material!!

  • To claim that Helen Thomas merely spoke what everyone else thinks is truly pathetic, beyond asinine.

    You really should try spending more time with the goyim. Believe me, we won’t spit or bite or ship you to Oswiecim or anything, promise.

  • You left out the part about being confined to the pale in Russia, with a exceptions for musicians (among a few others.)

    The Pesky Jews then proceeded to produce generations of terrific musicians.

    Didn’t you know you were supposed to bask in your bitterness? When you are told to go away and die, you are supposed to do that, not produce geniuses.

    Sheesh.

  • Thank you for telling it like it is.
    The best rant I have seen in years.
    More strength to you and your team.

  • Tom: Deal. Given your generous attitude, when we hang out I promise not to drain your blood for matzas. 🙂

    In all seriousness, of course i realize it’s not EVERYONE. It’s just enuf people that I needed to write it.

  • OK, deal, and I’ll have you sign my Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

  • Great job of explanation.
    If I really had to return to where my ancesters came from I’d have to go th the Land of Cannan. Hey, that’s where i am. how do you like that?

  • How do you like that? My ancesters came from the Land of Cannan. And here I am back home.

  • GREAT piece of writing. You expressed everything going on in my head that I, and probably many others are unable to put into words.

  • can you send me this article by email so that I can post it to all my friends?

  • Truly one of the best rebuttals of troll-faced Helen’s outrageous remarks. There are plenty of us Goyim who stand with Israel and the Jews and find it appalling and sickening that people even think that way about another race of people.

    Sadly, as you mentioned in your last comment reply, there are more than enough people who have that mindset and it seems to be growing daily. Jerusalem (Israel) truly is becoming the burdensome stone spoken of in Zechariah 12:3 and her people, unfortunately, are bearing the brunt of it.

    I think your response was 100% right on. Job very well done! 🙂

  • you have to understand poor helen; at such an advanced age she does not know anymore what she is saying: in fact, what she really meant is “tell the jews to get the hell out….” from anywhere!! from the planet! point blank

  • Excellent, a superb and eloquent response to a not so elegant despot such as Helen Thomas, the more the Obama new world order and his leftist nuts collude with islam in the efforts to negate the state of Israel and the Jewish people, the more it has forced me to identify myself for who and what I am, I am a Jew, I am not so kosher, non synagogue attending libertarian Canadian as well but I am a Jew before all else, I am proud of my ancestral heritage, “and I will stand with the Jews should the political winds shift in an ugly direction” and fight like a Macabee, but we are definitely not going away this time.

  • Excellent, but few may be aware that Germany had enough Zyklon-B, after finishing off the Jews, for 20 million more — Poles and Russians. See Amazon.com reviews by non-anti-semite Jan Peczkis. Gas was not used at all in Europe’s cruelest death-camp, Jasenovac, in Hitler-satellite Croatia. It was face-to-face murder there by club, axe, burning alive (as opposed to cremation of corpses). Overlooked too is that not only Ashkenaz Jews immigrated to Israel, but also Syrian, Jordanian and Egyptian Arab Muslims, to take jobs created by Jewish entrepreneurs… In WW II Croatia, too, Muhammed Amin al-Husseini (Yassir Arafat’s uncle) raised two Waffen-SS divisions of Bosnian Muslims for Himmler. Besides Jews, Gypsies and Serbs were the main victims. Yet in the 1990s Balkan wars, WJC, JADL, JPost, not to speak of Bill Clinton, repeated the PR lies (now aimed at Israel) in behalf of re-born Nazi-Croatia & Muslim Bosnia against the first victims of the current jihad, the Serbs. Wahabis from ex-Yugoslavia were aboard the Mavi Maramara. Kaffirs Unite!

  • The best I’ve heard or read. Helen—why don’t you return to Lebanon??
    I’m certain you’d fit right in. What have you every contributed to the American way of life? We’d like to see out of our way of life. Thanks

    Bern

  • WOW!! You know just how to say what we all feel!! Neal

  • Witty and to the point. tip of the hat to Naomi Ragen for the link to find you. I will continue to learn from your pen! I wish we could get you on American TV to share you.

  • This is a terrific rebuttal! However, to the person responding who refers to the Jews as a race, please do not do that, as that is how genocide is justified, and it is grossly incorrect, since many races make up the religion of Judaism: Black, White, and Asian are among the racial composition of the Jewish religion.

  • Doesnt Helen Thomas remind you of the ugly witch in “The wizard of Oz?” In the end we all know what happened to her. I guess it comes down to the old saying “NEVER AGAIN” We all know what the world thinks of us, but I for one will never back down to any one when it comes to my heritage. Naomi Ragen says what we all really feel. Keep it up……..Thanks

    • I’m seriously concerned by various equally racist and bigoted comments on Thomas and (Muslim) Arabs this thread has triggered. If you want to show a person you’re out of their league, don’t step down into theirs.

  • Such a fantastic article !!! Her ignorance of the history made her make this “oups”….so she actually should go back to Lebanon !!! Or best found her way to Saudia ! But actually she couldnt really make a GOOD CARREER in Hollywood!!! Yes !!! As the best and real “MEHASHEFA” witch !!!

  • Andy, my apologies, it definitely wasn’t intentional at all. In hindsight I realize I should have used group instead of race.

  • I am happy that someone was able to put into words all the feelings I have. Thank you Sarke

  • Seriously a fantastic piece that should be shared with as many people as possible. Thanks for writing this. I will be forwarding this to everyone I know.

  • The only issue I take with what was said above is that y’all is not spelled ya’ll. Kudos to the author for so angrily saying what I’ve been feeling the last week.

  • By the way, Helen never seems to mention the fact that 3 million Israeli-Arabs live better in Israel then they do than their so called “brothers” in the rest of Arabia. I’ve been to Israel many times and I’ve driven into the Arab villages. Just ask the people of Abu Ghosh what they think of their life in Israel. Ask the Arabs in Yafo and the Bedouins in the Negev. Perhaps the thousands of Ethiopians that were air lifted to Israel have something to say too about their high quality of life in Israel? Assholes like Helen Thomas are simply jealous that her own people can’t even treat themselves as good as their enemy does. Helen is a sad and pathetic excuse for a rotten old bigot! Good riddance to this garbage!

  • Very well written and very clever.

    (I was wondering if se knows mel gibson.)

  • This rant will be printed and put on my refrigerator door, yes it’s that good!

  • This is the best rant I’ve ever seen about how others feel about us Jews and I could not have said what you have any better. I’ve been thinking about this and felt frustrated that I couldn’t express my anger at what the world issaying about Israel and our people. Thanks so much for your rant. I will send it to every one I know. Unfortunately, it will fall on the lefty, liberal, palestinian -loving jewish people’s deaf ears and they will continue on in ignorance. I know a few of these folks and it makes me sad and mad how stuck they are with their lopsided incorrect views of jews.

  • Don’t sweat the houses and the property in Czechoslovakia, anyone who got confiscated property from the Nazis lost it to the Czechs,Slovaks or Slovenians, who then lost it to the state.

    And that confiscated property, especially in what was Sudetenland, has been available for reclamation and development or restitution for years from the current governments. Still is. But getting it back involves going back. So if your Grandma lost one and you’d love an Agricultural estate int he Czech republic. Go get it.

  • This isn’t the first anti Israel comment from Thomas.These comments come from being an arab, her parents were Lebanese, maybe she, herself, should go back to Lebanon, instead of making nasty ignorant, racist comments.Bitterness will finish her.

  • Totally right on! I agree 100 percent!
    I am a Catholic & I pray for & support Israel!

  • I really loved what Sarke wrote.-
    She said exactly what I always knew and felt.-

  • In 1943, My father (may he rest in peace) informed me that Hitler had given the world 24 hours to get out. Being only 7 years old, I tearfully asked my father where we can go. My father replied, “You’re right. I guess Hitler will have to go!” Good riddance to Helen Thomas. Soon, hopefully, we shall say good riddance to the rest of the anti-Semties!

  • Wish I had a talent like that.
    Thank you for what you wrote. Too funny .
    You have a way with words and are beautiful too.
    Hope Helen Thomas will read it with her hateful narrow mind.
    Proud to be a Jew.
    Am Yisrael Chai.

  • How refreshing! Information instead of name-calling! THANK YOU.

  • You did a good job ranting and raving. But you forgot to mention that after the Holocaust, the loss of 80% of the Jewish european population…..the United States limited our immigration to this country.

  • Dear Sarke;
    You hit the nail right on the head, I loved every word you wrote. And I like your style of writing.
    Where have you been all that time? We must hear more from you!

    Peter Whitmore (Pinchas)

  • You said it right.Those people who didn’t understand the big picture in the Middle East can see how desperate the Israeli position remains…and how the world perceives us

  • Hi,
    I was so incensed by Helen Thomas’ remarks. I was born in the Middle East and was kicked out of there with some NINE hundred thousands Jewish people and they confiscated everything we had. Should we go back to Baghdad; Damascus; Cairo, etc..
    People forget that apart from the historical facts that we had a country called Israel in that region before Christ appeared, it was the United Nations that in November 1947 gave us back the land…Period
    We are there to stay forever,
    Amen

  • While we’re at it…did you see the poor starving Palestinians homes in Amman, near the American Embassy? $5 million mansions with gates and private guards. Six Mercedes’ in the driveways. Man, are these people suffering!

    For all the antisemites who just don’t get it, I refer them to The New York Times’ “The Tel Aviv Cluster” and “The Israel Test.” We soon find areas you touched on in your wonderful bulls-eye essay. The world loves the useless, corrupt, the banal, the common, the unredeemable, and the stupidly excessive; and hates the creative, inventive, resourceful and the good. It’s always been that way and it always will be that way. Antisemitism can be almost summed up in a single word: ENVY – or two words: Self Hate.

  • Brilliant…so well said and with humor to boot! Thank you and God Bless You

  • Hello Helen Thomas,
    There is a great upside to your remarks; the world Jewry was able to see you humiliated and vanquished before you die. Oh, and by the way if you need a chat room buddy you can contact Mel Gibson. I’m sure he would be thrilled to hear from another celebrity like you.

  • Sarke…
    First and foremost, well done and well written, the world needs more people like you.
    Another good point is that there exists archeological evidence (which the Arabs have tried to hide/destroy) that the Jewish Empire did in fact exist and have a king by the name of David, so it’s not just the Tanach anymore
    Yet another good point is that, while the Islamic peoples claim that Jerusalem is one of their ‘holy sights’, it is not mentioned a single time in their holiest of books, the Koran, and is mentioned many times in ours (…so if I were to suddenly claim that Washington DC was a holy city for my new religion, does that mean they’d have to hand it over to me? I think not!)

    I am annoyed (yet not at all surprised) that the world dislikes us. After all, its the basic school hierarchy, extort the nerd and then beat him up and send him packing, but when I see people like you defending our right to be in our homeland (and yes, I agree that defending Israel does not mean defending every single little action the state, or any Jew for that matter, has made).
    Another interesting thought is that even if Israelis did provoke the 6 Day War (which a lot of people claim they did), the good old US of A provoke both the Mexican-American War and the Spanish-American War, yet we don’t hear anyone demanding that the US gives back California, Texas, Arizona, Utah, etc. to the Mexicans, nor has anyone forced the US to return Guam or Puerto Rico to the Spanish (and certainly nobody complained about the injustice of the US annexing Hawaii)…so why pick on us?

    Thanks again for eloquently expressing what needed to be said!

    Jeremy (Avraham Meir)

  • The reality as to WHY the USA has supported Israel is simply these two facts

    1) The country is located in the middle of all the oil – it is Westernized and serves us as a base to keep our eyes on the oil

    2) The GOYIM believe that the Jews MUST BE in Israel for YOSHKY ( jesus) to return for the second coming.

    IF the oil of the middle east was not there – and the Goyim did not believe that JEWS need to be in THAT PLACE on earth for their fake son of G-d to return……Israel and most all of us Jews woulr have already been TOAST

  • B”H

    Tx, Sarke. You have spoken well for Israel and the Jews.
    A regular word-weaver. I am B’nei Noach, a gentile that lives by Torah (the 7 Laws). I am honored to have Jews and Israel as my teachers and friends. And I long to live in Jerusalem as a “ger-toshav”. Isaiah 2/ Zechariah 8
    and “Oseh shalom bim’romav, Hu ya’aseh shalom ALEINU V’AL
    KOL YISRAEL – V’IMRU….AMEN!!!”
    Marvin, “Mel and Helen sittin’ in a tree, K-I-……
    “bye, bye, Helen. I guess you “got-the-hell-out-of” the White House, now, HUH!?

  • Kol Hakavod dear sister, I couldn’t of said it better. This is something Rabbi Kahane would have postulated as well. Keep up the good fight. You don’t have to always be nice and respectable to tell it like it is. That’s our problem always wanting to be nice and respected. Well we can see how well that theory works …Let’s mount up and head for home: Eretz Israel!!!

  • Well done. I am descendant of those pesky Jews who came to Israel in the late 1800’s, my husband’s pesky family came in early 1700’s, and do you know why we came here & not USA, South Africa, Uganda, etc. because honestly, this was our chosen land where our history evoloved. because the Bible, world’s best selling book is “our” book.
    If anyone doubts our history, go see the arch of Titus in Rome where relief sculptures of the Jewish capitves from Judea carrying the temple treasures are there for all to see & not deny.
    Anyway, thanks for a great response, just thought i’d add my 2 bits.

  • American jews should learn from the previous generations not to take sides! Too much leaning left and another side sooner or later will kick you out!!

  • I love Helen Thomas. Does she know what she did for Aliyah? Bet not!

  • Brilliant – from Sout Africa. There were also quotas in South Afrrica!

  • I feel sorry for the lady from the White House. I assume that she or her ancestors came to the U.S. because of the difficult situation in Europe and hope for a better life and free the country of unlimited possibilities. The difference between us (Israelis) is that we preferred to return to our deserted country and build it. I invite her to read the travel diary of Mark Twain Israel, in the 19th century, to learn about the wilderness that existed here before the arrival of Jews.

  • Great writing! Both funny and poignant..and nicely sums up Jewish History and many achievements. Only, Sarke, don’t forget the many Gentiles who like me love the Jewish people, uphold their God-given right to the land of Israel, are thankful for all their achievements and, last of all, conscious that their own brand of religion, Christianity, would not exist without its Jewish founder, roots and sacred texts. Don’t forget also the sad reality of the many Jews who do not support Israel, particularly in the US and the UK. The “demarcation” line no longer runs between Jews and Gentiles when Zionism and support for Israel is concerned.
    Shalom 🙂

  • Written with class and delivered with elegance. Unlike anything that has ever emitted from Thomas.
    As a Texan and serious supporter of Israel, and regular Naomi Ragen reader, I think Sarke has executed the festering carbunkle that is Helen Thomas without having to get near the stench.
    Sarke is William Tell with words in her quiver, and a master marksman!!!

  • Ani modeh lach!! The problem is our liberal Jewish friends won’t read it and if they do they will not understand it. Apparently, a person can have only one religion at a time and liberalism is a very jealous lover, and the Jewish left sadly has a new “Mosiach.” Ideas and ideals need more than Jewish stars painted on them to be Jewish.

    Keep up the Good Work

    Rafi

  • When are the Jews going to sit down and discuss amongst themselves why they are universally disliked? Is it possibly the fact that they are obnoxious and insulting too often? I have a small number of Jewish friends and we get along very well but every once in awhile they can be disagreeable. I wonder why.

  • Peter…..A bunch of us just got together and decided, in addition to being insulting and obnoxious, you’re an idiot.

  • Truly a good/great piece!. It’s too bad it won’t appear on the front page of the NY Times which is where is belongs!

  • Sarke hit the nail right on the head about Helen Thomas and (others like her). Too bad that this will never make the front pages of our newspapers or television newscasts.

  • I think Jews get that way every time Peter is in the hood, the only commonality seems to be Peter the Hood

  • The laugh the other side of Helen’s face aspect, is her parents were Lebanese(Christians?)- and the Moslem World is so hospitable !

  • Great rebuttal on a serious subject delivered in a really witty and effective if somewhat cynical style. You obviously have thought and researched much on this subject, Sarke. In your opinion, what is it that promotes the historical and ongoing anti-semitism in so much of the world? Is it “existing and overcoming” as you surmise? Not that there is a simple answer, but I would be interested in your opinion and elaboration. Thanks!

  • My son who made aliyah 20 years ago forwarded this to me. Thanks for an excellent rebuke of another anti-Semite. Keep up the good work!

  • Surprise, there is no bloc of goyim who all agree on this. I personally find anti-semitism alarming and perhaps over idealistically in my naive American way, am shocked and perplexed at resurgences of it, it should be a long gone nasty anachronism by now. But unfortunately it is clearly still revivable.
    And, yes, I could not begin to tally all the very good and amazing personal and impersonal effects that Jewish people have made on even just my life in the US.

    There are many good hearted people of all kinds who don’t like to see any country making a bad situation worse with bullying, death and destruction, and obfuscation. Particularly if they are helping to pay for it. I feel responsible for what was my money, is paying for. I don’t want to lie and kill with my money. I can’t help but think we help to fuel the fire. We Americans have enough to deal with halting our own country doing the wrong thing.

    I can’t imagine how stressful it would be to live in such a beleaguered mental state at all times, but the ‘ends justifies the means’ mentality apparently is not working anywhere there is strife. Don’t know the answer to protecting Israel and Palestinian rights and peace, but definitely appears to have been some wrongheaded and stupid moves on the part of Israel, they must fix. I don’t support my own govt. unconditionally, neither would I any other govt..

    Aggression with your literal next-door neighbor doesn’t work, if goal is peaceful and productive living, why would it work on a larger scale? I would say this to haters of any kind who would listen and want to understand.

    As an American of multiple ancestry background (some of whom would have had traditional enmity against one another), as I would have to be torn into tiny pieces in order to be sent back to where ever I came from (which may appeal to some readers of this), and as a child of divorce, I ask you to examine “US and THEM” thinking, it is more complex than that. Most important what you have in common, need to get you some of that security that comes from peace..

  • I disagree completely, what a unnecessary piece of Israeli propaganda. But in this free society how about stop killing poor and defenceless citizens?

  • Ahmed – poor defenseless Hamas! Oh those poor well armed and trained para military force with missiles that hit tel aviv, night vision gear, advanced communication systems. Boo Hoo!

    Poor 50,000 armed police of Fatah!

  • I have truly loved many Jewish friends over the years. I also have a great respect for the religion being it’s the beginning of mine (Christianity). I know you realize that there are many non-jews who support you and pray for Isreal and it’s people. AND, blessed you… you’re G-d’s chosen people which puts you on the radar of His enemies everywhere. Just wanted to remind you that Many Many are supportive of you and believe Isreal is yours.~Shalom~

  • Ahmed – we are not asking you to agree, we don’t expect you to agree, but that does not make anything you say have any value or truth in it at all, you are part of the problem and have no real intention of ever being part of the solution, good luck to you and may the blessings that mohamed has brought upon upon the nations of islam be especially on you.

  • Very well put!!!! I especially like the last paragraph:

    “But this time, seriously. Getting the hell out is not in the cards. We’re just sick of moving all the time.

    I know. Irritating.”

    Very well said indeed. Kudos!!!!

  • If only the State Department and Obama could read and absorb such a beautifully concise history of Israel and the Jewish People.

    I am in awe of this post and it should be widely distributed.

  • So impressed with your post! Your knowledge and passion just poured out of your pen! You are not just a pretty face! You are an amazingly talented scholar! I would only add that the main point you made about it being a natural law (that they hate us), is actually in the Talmud itself. “Esau soneh Yaakov.” Plain and simple. The Goyim hate the Jews. It reminds me of a famous story that took place when a handful of European Jews found four cubits on Earth (in Shanghai of all places) where they could practice their religion. As the Chinese official sat across from the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Rabbi (who was requesting permission to take refuge from the Nazis (may they rot for eternity), he asked him … “but why do the Nazis hate you so much?” The Rabbi stared back right into the eyes of the Chinaman (you can’t imagine a more diverse culture clash) and answered … “They think we look Chinese.” Yes, my dear … they hate us, torture us (Catholic Church), expel us, gas us, deny our history (Iranian denial of the Holocaust) … even as we give them endless gifts of medicine, invention, entertainment, freedom, and even as we teach them not to hate. But we will never change. We will always be a light unto the nations.

    Thanks for the awesome post! Be well my daughter.

    • The Goyim hate the Jews.

      and even as we teach them not to hate.

      We will always be a light unto the nations.

      Not with dialectics like these, I’m afraid…

  • Let’s not forget to mention that Judaism existed at least since 1,800 BCE when Abraham founded the Jewish religion. Jews established an independent Jewish kingdom in Israel around 1050 BCE. Jews were already living in Palestine/Canaan/Israel before any mention of Palestinians as a people/ethnic group occurred in the writings of Greek historian, Herodotus, in the 5th BCE. Who occupied whom?

  • Everything in this article is accurate. Finally the article ends: “Getting the hell out is not in the cards. We’re just sick of moving all the time.”

    – what’s the alternative – why do we never hear what we SHOULD do?

    I believe that Meir Kahane was correct and
    the consistent demonization of Israel by surrounding Arab countries and the Arab 5th column with and that in Israel is directly due to our allowing the Arab enemy to remain in Israel.

    They must be resettled outside of Israel if we are to survive with Gods help.

  • To Ms. Sarke, from a grateful Israeli (b., Philly)! May you go from “strength to strength”. I look forward to reading any of your future musings (certainly not to be characterized as a “rant”–you are saying exactly what needed to be said and in the perfect way). This essay deserves to be forwarded to my kids, family and friends.

  • Baby Huey, you are quite correct and I appreciate all the support Israel gets.
    Being racist and claiming that all non-Jews hate Israel is not the answer, but then again rolling over and playing dead is also not an option…what’s a Jew to do?

    Israel has the unconditional right to defend all of her citizens, yet because of the UN Israel is never allowed to deal the final blow. (Imagine if the UN during WWII was like the modern UN, Germany would have managed to develop the Atomic Bomb and freedom and Jews would have been history).

    I happened to have been in Israel for most of the Gaza War (it was a three week trip with the war being declared the day before my flight and the ceasefire occurring while I was flying back). As it so happened, just about every single person I encountered was in favor of helping their brothers and sisters under fire from Hamas rockets, even those who would normally lean towards the left. A good majority of the speakers my group and I went to see were in favor of the war, or at least in favor of stopping the missiles from launching (much to the annoyance of my liberal Jewish friend).

    Having been in the country during a conflict, the security around my group was strict, and there were certain areas we were forbidden to tour. During one trip to the City of David, we had to be evacuated due to nearby ‘protests’.

    My points? First, whenever Israel tries to defend herself, both the Arab-Israelis and the media (and soon after the good ol’ UN) can be counted on to protest Israel’s actions. (I imagine that if Canada was to fire missiles into the US, the US army would be storming Canada within moments and nobody would object…)

    Second, Israelis look out for each other, the main reason is because since it is such a small country everyone has a connection to everyone else in the country somehow.

    Third, a newsflash for some, the fact that more Gazans died in that conflict than Israelis was because the Israelis had a good plan of attack, and Hamas uses human shields…who’s oppressing whom now? Israel tries over and over again to avoid civilian deaths, and time and again it’s not enough for the rest of the hypocritical world, and yet we can’t just ignore the rest of the world (much as I’d like to sometimes…)

    In spite of everything, we shall persevere, and that is quite possibly what has made us odious to the other nations of the world…

    (It should be duly noted, once again, that by ‘the rest of the world’ I mean the UN, and not literally every single non-Jew, and by ‘other nations’ I mean only those who’ve tried to kill us, deport us, convert us, etc.)

    Jeremy (Avraham Meir)

  • As they say in Hebrew: im k’var, az k’var (in for a penny in for a pound> After praising your article, Sarke, you should be a bit more careful in choosing your imagery: When you say that the horrible acts of people like Madoff make you want to “crawl under a rock”. YOu know, of course, of the verses in the Koran that tell of that day in the future when the very “rocks will call out–there is a Jew hiding under me, come and destroy him” (I am not making this up!).

  • Dear Helen, you have become even more famous on account of your infamous remarks respecting Jews. You might be interested to know that, we Jews, generally have long noses (similar to yours), on account of our long past in the Middle Eastern deserts, similarly to other semite tribes. Throughout thousand of years, nature has done things gracefully and has given us long noses as a protection against breathing desert sands. Circumcision, also practiced by Muslims, has the same origin for the same health reasons. Dear Helen, you will probably appreciate the ryme, ‘those men called Moses, if you can’t tell them by their names, you can tell them by their noses’…

  • This is really fabulous! ; However, I believe all tbose of us who are reading it are quite familiar with these facts, as eloquent and precise as they are. It is the others who need to learn and read it. They are not reading or learning anything. Just hating.

  • Great article!! This will be Helen’s legacy, just like the guy in the pointy hat on Purim. You just don’t mess with the apple of HaShem’s eye!

  • It remind me a lot of “Open letter for the world” by Rabbi Kahana.
    Great piece, great writing.

  • In reference to Peter Hood’s remark, you are the epitome of obnoxious, offensive and
    insulting. Frankly, you are equally ignorant just like Helen Thomas and probably just
    as ugly!

  • Not to nitpick, but members of my extended family survived the Hebron massacre. The family’s ownership of their homes and lands in Hebron goes pretty far back. They definitely weren’t new immigrants.

    It’s unfortunately a little known fact that there has always been a Jewish presence in Israel since the Exile. The Mishna and Jerusalem Talmud were written there years after the exile (and we’re talking hundred of years after the exile already). We have numerous records of Arabs wiping out various Jewish communities over the centuries (so nothing new there either).

    So when I asked my extended family where Helen Thomas wants them to go home to, they say they can’t go… because Arabs are currently living in their former homes.

  • Peter Hood……Now you can tell us the truth. You and Helen are a couple.

  • Eloquent! Sarke, you tell it like it is. I’m sending it to everyone on my lists. Some will get it three times. I hope some will read the comments in addition to the essay. Bless you. I’m looking forward to more.

  • I think your rebuttal to Helen Thomas’s comments are GREAT! You have said what all Jews have wanted to say, and what many non Jews wish they could have said.

    Having grown up a WASP (Bible toting, holy rolling Baptist to be exact) in an almost totally Jewish neighborhood, and attending a nearly all black Baptist church, I couldn’t afford to be racist or predjudiced, because I was the minority. My school friends were all Jewish, in fact my best friend, Rachael, was the daughter of the Rabbi. I was so unaware of the differences between myself, my friends, and my church “family”, that when a member of the church I attended put his hand next to mine, and asked me what differences I saw, I told him his hand was bigger than mine, had black hairs on his knuckles, and his fingernails were bitten. I didn’t even think to say that his hand was black and mine white. When Rachael’s father, the Rabbi would see me, he always would teach me about Jewish traditions, festivals and beliefs, and I was an avid student. One day, he laughingly said he would make a nice Jewish girl out of me, I thought about it, and told him that I wouldn’t look good with black hair and my mother wouldn’t be happy if he dyed my hair. He broke into laughter and asked me if that was the only difference I saw, and I told him yes. Ahhh, the innocence of small children brought up to accept all of G-d’s people. I pray daily for protection for Israel and the Jewish people especially in these days where Bible prophesy is being fulfilled at a fast increasing rate. The Bible tells us that any nation that doesn’t support G-d’s people, will be destroyed, so I’m horrified when I read about some of our nation’s leaders advocating the division of Jerusalem. G-d save us all from these idiots. Shalom

  • That was an amazing post! Very healing and refreshing. Of course not all non-Jews hate Jews, or want to ship them off somewhere, but there are far too many who share Helen Thomas’ views. Your post needed to be written and needs to read by as many people as possible. No more woe-is-me-victim crap, that some Jews seem can’t to let go of. Someone takes a swing at us, they better be prepared for whatever comes down upon them in return.

  • you article is great. but your putting Goldman Sachs and Bernie Madoff in the same category is ignorant and unfair. you dont begin to understand the facts and yet comment. But that is just a -1 out of a phenomenal article. take care

  • I’m posting with the name my dear rabbi gave me — though I am Irish he said I have a Jewish heart. Brava, Sarke !!! From your keyboard to God’s ….eyes ! 😉 And may there be plenty more chutzpah where that came from. This is what the Arabs & other non-appreciators of Jews need to hear. No more pleading !!!! No more begging to be permitted to live ! no more apologising for the myriad gifts you’ve given to the world !!! No more ! Sunflowers love light, cockroaches hate it — keep on being a light anyway. And may the G-d of Israel (who knows each one by name) bless you, multiply you, protect you and make you so happy you forget all the sorrows.

  • So what is a Jew to do?

    Time to transfer the Arabs out of Israel.

    If not what do YOOU suggest?

  • Dear Helen,
    If you travel to Israel you will notice that most Jews are dark skinned as opposed to fair. This on account of some descendants of the original Jewish tribes having remained in Israel throughout history, and others, which were expelled from Arab countries, imigrated to Israel.

  • The Jewish presence was significant in Israel before that, of course. The Morishkas (Mostarbim) were the Jewish community indigenous to the country, descended from the Jews who weren’t captured and exiled at the end of the Second Temple period. (They later merged into the Sephardic community) somewhere around the 1800s.

    Sephardic Jews and Jews from Arabic countries always were trickling into Israel, since they didn’t have as far to go, and (under the Mamluks, Ottomans, etc.) had freedom of travel to get there. Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman’s (Ramban’s) move to the country is well documented, and that was in the 1200s!

    The Sephardic community grew dramatically from the 1400s straight on through, especially in Jerusalem and in Tzfat (Safed) — for example, Rabbi Yosef Karo, the Ari, and the Alshich. The increase in population owed a lot to the Spanish and Portuguese explusions of Jews, and later to the persecutions of the Inquisition.

    It was the Ashkenazi population that wasn’t well-represented until the late 1700s and early 1800s. Any Ashkenazim who came to Israel before 1800 integrated themselves into the existing Sephardic community.

    Jewish continuity in Israel is very well documented historically. It’s just that there is a great incentive for certain people to try and re-write history right now. But it’s all out there and accepted by all historians.

    Thanks for writing a great article which expresses how so many of us are feeling right now.

  • Thank you so much for such a great piece.

    Really nailed it!

    Maggie

  • I am disappointed. I wish instead of taking a defensive position, you have taken offensive stance and go after them arguing along their lines:

    – to get out of Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Filistine, Iraq, Iran, France, Malmo, etc, stop calling themselves Lebanesse, Syrian, Egyptian, Filistine, French and Swedish and let native people of that concurred or almost concerned lands speak their own language and practice their own religions. Well perhaps except for extinct philistinians. To transfer arabians to their native Arabia.
    – to get our of Byzantine cities, like Constantinople and let Kurdes self rule
    – to get out of Jerusalem and Israel where they do not belong, back to their native arabian lands of Saudi Arabiam, Yemen and Kuwait.

  • Jealousy is the ugliest and usually the most violent of emotions. When Jewish industrious Jewish people join together and create a prosperous society within the boundaries of another country people get jealous. Sure, there are annoying things about Jewish people and there’s always some truth behind stereotypes. The “chosen people” thing is old and really annoying, but for me that’s just because I’m an atheist and the Bible is just a book of stories. So when the Bible talks about the Jews as God’s chosen people, well to me that’s just more of the same nonsense as God created the universe, etc. It’s just silly. But that’s another discussion/argument for another time. No one is perfect and mistakes have been made across the board regarding the formation and support of Israel. But the bottom line is that Israel has a right to exist and there is more resistance from everyone else to get along, based on annoyances real and imagined, than the Jews. But then religion of all kinds is pretty much the reason this world is so screwed up anyway. Imagine if there was no God for Jews, Muslims, and Christians to squabble about. Then they would just be fighting over land and stuff which can be negotiated. It’s easier to offer one material thing for another than it is to change someone’s beliefs.

  • AC, you’re right its a problem that we have. We are good at pointing out how wrong others are for telling us to leave Israel and telling us not to ‘oppress’ those who attempt to kill us – how Israel always was the Jewish people’s…

    But to offer a solution that makes sense so that the “oppressed ‘Palestinians'” should not be ‘oppressed’ and that we should not have to be forced to give Israel to an enemy… for a solution we hear NOT a PEEP!

    My alternative is to remove the ‘oppressed Arab Palestinians’ from Israel and let them live in peace and comfort in one of their 22 Arab countries. We should ‘oppress’ them no longer!

  • James, Keep in mind that Mau killed 25 million, stalin a similar amount, Hitler may God blot out his name millions
    – I’m not sure that history bears out that land and other stuff is as negotiable as you may think (all the European wars, Japan and China …)

  • Student has far surpassed the teacher? Last time I checked, it was still Europeans who murdered 6 million Jews, NOT Arabs. Get your shit straight.

  • Will pass this on to everyone I know. You skipped the opportunity to tell dear decrepit Helen to go back to Lebanon! HA! Thanks for saying what I could never put together. Have also been wondering of late if the U.S. should just give Texas back to Mexico…

  • I think that if anything California should be ceded to Mexico, in that way half the illegal alien population in the USA get instantly repatriated back to the lands that they hold as occupied territory stolen from indigenous first nations, and here is the bonus, we rid the nation of half the brain dead demcrap stinking up the place without anyone ever even having to move, now that’s what I call a plan.

  • Beautifully written! As a refugee of Hitler’s Germany and a student of history, Sarke deserves the Nobel prize for her article.

  • Yeh — the goyim are pissed. They’re unhappy that we think it’s no longer fashionable for Jews to simply go away and die.

  • j get your shit straight, Arabs and islam have been killing incalculably amounts of Jews for thousands of years, percentage wise more devastating than the nazi’s, as far as the nazi’s go, the whole shit hole of Europe is as guilty of the holocaust as the nazi’s, three quarters of them were nazi collaborators and nazi sympathises, even one of the richest Jews in the world, that scumbag Sorros, made his money off of the holocaust and the plundering of Jewish estates, if ever there was a scumbag that deserves a bullet in the head its that piece of shit, it would be justice served as he is an out and out war criminal.

    • I’m embarrassed by and about the racism displayed on this thread, the dubious if not downright non-existent historicity of several claims made aside. It would serve the majority of commenters much better to grow up beyond the retaliatory level of toddlers in a sandbox quarrelling over a shovel.

      • I’m also embarrassed by the bigotry that has surfaced here.

        Folks, if you want to take offense at what Thomas said, at least have the decency not to repeat the error of her ways by being just as offensive.

        Having pride in Jewish history and achievements is fine, but it does not have to involve put-downs of others. We all know that many Arabs and Muslims have a problem with Jews, but just as you wouldn’t want to be nothing more than a negative Jewish stereotype, surely you can do better than stereotyping all members of other groups, whether they are Christian, Muslim or Martian. Those of you who are expressing this hatred are actually undermining Sarke’s effective rebuttal to Thomas.

  • froylein – Why is it the the PC police always cry foul when they don’t like the truth, do you honestly believe by negating the facts you can recreate history and an alternate reality, be embarrassed about the fact that you seem to know very little and what you think you do know seems to be erroneous at best. Heil froylein!

    • Mal, for one, I’d not confuse a call for not applying double standards with “political correctness”. Secondly, I suppose you’re new to this blog or you’d know that I’m savvy enough on Jewish history to spot the fallacies among many claims here. To give you the benefit of the doubt, seeing the various mistakes in your comments, I’ll assume the English language is foreign to you, so you probably didn’t get the nuances of my above comment.

  • I always find it interesting how people on the conservative side in general argue with facts and history whereas the liberal leftists use personal attacks, name-calling, put downs and putting words in others mouths in order to shut down reasoned arguments.

    A few examples:

    froylein: “I’ll assume the English language is foreign to you, …”
    personal put down

    themiddle: “Yosef, transfer yourself out of Israel.”
    themiddle: “surely you can do better than stereotyping all members of other groups”

    personal put down and strawman (nobody stereotyped ALL Arabs) in order to put the other commenter down

    So Mal and others don’t pay them much attention – you keep discussing the facts and let them use their method.

    • I meant it, Yosef, anybody who advocates transfer and ethnic cleansing – and be clear that what you are proposing is not even close to what Lieberman has proposed – should live far away from Israel. You will feel at home in Sudan, maybe.

  • Froylein – If you are so jacked up on Jewish history please do point out the fallacies, but don’t be a history revisionist and or spout BS PC talking points as they just don’t cut it, as for my English language skills, don’t be a naive dipshit in confusing them with my lousy typing skills, as for your pathetic attempt at nuances, its time to call a spade a spade, Jews everywhere are under serious threat, whether you like it or not we are being confronted in every single country on earth and we are loosing the battle, you need to get your head out of your ass and understand that in twenty years it will be a thousand times worse than it is now, its not double standards its simply unadulterated fact.

    • Yosef, you’ve failed at addressing the insults being hurled about by those you agree with.

      Mal, if you scroll up, you will find a sample of a correction I’d made on a point that anybody educated in Jewish history on a basic level should have been able to spot as false right away. Nobody’s perfect, such things can happen, but it should have been noticed by more people even if they haven’t spent endless hours delving into hundreds of books on European Jewish history and medieval documents in preparation of university classes on the various waves of the persecution of Jews in Europe during the Middle Ages.
      Lousy typing is one thing, poor syntax, vocabulary and dialects quite another. Usually, I exercise the discreet courteousy of fixing commenters’ typos in the admin section if I spot them first, but in this case, I’ll practise restraint.

      P.S.: Both TheMiddle and I have been frequent (in his case) respectively regular (in my case) contributors to this blog for several years.

  • “All of Jewish Law boils down to ‘Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you.’ The rest is commentary” Rabbi Hillel (translation)

    perhaps some of my fellow Jewish commenters on this site might want to think on that for awhile.

  • Well stated! After finishing reading “LThe Brothers Ashkenazi” (English ltranslated from Yiddish) lat midnight last night to find RANT on my screen was a mahchiah!

  • Then Rabbi Hillel has it very far wrong as that is only a part of it, unfortunately for those liberal minded we have tremendous obligations and burdens to meet to our creator and each other within the Jewish nation, a lot of it very arduous and often distasteful, but compulsory according to all three legs that make up what is required of us in defense of our beliefs and the lives of our nation, sacrifice of even one life in compromise to any cause outside of Judaism is a violation of G-ds law, G-g does not compromise, we are required by our law to if required destroy any and all threats against the Jewish people even if it means destroying a million to save just one, that one may just be the messiah, the difference between ours and any other philosophy is we are only to act in self defense, anything less is compromise that G-d tells us He wont accept.

    • Mal, something tells me you don’t know who Hillel was…

      Mr Biker, let me start by saying that I appreciate that good style matters to you and that you dare not to be “put into line”, so to speak, by a majority of commenters that appears to disagree with you.

      As Middle has already pointed out, we don’t have editors and we also don’t get paid, so it’s acually rather flattering that you used to consider Jewlicious to be fairly professional. (As far as I know, the only professional writers among our bloggers are Lori, Sharon and Rafi, who work as staff writers for a different newspaper each.)

      I hope that you will still be able to find enjoyable posts on Jewlicious on future visits.

      P.S.: You’ve got no idea how glad I am to finally see a commenter who gets their pragraphs right as commenters used to complain on an off comment threads that I divided my posts and comments up into “too many paragraphs”.

  • Excellent retort. Too bad it’s only us, Jews,(mostly) who read and enjoy it this stuff.

    My other general comment is about Helen Thomas’ amazing ignorance and utter lack of any knowledge of history and this is the Leading White House correspondent! wow! O, tempora, o, mores!

  • First of all, I have to divulge that I am Jewish. Why do I say that up-front? Because here comes a little criticism along with some praise, and I don’t want anyone thinking it’s anti-Semitic.

    The content is excellent, assuming the facts are correct. For the sake of argument, I’ll assume the facts are correct.

    PLEASE; Buy a style guide. Stunk and White, the AP Style Guide, Elements of Style, ANYTHING.

    This was a difficult read, not because of the myriad facts, but because of the lack of good style skills and well-developed thought. What am I talking about?

    There are sentences with six (not 6) commas. If you need six commas, you need to rethink your sentence structure.

    You should never start a sentence OR a paragraph with parenthesis. Unless you’re Cormac McCarthy.

    It’s not Pesky Jew, it’s pesky Jew. Unless you know someone named Pesky Jew.

    Final punctuation always goes outside the closing paren.

    And because I’m not going to critique the whole thing (and it really needs it), here’s my last glaring annoyance; You digress, point it out with “But I digress” and then continue to digress instead of getting back to the point. Plus, you do it by parenthesizing the entire paragraph.

    I’m sure the “I think she’s too cute for words” crowd and the sympathetic Jews will say it’s not the point and they’ll jump all over my case. I understand but I still disagree. Good writing is good writing. Including your picture in hopes of having people overlook the content because you’re cute is not going to cut it in the professional world. Previously, I have considered Jewlicious to be fairly professional.

    History is littered (in a good way) with Jews who created some of the finest writing the world has ever seen. Just look to your own article to find some of the names. Not to aspire to those examples is shameful.

    You want to be blown away by a fine Jewish writer? Read the writings of Louis Brandeis. The first time I read some of his stuff I almost cried. It’s beautiful. And he’s not even a “writer.”

    • Mr. Biker, please, it was fine writing. This is blogging, not newspaper reporting or book authoring. We write fast and loosely – nobody is paying us – without an editor or a publisher.

  • Brilliant. Style and grammatical errors and all – actually refreshing to read a view of Jewish history NOT written like a text book or edited newspaper report. It’s alive and breathing and human. Just perfect. I too will send out the link to everyone I know here in Australia!

  • Mr. Biker: I so do love a good grammar rant! As has been mentioned, Jewlicious is not in fact remotely professional. A style guide would be great but I can’t even get writers to add tags, images and thumbnails on a regular basis! For instance, you will find delicious chick pea paste spelled hummus, chummus, humus, houmous etc. on Jewlicious. You will find the Shiite terrorist organization based in South Lebanon spelled Hizballah, Hezbollah, shit heads etc. on Jewlicious. I’m afraid a style guide and more active editorial supervision is beyond the capabilities of our non-existent budget.

    The writer of this post, Sarke, is actually a professional writer. This post however, was written in the passion of the moment and did not undergo her usually punctilious grammatical and stylistic review. What it lacks in strict adherence to the rules of grammar, it more than makes up for in the power and sincerity of its sentiment. As you can see, many people found it quite resonant.

    Finally, the photo used above is not of the author but rather of Lea Michele who plays the character Rachel Berry in the popular television show “Glee.” Perhaps a caption would have been in order for the pop-culture-challenged amongst us.

    Please do feel free to stop by again and begin a discussion on the substance of this post. Our writer “froylein” is already your fan!

  • CK, I don’t become a fan of people but a fan of ideas. If people come up with original ideas, you might colloquially say that I am a fan of theirs, but content matters to me most. At that, good style and good grammar haven’t been out of fashion for millennia – just consider the beautiful imagery of the Song of Solomon, the captivating epos of the Odyssey, the political rants by Cato or the plain-style, easily readable factbooks by Cicero, Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s ability to play with poetry and the vernacular of different social standings, the powerful language of Goethe during his Sturm-und-Drang years, Heine’s and Tucholsky’s subtle political criticism and parody, …

    Analogously to Dürrenmatt’s claim that readability is the politeness of handwriting, I can therefore concede that good style (which does not exclusively mean high-brow, non-fictional literature) is the politeness of all writing.

  • Froylein – there you go again getting your head stuck up your ass over nothing again. Just because I don’t agree with all that the great Hillel, whom I consider a progressive for his time, does not mean I don”t know who he was. The fact that he is regarded as a brilliant sage his viewpoints are still opinions based on his time. If we are going to pay homage to his quotes, a far more poignant one and one that would be in direct relation to the point at hand, would be “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I” which is precisely what I have been stating all along but have been attempting to projecting it in the plural for all of us as a people.

    Of this my understanding in relation to this thread is that we need to understand very clearly who we are, we are the Jewish nation, if we don’t collectively take maters in to our own hands soon and stand up for ourselves as a united nation, then no one else will and we are in a nutshell screwed. now don’t go off over analyzing this, its a point of view, its the reason the thread is here, to provide us the opportunity to exchange notions and ideas and hopefully get those that will not see, to get a clearer picture of just how ever increasingly dangerous our environment has and is becoming.

  • Mal, please suit yourself. I need not take your verbal abuse about something you apparently didn’t get, namely the premise of Hillel’s take on Jewish morale and morality in general (including the interaction with non-Jews) as opposed to his take on the specific point of taking on respectively shedding responsibilities for one’s actions with regards to religious duties and their merit.

    I know you looked up Hillel on Wiki, hence the version of the quotation you used. Please compare with the following versions:
    “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when?” (aish.com)
    “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (answerbag.com)
    “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?” (thinkexist.com)
    “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?” mikesilverman.com)

    The above are just a few examples of how the focus can shift with (lack of) accuracy of the translation. The line is taken from Pirkei Avot (1:14), which literally means “Chapters of our fathers”; it’s on communal ethics and the application of religious law.

    Of you and all like-minded people, I’d like to ask the following: do you seriously think that if a predominantly non-Jewish world were so hostile against Jews as you paint it to be, you’d stand any chance at all at existing? And if you feel so, why does the majority of you not live in Israel?

  • Froylein – Not wikki, numerous discussions with my son at the Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, and its not meant as verbal abuse, the point is you simply refuse to see the world for where it is, you so flatly refuse to envision yourself to the facts facing us, the prophets themselves tell us that this will happen, that the whole world will hate the nation of Israel, every threat against the Jewish people comes from people who hold the position that we live in a predominantly fair and balanced world, this could not be further from reality, it is the most verily hostile environment imaginable. Humanity has not evolved, it has simply become selective and self preservationist nothing more. You are micro focusing to appease your liberal moral senses when in reality we are on the precipice of great human tragedy. We are closer to the destruction of mankind than we have ever been before and you are just not open to seeing this. Its uncanny that someone of your intelligence cant see the trees for the forest.

  • Mal, the line you quoted is literally – including the awkward, interpretative wording – the same as on Wikipedia.

    What yeshiva does your son attend in Bnei Brak if I may ask? Several of my friends there are yeshiva rabbis.

    Please don’t think that I do not acknowledge the recent rise in numbers of anti-Semitically motivated assaults and the pseudo-progressive media bias Israel is frequently subjected to, but I also understand that the world has changed in so far as that it is not in general d’accord with genocide. There has been a shift of focus from Jews as the target to other targeted groups – think Sudan – but for all I can tell there’s been a rising sensitivity for the understanding that lasting peace is a global cause. Alas, it’s the extremists of all kinds that draw most media attention, not decent people. – When was the last time you read good news in your newspaper?

  • May the God of Israel bless you: HE has, and will fully, give you the land – which is why everone wants you to ‘get-the-hell-out-of-it’. He has begun to restore you physically and will restore you spiritually. Please consider again HIS true Messiah – Yeshua.

  • On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:19 PM, wrote:

    I do not think all non Jews are hostile. Some of my family members were saved during the Holocaust by non Jews who did so at the risk of their own lives and the lives of their families. Before any Jew makes pejorative
    comments about non Jews, he or she should ask themselves how brave and principled they would be in similar circumstances.

    That being said, I firmly believe that ultimately we have survived because it is God’s will that we survived. Our task is to spend out lives discovering the purpose, both individually and collectively, of the miracle of our survival. Some of that purpose is universal – some of it is parochial, all of it must be approached with balance, sensitivity and yes, without question, force when necessary.

    Many of my left wing Jewish friends suffer from a Jewish form of the battered wife syndrome. Whenever we get beaten they try to figure out how and why we are responsible for the beatings we receive. When we constantly look
    and feel guilty we embolden out enemies and bring on more beatings.

    Like the battered wife, some of these people should seek therapy and a way out of the cycle of their own irrational guilt and destructive relationships with other members of the left they are constantly trying to please. Surely
    we are not perfect but who is? We must remember that during the Holocaust,our “crime” was nothing less than our existence.

    Rafi

  • themiddle,
    It doesn’t matter one iota to me that you ‘meant’ your personal insult. 🙂

    The point is that I and others talk facts and I presented an alternative to Israel’s destruction.

    You and left-wing liberal like yourself rarely respond to facts because you have no response and no alternative.

    I do understand therefore why you must use personal insults – its the last refuge of non-thinkers.

    So let me present the facts.

    Fact: the PA, the moderate Abbas,not just the Hamas say that Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state. Their maps have NO ISRAEL.

    Fact: Mein Kamph translated into Arabic is a best-seller in the Jewish territories.

    Fact: The Arab Knesset members voted ‘democratically’ supported the flotilla and 5 of them took concrete actions in its support.

    Fact: Abbas denied that 6 million of out brethren were killed in the Holocaust.

    Question: What do we do with such a 5th column enemy whose stated goal is to destroy us?

    I say let them live in any one of their 22 Arab countries but not in Israel where they threaten our ONE country. Lets put our heads together and try to figure out how to best do it. If possible by monetary incentives if not then without money.

    What do YOU say to the question above?? Something to the point not personal attacks!

    • I wasn’t resorting to personal insults, they were front and center, Yosef.

      Why don’t you put the word “endgame” into the search box on your top right and read some of my essays.

  • Hey, CK; Thanks.

    To Froylein, who said “good style (which does not exclusively mean high-brow, non-fictional literature) is the politeness of all writing.”

    Here, here. I hope I stressed enough in the my original post how much I liked sarke’s rant. Today, I even used some of her facts in a conversation I had!

    My point is, if sarke took the time, she could have turned a great rant into a great read. When the prose takes you out of the article, much like when a theatrical trick takes you out of a movie, you’re busy thinking about the style and not the substance.

    Please heed CK you Jewlicious people (writers) and practice writing so it comes out of your word processor with only a few corrections necessary.

    As for the cultural ignorance of not knowing the woman from Glee, I’m guilty for two reasons. I refuse to spend my time watching TV as I believe it’s now used to keep our mind off of what’s really happening in the world. Look at the state of broadcast journalism. It’s disgusting. Cat up a tree and house on fire stories. That’s in between 5 weather casts over the course of 30 minutes. Now they broadcast stories about upcoming shows on their network. It’s a joke. So aside from movies and stuff I’ve DVR’ed, I have better things to do.

    The second reason I wouldn’t know about Glee is because I do nothing that helps Rupert Murdoch. He’s an evil man who’s destroying America for his gain. No Fox, no Wall Street Journal, no anything Murdoch. I have principles.

    Lastly, I notice the writing improved dramatically after my rant. You folks wrote some very intelligent stuff. I don’t know if I caused it but good job to everyone that wrote cogently. There’s some excellent responses in there.

  • Aha 🙂

    Let me ask others – since leftist ‘themiddle’ can’t:

    What SHOULD Israel do about a 5th column Arab population sworn to destroy Israel?

    • Yosef, let me just state for the record that if the Jewish state ever becomes an undemocratic state that doesn’t treat its citizens equally, then it does not deserve to exist as the Jewish state. Regarding the Arab minority, the first thing you should be trying with them is mandatory national service which they have to spend among the general population doing national service. In other words, let them become a part of Israel instead of excluded from the mainstream. This means that both sides have to make an effort to integrate with each other. I know, opposite side of the spectrum from what you propose.

  • Yosef, as a namesake of Meir Kahane, I can agree that the simplest solution would be to ‘relocate’ the 5th column into one of their 22 countries, as non violently as possible.

    However, you and I both know the 5th column would not go peacefully, and that would result in disastrous consequences…so on second thought, perhaps ‘relocation’ is not the simplest solution after all.

    That said, it is never a good idea to keep enemies within your borders, especially ones that tend to get violent over small things, like, say, a Jew trying to pray on the Temple Mount. (I have already made clear my opinion when it comes to the Islamic claim to Jerusalem as a holy city in an above post).
    On the one hand, keeping the 5th column where it is is a bad idea because they are sworn to destroy Israel.
    On the other hand, it would be impossible to relocate the 5th column (even with monetary incentive), without resorting to violence.

    The main problem here is not Israel, but rather the 22 Arab/Islamic nations that have refused to allow their brethren into their countries and, instead, choose to exploit their fabricated plight to the rest of the world.

    Who’s claiming ‘woe-is-me’ now?

    Jeremy (Avraham Meir)

  • Yosef, you claimed you and like-minded commenters were arguing with facts. Please obtain an introduction on Jewish history and double-check the claims made in the post as well as in the comments. There might be a few surprises for you in store.

    Talking about facts, Hitler’s book is titled “Mein Kampf”. A little fact-checking would have gone a long way to give your comments more credibility.

    As you, and others, obviously didn’t notice the severe mistakes in the post above (regarding the migration patterns of Jews in Europe in this context), it would be a moot point to draw analogies between the editoral and receptive history of “Mein Kampf”, “The Protocols of the Learnt Elders of Zion” and other pieces of ant-Semitic filth literature. It would as much have been a moot point to explain that any claim of historicity of Jewish counter-facts, so to speak, would need to undergo extraordinarily diligent fact-checking in order not to diminish their value in arguments in post-Enlightment societies.

    You also claimed that Middle and I had resorted to insults; I’d appreciate if you applied your make-shift rules across the board, perception permitting, as bigoted, hateful and fascistoid languange are not to be found all that quickly in Middle’s and my comments.

    Mr Biker, I heard you loud and clearly.

    I was replying to CK with that line, who’s got an idea much different from mine of what makes a post good. I will refrain from quoting the short conversation he and I had on that issue as it might be offensive to certain people.

    I’d like to add that I also had not idea what “Glee” was. Looking the show up, I figured it hadn’t exactly been a loss of cultural knowledge to not have wasted time on watching yet another piece of stultification.

    Still, I’d like to repeat that good style does matter in order to engage a readership, and the examples of authors and their works I provided should sufficiently demonstrate that style isn’t solely determined by the author’s ability to produce written language but to fit the way of expression to the type of text. A political rant requires a different kind of style than a satire, a pamphlet, an essay, an epos etc.

  • Froylein,
    Wow, that was a long post – I’m not sure completely what you are saying.

    You wrote: “double-check the claims made in the post…”
    You are challenging the facts in the post?

    YOU challenge them! More innuendo with no facts?

    Fact: Mein Kampf is a best seller amongst the Arabs in Judea and Samaria.
    http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Archive/Articles/2000/Hitler%20is%20a%20Youth%20Idol-%20Mein%20Kampf%20is%20a%20Bestseller

    See I backed my words up.

    Now why not answer the question?
    Its a toughy, I know.

    What SHOULD Israel do about a 5th column Arab population sworn to destroy Israel?

  • As I had rather a busy weekend I had little time to read and respond too much of what was written over the weekend. It’s interesting to note however that Froylein is still attempting to give unsolicited English lessons to all that she is trying out debate and rebut, but as I have this morning read a few more of her posts I have noticed that she is just as fallible as the rest of us and in her efforts to obliterate any and all that she considers right wing extremity she too has made a few typo’s. But as I do not consider that an evil of any kind I it really does not matter or detract from the thread, but I can’t help but notice the leftist ideology of go nowhere politics emanating from the Obamabots on this thread and although the Whitehouse trash pile has not as yet been mentioned here one can’t help noticing his base trolling this site. I do however have a new set of four questions to put to them,
    a) Do they believe in a two state solution and or the possibility of it bringing piece?
    B) Do they accept the division of Jerusalem as part of this proposal?
    c) Does anyone honestly believe that there will ever be a peaceful solution between the Jews and the mohammedans?
    d) Do they believe in the final conflict philosophy as prophesied by Ezekiel for the coming of a messiah?
    Disclaimer: I apologize in advance for any and all typo’s and or any misconstrued as offensive or erroneous offensive that I have but honestly just don’t give a damn.

    • Yosef, why don’t you answer my question first, and then I’ll ask you to specify whether by “Arab” you mean the Muslim Arab, Christian Arab, Jewish Arab, Muslim Palestinian or Christian Palestinian people living in Israel / Israel and the territories.

      Also, I’m not sure whether you got me when I said that you should double-check the claims made in the post (which is the blog entry or article) and the comments (which are the replies – all of them). You referred to Hitler’s book as “Mein Kamph“, not me. This is not “innuendo with no facts”; actually, I thought I could expect people that feel confident enough to comment on the content of this post to be a bit more knowledgeable in Jewish history.

      I’ve got work to do, so I’ll just copy-and-paste a concise bibliography of reference works (which I used in the past preparing a university lecture on blood libel, blood miracles and the Rintfleisch and Armleder pogroms) that prove several claims of the post wrong:
      Bätz, Kurt. Judentum. Wege und Stationen seiner Geschichte. Stuttgart 1984

      Beinart, Haim. Geschichte der Juden. Atlas der Verfolgung und Vertreibung im Mittelalter. Augsburg 1998

      von Braun, Christina. Viertes Bild: »Blut und Blutschande«. Zur Bedeutung des Blutes in der antisemitischen Denkwelt, in: Schoeps, Julius H. & Schlör, Joachim (Eds). Bilder der Judenfeindschaft. Antisemitismus Vorurteile und Mythen. Augsburg 1999

      Eckert, Wilehad Paul. Das Verhältnis von Christen und Juden im Mittelalter und Humanismus. Ein Beitrag zur Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte, in: Schilling, Konrad (Ed.). Monumenta Judaica. 2000 Jahre Geschichte und Kultur der Juden am Rhein. Cologne 1963

      Erb, Rainer. Drittes Bild: Der »Ritualmord«, in: Schoeps, Julius H. & Schlör, Joachim (Eds). Bilder der Judenfeindschaft. Antisemitismus Vorurteile und Mythen. Augsburg 1999

      Graetz, Heinrich. Geschichte der Juden. Von den ältesten Zeiten bis zur Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Berlin N.N.

      Graetz, Heinrich. Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden in zwei Bänden. Von der jüdisch-spanischen Zeitepoche bis zur Epoche der Wiedergeburt. Volume II. Cologne 2000

      Grossmann, A. Die Juden in Byzanz und im mittelalterlichen Europa, in: Kedourie, Elie (Ed.) . Die Jüdische Welt. Offenbarung, Prophetie und Geschichte. Munich 2002

      Haverkamp, Alfred. „Concivilitas“ von Christen und Juden in Ashkenas im Mittelalter, in: Jütte, Robert & Kustermann, Abraham, P. (Ed.) Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. Wiesbaden 1998

      Heine, Heinrich. Der Rabbi von Bacharach, in: Prinzessin Sabbat. Ãœber Juden und Judentum. Bodenheim 1997

      Hsia, R. Po-Chia. Trient 1475. Geschichte eines Ritualmordprozesses. Frankfurt 1997

      de Lange, Nicholas. Atlas of the Jewish World. Oxford 1992

      Limor, Ora. Das verworfene Volk, in: Nicholas de Lange (Ed.). Illustrierte Geschichte des Judentums. Frankfurt 2000

      Lotter, Friedrich. Bildfrevellegende, in: Schoeps, Julius H. (Ed.). Neues Lexikon des Judentums. Gütersloh 2000

      Lotter, Friedrich. Brunnenvergiftungslegende, in: Schoeps, Julius H. (Ed.). Neues Lexikon des Judentums. Gütersloh 2000

      Lotter, Friedrich. Hostienfrevellegende, in: Schoeps, Julius H. (Ed.). Neues Lexikon des Judentums. Gütersloh 2000

      Lotter, Friedrich: Hostienfrevelvorwurf und Blutwunderfälschung bei den Judenverfolgungen von 1298 („Rintfleisch“) und 1336-1338 („Armleder“), in: Monumenta Germania Historica (Ed.). Fälschungen im Mittelalter. Teil V. Fingierte Briefe Frömmigkeit und Fälschung Realienfälschungen. Hannover 1988

      Lotter, Friedrich. Ritualmordvorwurf, in: Schoeps, Julius H. (Ed.). Neues Lexikon des Judentums. Gütersloh 2000

      Wurmbrand, Max & Roth, Cecil. Das Volk der Juden. Eine Universalgeschichte. Frechen N.N.

      Mal, for one, I’ve never claimed that I don’t make typos; I usually fix them if I spot them later on (just as I usually fix commenters’ typos as we haven’t got an edit function for those), but that is not a necessity. I wasn’t giving English lessons to anybody but merely replying to another commenter. How you can deduce my political stance from my posts is beyond me, particularly since the very few posts of political nature from way back that include my personal perspective tend to lean to the European conservative side, which is centre-right. That makes me assume that you haven’t actually read any of my posts.

  • Froylein I dont agree with you, I believe you are pretty left wing, just as you think I am a right wing extremist when in actual fact I am pure libertarian.

    Now for all the Froylein like minded leftist individuals – Your concept of peace is total and absolute ideological misconceived lunacy based on and supported by absolutely no facts in play at all. Islams numbers are exponentially increasing at rates that should terrify any reasonable and logically thinking person.

    Having been around for over fifty years and having fought in three regional conflicts, for the first time in my life I face a world that I believe has very little future in store for it.

    According to Wiki and a number of Jewish groups there are less than thirteen and a half million Jews in the world and in comparison with all other world nations it a drop in an ocean of an extremely hostile anti-Judaic environment wherever you look.

    To claim that there has been a shift in focus of targeted groups away from Jews is pure fantasy period. The reason it appears that way is because the rest of the world just don’t give and honest to G-d damn about what goes on in Africa, we saw that test of this during the Rwandan genocide, and we are seeing it in every islam dominated society in Africa today as islam wipes out all that oppose its tidal wave onslaught. But if one were to look a little closer at each and every islamic invasion or dominance campaign taking place throughout the world you see a very clear and decisive operational plan of resettlement re-education and islamic viral indoctrination for the marketing of this vile product to all from children to adults.

    The only reason that the same type of onslaught is currently not being carried out against Jews is the fact that we are better organized than most and they have lost so many battles against us since the establishment of modern day Israel an alternative became necessary to deal with Jews. There was a time when we used to be able to out market them but through sustained losses against Israel and overall international Jewish solidarity that gave us victory in earlier times, they have learned and adapted to fighting us in the same decisive way. The fact that world Jewry is now so fragmented and disjointed in ideology with one another, it has destroyed our resolve and solidarity and has left the front gates to the kingdom wide open for our natural enemies to enter and destroy all that we have built.

    As for that rising sense or understanding that everlasting peace is a global cause, you are suffering from the Neville Chamberlain syndrome of peace in our time. When islam is done conquering the nations and territories, that no one gives a hoot to fight about or for, they will be coming for the rest. Your descendants will pay the price of your leftist ideology and PC correct feel good politics, your daughters and granddaughters will feel the evil of islam of this you must have no doubt.

    • Mal, I neither think nor have said that you’re right-wing as nothing in your comments suggests that you are. Fascistoid, racist thinking appears across all political spheres (Stalin, for instance, was a left-wing fascist), but I haven’t even referred to you as that but labelled an unspecified number of comments by unspecified commenters such.

      You might not be aware of the history of Islam in Europe and the many different facets there are to it, but suffice it to say that history has shown us that by far the largest number of Jews suffered at the hands of atheist governments, so should we call for a fight against atheists?

  • I know I’m late to the party but Sarke, I just wanted to add my appreciation and gratitude for this brilliant piece.
    I’ve already forwarded this post to friends & family, and I get the feeling it will be widely circulated over the Internet.
    Mazel Tov and Gd bless!

  • Froylein – I do hope that when the time comes to deal with reality that you are as tenacious with an assault rifle as you are here, but I am concerned about your wonderful ability to duck and avoid the difficult questions that have been asked of you by myself and others, you are well versed on historical fact, and you are aptly able to quote ideals and conceptualism in a perfect world, the problem is that is not where we live, so please answerer all the questions that have been asked of you, we have all heard and been publicly told to return to the ovens of Auschwitz and the like or to lands that inherently never belonged to us but for now on this thread we all would like to know where you stand.
    The middle – All that I have learned in life as a Jew proves to me beyond a reasonable doubt that the koran is a book of pure unadulterated evil and was scribed by one that is of greater evil than even Lucifer himself was, as such my understanding is that we are not supposed to share or inhabit the same lands as they that are of such evil, compromise and or diversity of this is without question a modern interpretation of what was G-ds intentions, why else are we warned by the prophets of the final conflicts between these forces and the people of Israel, are our books all wrong or are we now just going to keep putting a leftist spin on it.

  • Its time for the Idealouges to get there heads out of their asses and to see islam for the evil that it is, crush it or it will crush us!

    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    StatsCan: Hate crimes against the Jewish community up 42%, B’nai Brith calls for concerted action

    TORONTO, June 14, 2010 – B’nai Brith Canada has called for intensified action against antisemitism in light of a new Statistics Canada report based on police records that shows a 42% increase in the number of hate crimes directed against the Jewish community over just a one year period (2007-2008). According to the report, hate crimes driven by antisemitism accounted for nearly two-thirds of incidents motivated by religion in 2008.

    “We see once again from the Statistics Canada report that antisemitism is a serious and ongoing problem here in Canada,” said Frank Dimant, Executive Vice President of B’nai Brith Canada. “These statistics support the findings of B’nai Brith Canada’s Audit of Antisemitic Incidents which has drawn attention to this issue through its annual investigation of patterns of prejudice in this country.

  • Mal, answer my question first:
    If the world were as hostile towards Jews as you paint it to be, would you really stand a chance at existing?

  • That would depend on the current anti Semitic climate which tends to swing like a giant pendulum throughout history. Until ten years ago world guilt from the Nazi genocide had managed to keep the ever hungry for blood anti Semitic hounds of hell at bay as the pendulum of guilt was ending its swing arc in our favour. Terrorism was still seen for what it was and was internationally and officially stamped as evil and the state of Israel was commended and respected for its resilience and ability to thwart its enemies from being able to again reign terror down on Jewish heads, you messed with Jews no matter where you were in the world Mossad, JDL, or some like Jewish group would come for you.

    This is no longer the case, islamic terror strategy has changed. It has achieved moral equivalency with leftist ideology. They no longer fear reprisals from us but welcome them as propaganda tools to use against us. They are winning the geopolitical as well as the war of popular opinion, it’s how all past anti Semitic tyrants have always succeeded in bringing about their dreams of a JudinFrey world, one that progressive Jews such as those that lived in Europe and the USA prior to WW11 aided and abetted these evil monsters in gaining power and bringing to fruition the terrible injustices brought against the Jewish nation.

    That pendulum is again swinging out of favour for us, and progressive Jewry is again aiding and abetting the anti Jewish onslaught coming our way, and just as all the times before the progressive and enlightened Jews are going out of their way to convince us compromise is good and all is well in the world, “it could never happen again”. Only this time the enemy is a billion times more in its numbers, its anger, its hatred and its desire to rid this world of the Jew.

    Just as in Rwanda in 1994, a mere sixteen years ago, it has begun, its pace is slowly picking up, but when it brakes free it will be ten times worse than the Nazis, wiki interprets the Talmud as saying “when the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him, And the Redeemer shall come to Zion” I have to believe that our destiny is laid out in prophesy as a warning, G-d will provide us the tools and the means to use them to defend ourselves, but it will be up to us to actually get up and fulfill the word, as before we will be the ones that choose whether to stand by idly doing nothing as was done before in Europe, or whether we fight back this time. The book of Joshua teaches us that G-d will deliver us that victory, but to bring down those walls we will have to march and do our bit.

    You ask me “If the world were as hostile towards Jews as I paint it to be, would we really stand a chance at existing” The answer is yes, if we stand and fight as we should have done in Europe in WW11, I believe that G-d himself will provide us with the Messiah, a redeemer whom will lead us to the fulfillment of all that is promised us.

    • I’m getting ready for work now, but I just wanted to point out that the genocide in Rwanda does in so much not compare to the Holocaust as that the target of the killings were (assumed) members of the suppressive, officially upper class. (The German federal state I live in is a sister state of Rwanda’s, so naturally, Rwanda appears on the curricula here and most schools and various public services run projects in support of the people in Rwanda).

      I still believe it’s counter-productive to paint all non-Jews with one, broad brush as it happened on this thread. That was rather insulting to individual non-Jewish commenters, who came to leave their message of support. In addition to that, it’s bad manners. I still believe that the world Jewry is in a much safer place now than it used to be up to the 1970s. The greatest risk is that the demagogues on either side will gain popularity.

      Also, please don’t believe the myth that Jews were standing idly by in Europe during WW2. As a matter of fact, the largest share of resistance fighters was Jewish. This is well-documtented; a nice, comprehensive introduction on the topic I’d suggest to read is Zum Kampf auf Leben und Tod. Das Buch vom Widerstand der Juden 1933-1945. by Arno Lustiger.

  • while I agree that it is counterproductive and insulting to paint all non-Jews with the same brush, I’m not so sure the same can be said for Muslims…not that all Muslims want to destroy us (some may only want to kill us a little), but the more moderate Muslims have nullified their existence by being silent and coercive.

    As a reference I’ll enclose an explanation by a Holocaust survivor from a book by Dr. Emanuel Tanay, who is himself a Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist.

    “A Holocaust Survivor’s View on Islam
    A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II, owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. ‘Very few people were true Nazis,’ he said, ‘but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories.’

    We are told again and again by ‘experts’ and ‘talking heads’ that Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.

    The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history. It is the fanatics who march… It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor-kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to become suicide bombers.

    The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the ‘silent majority,’ is cowed and extraneous.

    Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant. China’s huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.

    The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.

    And who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were ‘peace loving’?

    History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points:

    Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.

    Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don’t speak up, because like my friend from Germany , they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.

    Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold, we must pay attention to the only group that counts — the fanatics who threaten our way of life.

    Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world-wide, read this and think about it, and send it on – before it’s too late.”

    Interpret this as you will…I happen to think the message is relatively self explanatory.
    Also I agree with Mal’s pendulum theory, and (as I began to peruse through one of themiddle’s articles) I also see one of the problems being assimilation and detachment from Judaism as the cause for Jewish anti-Semitism…liberal views don’t help much either.

    I have a very good friend who is a left-wing self proclaimed socialist. He is anti violation of human rights, and yet he says that under no circumstances (even in self defense) should a human being endanger the rights of other human beings. As a good example, he’s against blockades as a whole, whether or not the justification for said blockades is credible.

    In other words, in his opinion Israel should let up on its blockade of Gaza despite the fact that this would result in several thousand [more] rockets being able to be smuggled into Gaza and, in turn, launched at Israel, namely its defenseless civilians.
    May I ask you, if the true value to be upheld here is human rights, does this not seem a little contradictory?

    When confronted about his beliefs in a heated debate last year (during a Poli-Sci class nonetheless, my friend admitted that his beliefs all stemmed from an ideal society. When further questioned he claimed the the world in which we live is far from ideal, but we should still act as though the world was ideal in the hopes that our light would influence all others to behave like civilized human beings.

    To me, and maybe I’m wrong once again, this seems like a sure path towards suicide and self-destruction for the Jewish people. That said, were we to be living in an ideal world, I’d completely agree with my self proclaimed socialist friend.

    Acknowledging that we are not living in an ideal world is one thing. Doing something about it is quite another, and Political Correctness is not helping either…

    Standing around doing nothing never helped, and certainly giving aid to our enemies is, indeed, commendable beyond a shadow of a doubt (and yet despite all the aid given to Gaza by Israel the world still manages to find fault with us), but enough is enough. When Iraq was going to go nuclear Israel launched a surprise attack and destroyed the facilities. At the time, the world really didn’t like that, but eventually they came around.

    Now Iran is on the verge of going nuclear, but Israel is too tied up in ‘red tape’ and ‘political correctness’ to be able to do anything about it…

    Anyways I think I’ve rambled enough. The bottom line I’m trying to get across here is that the world is not ideal, live with it and be prepared to adapt your lifestyle or prepare for extermination, and even if a majority of the people don’t want to utterly destroy you, they become irrelevant if they don’t do anything about it. Do you think the Allies asked each Nazi they confronted whether or not they actually had a vendetta against the Jews or were just following orders? I think not!

  • I have stayed out of this discussion, mostly because I’ve been busy fielding comments on my own blog, which have taken the shape of a summer course in the rhetorical folk history of the Middle East; because I am still looking for my Chicago Manual of Style, which may actually be the thing propping up my desk on one side, and as such, is at least the basis for something; and also because this monstrous page no longer loads on my main laptop (IE8 / 128-bit…FYI, CK.)

    However, I have been lurking. A substantive post on the many assorted and highly flavored opinions in any fresh pack of Jews is in the works. In the meantime, let me say that if the opinions here were arranged in a row, and were I to jump in, I’d probably land in the middle. Not ON themiddle, though, because that might hurt him, and also, be kind of awkward.

    I chose to pop into the discussion right here because I love what Jeremy wrote about the silent majority – especially in the Muslim world – finally being asked to take some responsibility.

    Indeed, the opinions here show that the majority of Jews are forever internally investigating where they can change themselves and their world; this extends to Israel on a national, policy level as well. We feel, as a whole, responsible and accountable and confident in our ability to change and grow. I see no reason why this type of soul-searching should not be a universal standard for all people. Let’s begin with equality there – in what we demand of people – and not only in what we feel we must give them. I feel like the conversation needs to change in that direction.

  • Sarke,

    Thanks for your article. You are right that the discussion has to change and those who attack us have to bear responsibility.

    The unfortunate issue that we have with certain commenters is the doubt they are casting on the veracity of what you wrote – but without being specific.

    I always find that troubling.

    • Yosef, I’ve given the specifics as well as reputable sources. Now I suggest you grab a few books of the list and do some reading. I always find it troubling when newbie-commenters try to tell any of us what the blog should be about. I find it even more troubling when assumptions are elevated to facts.

  • themiddle,

    You suggest mandatory national service for the Arab minority. Problem is that they refuse to and Israel nw has no juristiction over those in the territories since they gave them autonomy. Those in the ‘green line’ cannot be forced.

    You make it as if Israel does not try and has not tried to do this in the past. The reason that Israel does not allow Arabs in the army is because they want Isreal destroyed and would use arms against Jews. They don’t trust them.

    Are you suggesting that what I just said is wrong and that they would do national service and/or that the Arab minority (quite a large minority now) does not want Israel to cease from being a Jewish state?

    If you feel that way I will endeavor to bring you strong evidence to what I am saying and much of what others have said.

  • Froylein,

    Aha…

    Don’t give bibliographies and and say ‘read books’ so then us ‘dummies’ will ‘figure it out’.

    If you have an answer then explain it in simple terms – just as themiddle did in his last post. Now I can respond point to point on what he wrote and maybe we can get somewhere.
    Figure out how to be concise and to the point.

    I’ll answer your question simply:
    By Arab I mean anyone living in Israel who desires Israel to cease as a Jewish State.
    At this point it is the Arabs mainly Muslim who are asking for that. It it be others then it includes them too.

    Now again for my question:

    What SHOULD Israel do about a 5th column Arab population sworn to destroy Israel?

    (At this point I am not holding my breath for a concise and to the point response.)

    • At this point, I can hardly take you serious anymore if you downright refuse to learn (i.e. from reputable sources) about Jewish history. I’ve pointed out two issues extremely briefly, yet you didn’t address them.

      So, if I understand your definition of “Arab” correctly, it’s neither about ethnicity, provenance nor religion but merely a political category (and also includes a large share of Chasidim). Here’s my concise reply, if guerilla forces engage in violent acts against a democratic state – be it its civilians or its military -, that state should reserve the right for itself to respond within what international law provides, which can go as far as execution without trial. A state’s responsibility in first line is to take care of its citizens.
      Now, if you’re talking about spreading inciting propaganda, there are certain measures that can be taken (which states like Germany also take BTW) ranging from restraining orders to a loss / limitation of civil rights, imprisonment and (not in Germany because of the NS-past but in other states) expatriation. All of this provided though that all walks and groups within society are granted the same level and possibilities of political participation.
      Civil servants over here, BTW, can lose their tenure positions, pension and social benefits if they spread views that are not constitutional. To enforce that, you need to take an oath on the constitution as soon as you get into civil service (I already did that way back when I was made the assistant of one of my profs).

    • I dunno Yosef. I was recently in the village of Abu Gosh near Jerusalem and the Arab Israelis there sure don’t seem to have a problem with the existence of the State of Israel. The same can be said for the many Bedouins and Druze who send their kids to fight in the IDF. Assuming someone is sworn to destroy Israel by mere dint of their ethnicity is a tad prejudicial don’t you think? I mean I know Jews who are opposed to the State as well – for instance Haredim who refuse to support the country and don’t celebrate Israel Independence Day and don’t stand still on Yom Hashoah etc. They’ll tell you straight up that they are anti-Zionist. If you find yourself in certain parts of Meah Shearim with a knitted kippah or a flag of Israel sown onto your backpack, you face the risk of getting assaulted. Similarly there are extreme right-wing Jews who are opposed to territorial compromise of any kind with the Palestinians and consider any government that would do so (basically every government in the past 10 years) as traitorous and worthy of being overthrown. So what about those 5th columns? Finally, my entire family speaks Arabic. We listen to Arabic music, eat Arabic food, wear traditional Arabic costumes – in short, we’re Arabs any way you dice it. Your view of ethnicity is as simple minded as your perception of our society here.

      Simple minded? Yes – for I can perceive your notion of 5th columnists and how to deal with them as dangerously undemocratic and thus a threat to the continued viability of the State of Israel. If implemented, your views will inevitably require the destruction of the State of Israel as it currently exists. By your rationale, I ought to come to your house and send you and your family packing.

      See what i mean bucko?

  • Froylein – At no point have I broad brushed non Jews as anti Semitic at all, I have no fight with Arab Israelis, Bedouins and Druze. I am however focused on a particular threat to the Jewish people coming from the mohammedans, but I am also well aware that they have far reaching liberal support from far and wide that is influencing the depth and determination of their anti Semitic cause. I am also very cognizant of the WW 11 resistance as I had family who were members of the WW11 resistance, I have family that fought in both the war of independence and the Six day war, none of the survivors believe in your ideology, none of them would give up a single inch of gained territory or political philosophy in favor of islam or any other of the leftist causes.

    Not a single one had even the remotest of left wing ideology, all they ever say is thank G-d they were able to fight back and do some damage. Don’t for a moment begin to think you know what it’s like to face down an enemy combatant on a battlefield that just despises who you are for what he perceives you to be.

    Jews owe this world and its people nothing, not a single grain of dirt, not a single drop of water and not a single ounce of remorse. For thousands of years we have been the contention of every vile “civilization” that has come to power on this planet. We have been fed to loins, we have been murdered, disemboweled, shot gassed and burned in ovens by the millions, and we owe nobody anything, not even an explanation for what we do. Even the most basic of creationism’s life forms fights to the death for survival, why are our rights denied.

    It bothers me what the mohammedans do but it bothers me much more what the collaborators do, people who champion their cause bother me a great deal more. We so easily vilify the Nazis for their atrocities against the Jews and mankind, but it was the enablers before the war who are to blame for not stopping them before it got to that point, it was the enablers whom allowed themselves to be herded first into ghettos and then into cattle cars that allowed the atrocity to fully develop, it’s the enlightened and leadership of their time who did nothing and refused to even lift a finger to help themselves that hold a huge responsibility in the holocaust, the nazi’s may have been the architects but the enables allowed them to flourish, it’s that same act of enabling that is taking place today.

    At this point your slant against everyone that does not agree with you personal concept and responsibility of the way Jewish life should be and on how we need to conduct ourselves is heavily biased in favor of our enemies. To this point other than trying to weasel out of answers to questions put to you, you do nothing but reference further revisionist articles on Jewish history that do nothing but negate all responsibility from Israel or Jewish detractors.

    This is bothering me greatly and I am beginning to draw the conclusion that there is a strong possibility you are not Jewish, that your only interest is anti Israel talking points, and that you are here gauging the temperament of bloggers. I asked you earlier the four most important questions facing Israel and the Jewish people today and you simply don’t have the balls to answer them. You are either a coward or a liar but either way if you will not answer those four basic questions then the rest of your point of view becomes mute.

    Jeremy – A brilliant piece, it is the most accurate depiction of truth on this blog and should purely on its merits, be the lead of a new blog discussion.

  • Froylein – RE: your “at this point “ response to Yosef

    This is exactly what is wrong with the world today, way too much state and not near enough true free choice. You stated earlier that you are not a left wing nut job and yet this response is a 100% Statist and is pretty much out of the Che / Castro handbook of how to control the population.

    It poses limits on freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and no state or country must ever have the right to carry out summary executions of any one. Every part of this is a violation of humanities G-d given rights to life and free choice. I want to hear the subversives speak out, I want to hear the racist rants, in this way I will know who these scum bags are. The left have become way to dependant on state control of all aspects of life, the philosophy of big brother know what is best for you.

    A states responsibility is to serve the people and nothing more, not rule them, not limit their freedoms, not to be the guardians of moral authority or standards, not to regulate the flow and movement of people, not to control and manipulate the education of people, and never under any circumstances to socially engineer the thinking of anyone. Anything other than service to the people is pure oppression even in its mildest forms.

    As for modern forms of democracy it is the most unfair manipulation of statist ideology in existence, it’s the epitome of the patients running the sanatorium.
    The leftist ruling classes love nothing better than to mobilize and control the largely ignorant moronic masses to maintain control of the flow of finance and redistribution of wealth, it’s a policy that violates the diligence of enterprise and entrepreneurship and it creates a culture of mediocrity and negates personal responsibility. It’s the reason Africa is in the state it is in today, it’s the reason Venezuela and Cuba are the domestic shitholes that they are, it’s the reason Greece is bankrupt and Europe will soon follow. It’s the reason the Whitehouse is now the outhouse.

    Democracy is the biggest left wing mind fuck ever created. Democracy is why innocent soldiers die while the assassination of their political assholes leadership is a crime, democracy is the biggest violation of human rights ever devised, and it’s the Saul Alinsky version on how to socially engineer and screw up a nation. Its socialism in its purest form and it does not and never will work.

    It is Judaism’s most catastrophic invention and is responsible for more loss of life out of the barrel of a Kalashnikov 47 than any other cause ever; it makes the holocaust look like a Sunday school picnic in comparison.

    • Mal, I’m not quite sure how you read all of that into my reply, but a few things:

      I haven’t told anybody on this thread how Jewish life should be. I merely stated that certain assumptions about Jewish history reiterated on here are plainly not true. If somebody told me over and over again that they rode to work on a pink elephant every day and I could verify that wasn’t the case (which in the case of Jewish history is done by referring to quality reference works), and I asked that person to take a look at what their bottom is seated on on their way to work, and said person refused to do so, I don’t think any exchange on that matter is going anywhere.

      Random executions are not limited to left-wing dictatorships but have taken place across the board in pretty much all fascist societies (“fascist” literally refers to taking the liberty to randomly decide on another person’s life or death). Still, I’m not quite sure what you were talking about here. International law provides for certain treatments of guerilla, i.e. terrorists and terrorist supporters; all I stated is that Israel should be given the same options other states also reserve for themselves. If somebody claims repeatedly and openly that the state of Israel shouldn’t exist and demand it must be destroyed, I don’t see why those people should enjoy social benefits paid for with the taxes of those they aim to destroy.

      Please be aware that a person’s freedom ends at the point it invades the comfort zone of another person. That’s why democratic states also establish and enforce rules, to preserve their people’s comfort zones within which they enjoy a lot of liberties. If those rules are not established and enforced, chaos wil inevitably ensue; socio-political chaos, or anarchy if you wish, has so far always paved the way for tyrannies. The people is the sovereign in a democracy; it doesn’t get more liberal than that.

      Democracy is a Greek invention. Democracy has always been the state form in which societies as a whole could flourish in many ways. You claim it makes for mediocrity, but please consider that every monarchy up to WW2 and every dictatorship so far have not exactly been the breeding ground of excellence for the masses – those that excelled commonly belonged to a tiny splinter group of society considered up class. Democracy is as libertarian as it gets as it ensures that theoretically, everyone will get the same chances at excelling (whether they do or not is a different matter altogether). Mediocrity happens when “chance” is confused with “entitlement”.

      The reason why most developing countries are in the state they are today is that imperialism and colonialism first bled them dry and then left them in a state of chaos, which, as pointed out above, is a breeding ground for dictatorships.

      Greece is bankrupt, because it a) overspent, and b) received huge credits off the books from an American bank and kept spending. However, most states of the Euro-zone abide by the strict “quality standards” required, so there’s no prospect of Europe going down anytime soon. Little do most people know that it’s state regulations in the US, namely safe-trade zones and the artificial limiting of inflation by restricting the circulation of cash that currently aim to save the country from an economic disaster. Whether this’ll work or not remains to be seen, but this just to point out that state intervention in society happens all over, even in presumably more liberitarian societies.

      Also, please note that it’s “Muslims”, not “Mohammedans”. Jews wouldn’t rightfully be called “worshippers of Ezekiel (or any other prophet)” either.

      Do Jews owe this world? Hmmm, yes, that’s theologically what being “the chosen people” is all about. Many understand this to connote “the entitled people”, but if you look at Exodus and the conditions to which settlement in “the Promised Land” are tied and the understanding that Jews should be “a light onto the nations”, it quickly becomes clear that theologically, Jews are meant to owe a lot to this world. That does not mean that the rights for and of Jews should be limited in any way, mind you, but it is apparent that from its early days on, Judaism has had an understanding of its responsibilities towards creation as a whole.

      Also, I’ve answered the question directed at me by Yosef and asked you (the generic you) to do the same. I haven’t weaseld out of anything. Anything you need to know has sufficiently been addressed in my replies. If you don’t like my replies, fine, your choice, but your replies keep containing insinuations of what I said and what I am, which either are not true or which you can know nothing about.

      And please don’t give me that you’re-not-Jewish-if-you-don’t-feel-like-I-do nonsense; if you wish to belong to a religious group that forces people into line, may I suggest one of the cults that have emerged more recently?
      As far as I can tell from the lack of reference to it, there’s little interest on this thread to try to match Israeli / Jewish policies with Jewish theology or at least conduct a discussion in that light. The only real reference to religion in any way so far that resulted in any exchange has been that one line by Hillel, which you took out of context and provided a specific version of, and I put it back into context and demonstrated by showing different versions that the bulk of interprative translations had a decidedly different undertone to them than what you had concluded from the version you chose.
      I’ve tried to include a theological aspect in this comment a few paragraphs above. I hope taking a more wholistic approach than handpicking lines from instructive / prophetic religious sources and trying to read something into them that is not in there is something people can relate to. If it take a brick out of a wall and throw it at somebody or use it as a paperweight, that does not change its original purpose of being part of a wall. To elaborate on the image, Exodus says, “If you take these specific materials and build a wall, it’ll last.” Sages like Hillel elaborated on that by saying, “If we do proper maintenance and also make see to that the statics of the wall are kept intact, it’ll last even if other people start building around it.” Now, if you take just one or three or a dozen bricks out of the wall to use in different ways than originally meant, the wall becomes instable.
      If you try to argue based on religion, you cannot be cherry-picking. With a religion as rich in interpretation and commentary as Judaism, it is important to consider the “hierarchy of mandatoriness”, so to speak, which puts the Torah above the scriptures, the commentaries, the teachings, and the customs.

      The articles and books I referenced on Jewish history are not revisionist by any means. Several of them are standard works compiled by some of the big names in Jewish historical research that you likely had come across at some point had you entertained yourself with the study of Jewish history (popular history / folklore as well). Please refrain from making such as allegations as you did. If you don’t know some of the biggest names in Jewish historical research (most of the authors are Jewish BTW) and history writing, don’t go about and call their highly substantial and well-researched works revisionist. I’m not familiar with many aspects of physics but that doesn’t qualify me either to label the likes of Hawking or Newton scientific quacks.

  • A damn good article. Sassy and articulate!

    The only comment I would make is that in his book “Saving Israel: How the Jews Can Win a War that May Never End” Daniel Gordis makes the observation that the “evacuation of Gaza” could also be referred to as a “population transfer” which is advantageous as it builds the rhetorical linkage between the Jews leaving Palestinian lands and potential Palestinians leaving Jewish lands. The high birthrate of Arab-Israelis may pose a future threat to the state’s Jewish majority.

    Otherwise brilliant.

  • CK,

    I don’t know what you mean – so you wear Arab garb enjoy.

    Its not by “dint of their ethnicity” I see you build a straw man and blow it down. Its by dint of their actions. See below and quit this nonsense of your visiting Abu Gosh – below I give the ‘moderate’ PA words.

  • froylein,

    “Reputable sources” ?? 🙂 Below I give the most reputable sources you can find the Arabs themselves.

    See below in another post to you and ck.

    I refer to action of violence and the fact that they will advocate for and vote to change Israel from a Jewish state and cahnge the Hitikvah and make Israel Judenrein as they have done and demand be done in all areas under Arab dominion.

    ‘political category’ did I say that? Again leftists build straw men and then attack it.

    • If your definition of Arab isn’t political, then what is it? And I haven’t attacked anything. What I did was paraphrasing what I understood you meant to say to see if you agree. Your definition of “Arab” was a political one, a category Neturei Karta would fall into as well.

      And you, also, have got no indications as to what my political leanings are. You’d be hard-pressed to find sentiments by me that you won’t find among any party of the centre political sphere (not among the far-wing right or left though).

      And yes, there is such a thing as reputable sources. I know the sources you listed and I don’t doubt them. The sources I listed were in reference to a wrong notion (more than one actually) on Medieval European Jewry.

  • Molly,

    You are very right – the very real threat posed to Israel as a Jewish state by Arab-Israelis must be dealt with.

    • Yosef, you have proven nothing. ck and I have posted numerous times about the intentions of the Palestinians, their charters, their propensity to enjoy the Protocols and Mein Kampf, etc. So what? This has nothing to do with your wish to physically remove Israeli citizens who are Arab non-Jews from their homes and from Israel entirely by pushing them out. ck has already schooled you about the mistake you are making regarding basing your bias on ethnicity and I have explained to you that before you talk about a people as the enemy, you could at least try to integrate them (your lame excuse, that they don’t want to is a joke since a government can make laws, just as they conscript plenty of soldiers who would rather not spend 3 years of their lives in the army) or find other ways of making peace. You could, at least, make a proposal like Lieberman’s, where at least he doesn’t evict them from their homes, just cuts a parcel of land and attaches it to the new Palestinian state. That is challenging enough to accept, but you are talking about ethnic cleansing.

  • To all those following the discussion:

    Here are some nice links and facts:


    http://www.jewishactivistnetwork.dreamhosters.com/#facts_enemies

    There are links with direct articles and with clarity point by point.

    -Mufti of Jerusalem with Hitler in the 1940’s and before

    -Arafat a Nazi sympathizer

    -Picture of today’s ‘Palestinian’ salute click

    -Abbas, the ‘moderate’ PA leader is a holocaust denier

    -Mein Kampf – a best seller in the Arab territories click

    -Israel does not exist on PA maps

    -Palestinian Authority’s current charter, adopted in 1968, states: The term ‘Palestinian’ is a temporary facade and a means to an end. They are in reality part of the ‘Arab Nation’ [Articles 12-15].

    -Israel must be destroyed and replaced with an Arab state [Articles 21-23].

    -Arabs left Israel in 1948 at the request of their Arab brethren in order to allow the invading armies to attack Israel

    Notice the difference between the historical facts I and others present vs the rhetoric devoid of facts by the leftist liberal commenters who chastise us for not having ‘reputable sources’ – in the meantime i have given those and they have talked up a storm with no substance presented.

  • oh, regarding the line “treat others as you would like to be treated yourself” (or, going back to Kedoshim from which this line is taken, “love your neighbor like yourself”), I’d like to do a little mathematical inversion if I might.

    Given: One must treat others in a manner that they themselves would like to be treated.
    Question: Is turnabout fair play?

    Solution: If all people are supposed to treat other people in a manner that they would like to be treated, then it ought to be perfectly acceptable to treat that person in the same way s/he treats you. Ergo, if person A launches a rocket at person B, it can be implied by the given statement that person A is treating person B in the manner that person A would like to be treated. Thus person B can launch a rocket at person B…

    Inversion: It is permissible to treat others as they treat you.

    Conclusion: Turnabout is indeed fair play

    …whew that’s a lotta math.

    • Jeremy, the problem is the gauge. “An eye for an eye”, means “the punishment shouldn’t be more severe than the crime”. Israel frequently gets accused of “disproportionate” responses, but nobody on the world stage ever says what a proportionate response would be as the often-suggested alternative option appears to be negatively disproportionate.

  • Froylein – And I have absolutely no idea what prevented you from understanding the simplicity of what I said that led to your great rambling drivel, I had thought of going into your response in detail but have come to realize that it would be a pointless and redundant cause. From being a historian and geo political scientist to world economics wizard you just simply have all the answers and can’t go wrong, you are the ultimate rabonim who has all of life’s solutions, with people like you around I just simply can’t understand why we aren’t the most admired and endeared nation on the planet, but then again as I have come to the conclusion that you are without a doubt the most pigheaded, self indulgent, arrogant and disingenuous twat I have ever interacted with that I might not be alone with this thought.

    I have only one question left, When do you walk on water?

    • Mal, I’ve never claimed I can’t go wrong. I’ve also never insisted on that people must not disagree with me.

      Your (hardly coherent) comments contained untrue bits of information and accusations that I felt right to respond to. If telling the truth and backing my opinion and resisting downright lies makes me the most pigheaded, self indulgent, arrogant and disingenuous twat [you] have ever interacted with, I’m ok with that. At least you’ve shown sufficiently that you’re a potty-mouthed person to who honesty and facts don’t matter. Bravo. You’ve done yourself a great favour. Now don’t blame me for catching you lying.

  • Jeremy you are a breath of fresh air, but should it not be that as we are first and foremost morally bound to preserve Jewish lives that:

    a) preemptive strikes are perfectly and morally legitimate and acceptable to prevent an attack on home soil

    b) and that in the event of an attack on home soil and the need for retaliatory strikes arises, these strikes should be effective enough so as to permanently eliminate any future threat.

    With this in mind and as all super powers collect as a deterrent nuclear muscles with which to protect the citizenry that the theory of disproportionate response is nothing more than an islamic and international whipping stick to limit Israels right of retaliation.

    No country other than Israel is subjected to these hypocritical rules. It may at this point be better for Israel to declare its nuclear arsenal and to begin to use it as a warning of what lengths will be gone to to protect the state, I believe with oddball in the white-house they may soon be forced to anyway.

  • Froylein, if you think about it though, “an eye for an eye” is the ideal governing system. It may not be the most ‘enlightened’ system, but it certainly required everyone to take responsibilities for their actions.
    In my opinion, people would be a lot less likely to kill someone if they knew that the punishment was to be killed themselves. Letting people off with anything less is like justifying or belittling their crime.

    As for the whole gauge system, that’s just international bullshit used to pick on Israel. “Disproportionate responses” cannot occur if for every 1 rocket launched at Israel, Israel launches 1 rocket at the organization responsible. Thus in its purist form, “an eye for an eye” neither makes the world go blind, nor causes so-called “disproportionate responses”

  • Mal, I agree that the current situation causes the effects you were describing, and that is perfectly justifiable in this instance. (This is another instance of reacting to living in a realistic world as opposed to an ideal one).

    That said, taking a lesson from history, the only reason the Cold War didn’t get ‘Hot’ was because everyone was afraid of retaliation, i.e. if the USSR launched nukes, the USA would launch nukes and vice versa. This is a clear demonstration of how effective the “eye for an eye” system would actually be.

  • Agreed but a declared nuclear arsenal would be a strong deterrent against any further precursory attacks, as long as there is an element of doubt they will continue to provoke. At this juncture I have grave concerns about the huge armaments build up an all three Israeli fronts, knowing Hezbollah’s and Hamas’s history and the proven treachery of the Syrians, this is becoming a very alarming situation with a very real probability of a major conflict braking out this summer.

  • The slight issue with that is international backlash, but that’s mainly just more of the “disproportionate response” bullshit anyways.

    Another potential problem is that nuking Gaza or Lebanon or Syria would have fallout issues in Israel, so the smarter fanatics (if such a thing actually exists) would realize it to be a) a bluff, or b) a double bladed sword that would still help them achieve their goal.
    Remember a lot of these fanatics don’t care about death, hence the suicide bombers. All they care about is their so-called jihad and the glory of Allah (not to mention the 70 virgins they allegedly get in heaven). Thus, if Israel were to nuke Gaza, and the fallout killed people in Israel, the remaining fanatics would call the Gazans martyrs and rally even harder against Israel in the process…at least that’s how I’m fairly sure these things work.

  • themiddle,

    You wrote “a government can make laws, just as they conscript plenty of soldiers who would rather not spend 3 years of their lives in the army”

    Is Israel supposed to act like the Soviet Union and force parents to teach their children an ideology (in Russia it was Atheism)?! 🙂 Send them to Siberia otherwise?

    They WON’T GO! Just as they can’t force some Hareidim to go – you can’t FORCE people to go against their convictions.

    This is the problem with many leftists. You guys live in a make believe world where you think you can “train” people to believe what you believe!

    How silly.

    • Yosef, I’m not a leftist or a rightist. I’m a pragmatic realist and a centrist. You are an extremist. Israel should force the Haredim and the Arabs to do national service. Period.

  • It is indeed amusing how the focal points of the current world situation are skewed and veiled by irrelevant obscurities. The topic, of this thread, and the article above, has been lost completely. So before the talking head can again spew its redefined all is fine and safe with the world ideology lets recap.

    The simple facts as they stand display a rise in anti-Semitism not seen since 1933. Is it all Arab wahabism ideology, is it all of islamic fundamentalism, probably not. But are these catastrophic problems facing not only the Jewish people but the world at large, let’s look at the math. If 10% of Arabs/islam shares the sentiment of Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, it gives the Jewish people over 150 million enemies in the world. During the reign of Nazi fascism there weren’t even 100 million Germans during World War 11, there weren’t even 5 million nazis yet we know how well they managed to orchestrate and carry out their extermination plans. A nation does not need the whole world against them to face an existential threat. There were Germans who had no beef with the Jews, and Germans who covertly assisted Jews to escape death. Yet more than 6 million Jews died due to the will of but a single mind that managed to convince and indoctrinate more than half a nation, 150 million is no small threat, are there 150 million? Without a doubt the math will bear it out.

    I agree with the author in that our historical and G-d given rights to the Land of Israel are neither respected nor considered today. But there is a beauty herein in that we can rely on basic definitions of right and wrong when we defend our land and our people, even without reference to our rights to the land. Liberals believe that it is somehow offensive to speak the language of right and wrong but fail to learn the lessons of the history they love to spout and that is that appeasement only makes the aggressor a lot more aggressive.

    It is a simple assertion, that while not all Arabs and Christians are anti-Semitic, of the people in power, who have the ability to harm Israel, are lot of them are indeed anti-Semites. While it is beautiful and comforting to hear support for Israel, and to meet people who have the intelligence to see and seek out the truth, it is the opponents and enemies of Israel who we have to focus on, because they have the tremendous power to harm us. The people who love us are not in a position to protect us. Obama himself is if not an open anti-Semite and a hater of American capitalist values, he is indeed one of our greatest and most dangerous enemies and threats. Not only to us as Israel and Jews, but us as Westerners who love freedom and democracy, whether Jewish or Christian.

    To say that Obama, the Arab League and the UN Security Council are fascist dictators is grossly politically incorrect. But it is such because it is true. By the talking heads own definition Obama obliterates and determines who lives and dies with his drone program, the very same drone program he wishes to introduce into American Air space as a deterrent to domestic terror. The truth is calling this unholy trinity fascists upsets all those opposed to it. So they seek to crush all its opponents and distorted its reality.

    The very real and existential threat against Israel and the Jews is as grave as it was in 1933 and centuries before. Every statement released by the above mentioned fascists always begins with “Israel has the right to defend itself”, but when Israel actually exercises that right, she is condemned. At this point in time a pre-emptive strike against Iran is Israel’s only recourse to prevent them from going nuclear. Yet when she does so, the world will cry foul and will decry Israel’s action as evil and disproportioned.

    The aberrantly double standards set by current world leaders shoes the anti Israel/Jewish bias as, as the South Africa leaders recalled its ambassador to Israel following the Flotilla raid. South Africa’s neighbors, Zimbabwe and the Congo are lead by cold-blooded murderers, yet South Africa and the rest of the world remain silent. If Flotillas were approaching U.S. waters, they would be sunk after unheeded warnings. How many Americans and Europeans have to die at the hands of terrorists before Israel will be justified in defending itself against the imminent threat of destruction? How many have to die before the threat of the Arab/islam world is taken seriously? Arabs/islam don’t want to live side by side with Jews or Christians. They want to destroy America and Israel, and reign in a world ruled and dictated by Muslim ideology.

    Contrary to what the world leaders and progressive groups want us to believe, the world is not filled with loving people who have a soft and warm creamy centre. The enemies we face are real murderers and killers. They are evil and toxic. Israel cannot afford to negotiate with its neighbours and regional foes. Israel, now more than ever, needs to take decisive action to ensure its survival. It is regretful that Israel did not do so before the current Obama administration, but Israel is now hopefully learning that she is neither answerable to or can bank on Obama or any of his gangland buddies.
    Israel must do whatever she needs to do to ensure her survival. The West and Israel need to use the upper hand they have at present to defeat the scourge of Islam, before Muslims are too great in numbers in Western countries.

    When G-d destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah he extended Abraham the opportunity to find only ten genuinely good men, one Jewish quorum was all that was required to have saved the people of those cities, his failure to find them led to their total and absolute annihilation. By the standards set forth by the international community that would be considered a disproportionate response, but G-d had looked far into the future and had seen the damage and horror their continued existence would create and acted accordingly, he necessarily destroyed the evil. Through this lesson, should not the leaders of Israel determine the future cost of continued violence and terror from Gaza and the remainder of the middle east when calculating proportioned response, does not a preemptive position also qualify as proportionate response, Hezbollah is sitting on over 20 thousand rockets that have only one purpose, do Israel not have the right to eliminate such a threat with extreme prejudice, will any other free nation tolerate willingly its neighbor pointing thousands upon thousands of war heads and rockets at its civilian population, only countries where the dirty little Whitehouse sticks its nose into have to live by these standards, could you even find a quorum in Gaza that will support the existence of the state of Israel?

  • Mal, at this point I’m not even sure that a quorum of Gazan peoples that support the existence of Israel would be enough.
    As the article I posted earlier stated, what good is an opinion if you’re not going to vocalize it, and if somebody is brave enough to vocalize it, that person is shunned by the public (whether or not they agree with him) and executed by Hamas…

    Also, your math appears to be flawless and the conclusions thereof seem solid enough to me.

    As I posted earlier, the world condemned Israel for her preemptive strike on Iraq, but later came to realize that Israel was correct in her actions after all, but that was about 20 years ago. Nowadays, if Israel were to attack Iran, the world would not only shun Israel, but would probably inflict some kind of ‘disproportionate’ penalty on Israel as well.

    However, what everything all boils down to is this, everybody is too f***ing busy playing the ‘blame game’ to actually get anything done. The left blames the right, the right blames the left, name calling ensues, etc. Basically what’s been happening here…

    Enough!

    If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the [almost] 20 years I’ve been alive it’s that whatever your connection to the Jewish faith, you are a Jew. Orthodox, Conservative, Reformed, secular, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, Lebuvitch, etc. are just labels to try to divide us. I know there’s the old saying “two Jews, three opinions,” but honestly, if we could look beyond our differences we’d be able to fight our adversaries more effectively.

    Did the Nazis ask if you believed you were Jewish or not? No.

    Do the Arabs care whether the Jews they slaughter are ‘progressive’ or ‘conservative’? No.

    We can settle our differences later when we’re not in dire danger. In the meantime, let’s focus our attention on dealing with our true enemies. United we could put our combined brain power to good used finding solutions to Israel’s problems, political and social. Divided we will bicker and bicker until we are destroyed.

  • I am 54 years into wondering what more we Jews could possibly contribute to society to be accepted as humans. Thank you for your direct, sarcastic presentation…supported by facts. If anyone actually CARED about facts, we could all move forward.

  • There is no more that we can do, it has become purely a numbers game, 2 billion to 13.5 million the odds are not in our favor, its like watching dandelions take over the lawns, without the proper control methods are applied the infestation can’t be stopped and where there is no will there is no way. We are getting screwed into oblivion by the biggest con ever imagined.

  • themiddle, as the great Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook put it, some Jews are needed to study and some Jews are needed to fight. A balance of both is necessary in order for the Jewish peoples to survive. (Obviously I’m paraphrasing, but it gets the point across.)

    As for forcing the Arabs to do national service…I agree with Yosef that they won’t go, and I also think that would be a bad idea. I imagine that mass mutiny would occur as soon as the first conflict with an Arab nation were to occur. (It’s also never a good idea to have soldiers who really don’t give a damn about the country they’re supposedly fighting for, let alone soldiers who believe the country they’re fighting for doesn’t exist and should be destroyed…)

  • PLEASE FORWARD TO HELEN THOMAS:

    Say, Helen, now that you have some time on your hands, you could use a little something to do, right? There’s a great program you should attend at Appalachian State University (Boone, NC)starting July 18, 2010. It’s the 9th Annual Holocaust Symposium. After spending decades supposedly reporting the facts, it’s time you learned them.

    Click on the link: http://www.news.appstate.edu/2010/05/21/9th-annual-rosen-summer-symposium-%E2%80%9Cremembering-the-holocaust%E2%80%9D-begins-july-18/

  • well said. no – really, really frickin’ WELL SAID!!! keep up the good work…

    • Jeremy, I’ll blame your youth for not knowing that what you suggested wasn’t working in Northern Ireland for centuries, hence the eventually peaceful approach.

  • There can not and never will be peace in Israel, the only way hostilities will ever cease in the Middle east, is when Israel no longer exists, that is and will be due to the cowardly liberals having surrendered the land and Jerusalem to the mohammadan barbarians, to achieve “peace in our time” at which point humanity will cease to exist, as the barbarian mohammadans will then turn their attentions on conquering the remainder of what is left of the free world and relegate the planet back to the sixth century.

    Please note, and as I strongly disagree with the talking head, I refer to the mohammadans as barbarians as I do not believe or accept for even a single moment that mohammad was ever anything other than a vile vicious murdering pedophile, and since the Jews were driven out of Israel there have been no more prophets on earth at all, and the only true G-d would never have dealt with such a murdering scum sucking pig such as him.

    To acknowledge either mohammad or islam as a religion or to be of G-d is to accept satanism or devil worship as legitimate religions, maybe the talking head can but I am simply unable to do that for as long as the one true G-d of Israel rules this universe, there can never be place for mohammad and his fellowship in his house.

  • No problem ck, simply prove it, show me the facts that I am wrong, prove he was a prophet in even the mildest form of the term, prove that he was no more than a murdering pedophile and a blood thirsty war lord?

    • Mal. Just like I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, I also do not believe in the divinity of Mohamed. And yes Islam is unique in the sense that its founder was a religious leader and a warrior and a political leader. But keep in mind what the Israelites did to the Canaanites. Hardly peaceful. I’m not knocking it – it was God’s will after all! In any case, I’m all for tolerance and your comments are so over the top that they in effect amount to a load of bollocks. But thanks for stopping by!

  • My apologies!

    prove that he was more than a murdering pedophile and a blood thirsty war lord?

  • For all the ignorant gullible fools out there, get educated make a case on fact not fiction, here is a refrence to Israels future and the hopelessness to an Israeli future without war.

    http://palwatch.org/

  • I agree with the website. Jews are living on stolen land. Until they admit that and remove themselves there will never be peace and Jews will continue to shed everyone else’s blood except their own. Jews are the scourge of mankind.

  • The holohoax myth has already been debunked. Your bloody revenge is based on no more than hyperinflated numbers and leaves out vital facts such as that the Jews declared war first on Germany. Jews started WWII and the U.S., poor sucker, ended it with their own blood. Scumbag jews.

    • Oh my. Looks like someone didn’t take their meds this week. What is it crazy comment day today or something? Stu? I could delete your comment, but I find that usually the best argument against the type of bullshit you’ve been spewing (SO much in one short paragraph!) are your own words. Thanks for popping by and showing us all how utterly dysfunctional and batshit insane holocaust deniers and anti-Semites are!

  • Stu, stay the inbred idiot you are, you are a shining example of why abortion may be a preemptive necessary right to save mankind.

  • No ck, he was an evil sadistic war lord that used religion as a political tool to carry out his campaign of genocidal madness, it was his so called disciples and followers who later turned him into a religious leader, as for your point that my statement is bollocks, again I demand of you to have the courage of your convictions and prove it, there is more than sufficient evidence that proves neither the Palestinians nor the nations of islam have any real desire for any lasting peace with Israel and are committed only to its eventual surrender and end as a Jewish state so as to absorb it into the collective of Arab nations, now prove me wrong or accept that you are no more than a die-hard liberal and an ignorant liar?

  • Mal and CK…I’d also like to point out that even if one can prove Islam to be a true religion based on the prophesies of Mohammad, there is still no mention of Jerusalem or even Israel as a holy land for the Muslims. That too was invented later on as a way to eradicate the Jews.

    Froylein, perhaps you are correct that my system would not work perfectly, but it sure as hell beats the world condemning Israel for every move she makes to defend herself. In my opinion, an eye for an eye does not make the world go blind because people catch on that there will be consequences for their actions (and not just stupid UN bullshit sanctions either). Real crimes deserve real punishment equivalent to the crime committed. To attempt to put a value on human life is to justify killing. On a smaller scale, the same can be said of any other crime. ‘Capital*’ and # years in jail are two completely different scales that cannot be interchanged.

    More math: 1 human life = x years in jail, find x
    1 human life = priceless therefore x does not exist.

    Conclusion: no matter how many years are served in jail, the value of the human life they took is not repaid.

    Second conclusion: # years in jail cannot be used as a conversion unit from $, lives, or any other crime. The units are incompatible…

    *Capital here is being used as a general term for ‘life’, ‘liberty’, ‘currency’, and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ (in other words, similar to the Communist definition).

    • Jeremy, it’s been a few years, but one of my majors was mathematics, and the calculation you make up is 1=-1. That’s why I didn’t work in Northern Ireland either.

  • Froylein, the equation being 1 = -1 is my whole point. The jail system does not effectively and justly punish the criminal, hence 1 human life cannot under any circumstances equal x years in jail because no matter what value is given for x 1 will not equal -1. The units are incompatible.

    • Jeremy, do you really think this’ll work with a mindset that has brought us suicide bombers and the use of infants and schoolchildren as human shields if only just to draw media attention? To those extremist forces, the sacrifice of human life is a no-brainer apparently.

  • Froylein I suppose you are correct and, as you’ll note above, I sort of advocated against Israel declaring nukes for the same reason.
    However, in a semi-civilized society the system I am suggesting should work (again I’ll refer to the Cold War as an example).

    Then again…if they really don’t value their lives why should we, or anyone else, care for that matter?
    To paraphrase Hillel once again, one must be for oneself if others are to be expected to support the one…

    • Jeremy, that way you’d just play into their hands as recent events have clearly shown.

      I get a feeling that you don’t know how many innocent, uninvolved victims the Cold War claimed. It disrupted societies. European unity has been a lot of work over the past few decades and has been led by outstanding political figures that dared not to appease extremist, forever-stuck-in-the-past electorates.

      To explain Hillel, one cannot be a full, self-aware individual if one isn’t capable of altruism. One cannot shift one’s responsibility for society at large onto somebody else or to a later point in time.

      That’s what Hillel said.

  • I guess this begs the question, who really gives a damn what the world thinks if we’re right…which brings me to the point of if European leaders dare not appease extremists how come they’re always crying out for the ‘poor helpless Palestinians’?

    Also, even if the Cold War did disrupt societies (and I have no doubt it did), it didn’t become a ‘Hot’ War, and the main reason for that is the thought of retribution, the fact that, if I launch a nuke at him, he will launch one at me. The same principle is being applied today (until Iran manages to develop nukes that is…). The only time ‘the bomb’ was dropped was when the USA was the only one to have it, thus no retribution was possible.

    As for your interpretation of Hillel, to me it seems like Hamas has no intention of creating anything resembling society or civilization in Gaza, so if they’re not interested in society in Gaza, we shouldn’t have to be either.

  • Mal,

    Stay the ignorant lying bag of crap that you are.

    Nothing but a bunch of Zionist pigs here blowing hot air up each other’s butt as if you actually have anything to say other than die for israel and crush all others. You are all racist and ethnic murderers that the world despises. Your day will come, you can be sure of that.

    • Stu, that’s interesting. Israel’s supporters always make a point of stating that Israel serves as a refuge as well as a place that provides protection against those who would harm Jews. I guess you’re proving their point for them.

  • Ah the anti Semitic cerebrally challenged degenerate Stu is back; Stu your worthless breading shines like a beacon of ignorance from within you, being anti mohammadan is not racist, and since I am not against people of any color at all that disqualifies me as a racist, just anti the occult of the Koran and its illiterate following. But you on the other hand, as a holocaust denier, an anti Semitic hater of Jews, pretty much prove who is the worthless petty little racist and bigot rearing its ugly head, but not to worry there is a time and a place for all deranged little turds such as yourself to get there come-upance, until then why not go back to high school and get a real education you may find that learning after the 6th grade that you did not complete, has an enlightening effect on intellectual retards like yourself. You also need to get a grip on that egregious Jew envy you have, it’s truly not our fault your life is a piece of crap.

  • goody we have a holocaust denying anti-Semite in our midst…what else is new?

    Stu, by expressing your opinion you have proven Sarke’s point…
    Furthermore, a my liberal (self proclaimed socialist)friend had a habit of saying, “everyone is entitled to their own wrong opinions.”

    Thus I will not waste my time arguing with you. Good day sir! 🙂

  • “And you know why we were in Western Europe to begin with? Cuz we were told by the Greeks and the Romans – wait for it – to get the hell out of “Palestine,” where we had been living since the beginning of recorded history.”

    Does recorded history exclude the battle of Jericho and the land grabbing that then went on in Canaan?

    Seems Helen needs a history lesson or is it convenient historical amnesia.

  • Irish Goy, recorded history depends on whether or not the Tanach is considered to be a historical document, most people would say no, so then according to those people the ‘land grabbery’ never occurred and the Jews were in “Palestine” for all of recorded history…or something like that (as far as I know, recorded history was in Egypt beforehand, but I also don’t believe that the Egyptians would have recorded the Jews’ seizure of Canaan, as far as Egypt was concerned the Israelites came down for temporary refuge during a famine intending to return to Canaan, but Canaan was their place of origin so…yeah)

  • I like the tenor of the post. A couple details.

    No one disputes that King Solomon ruled the state of Israel, perhaps around 800 BCE. The archaeology is clear. “Minimalists” only quarrel with the Bible’s claim that it was a large and powerful state.

    The Maccabees threw out the Seleucids, who were successors to Alexander the Great — a Greek-speaking multi-ethnic empire, ruled from Antioch. The Maccabee dynasty became known as the Hasmoneans. Two Hasmonean brothers fought for the throne in 65 BCE, and one, Alexander Yannai, invited in the Romans to help him…

    The first Jewish rebellion against Rome was of course 67-70 CE. When Rome quelled it in what was by then their province, Emperor Vespasian issued celebratory coins, stamped, “Judaea Capta.”

    Simon the Christ launched the Bar Kochba War, 132-5 CE, and when the Emperor Hadrian quelled that, Hadrian decided to forestall further revolts by renaming Judaea “Palaestina.”

    The Philistine people, who’d never lived much beyond today’s Gaza Strip, were conquered and marched into oblivion by the Second Babylonian Empire, ruled by Emperor Nabopolisar, about 606 BCE. Perhaps I can find the link to the article. No trace of them was left.

    The Babylonians did much the same to Yehudah about twenty years later, the famous “Babylonian Exile” recounted in Jewish Scripture and in Babylonian records.

    Contrary to pretty much every precedent, the Jewish community in exile survived and even grew. The Babylonian Jews, later known as the Iraqi Jews, became the center of Jewish life for many centuries, with Torah academies at Sura and Pumbeditha, in the general vicinity of Baghdad. The Talmud was completed there, about 450 CE.

    Every other such transported people tended to assimilate away into oblivion. That the Jews did not deeply annoyed the historian Arnold Toynbee.

    Herodotus, c. 400 BCE, mentions the Philistines. But he also says they were circumcised. He’s known for being undiscriminating about facts; he also says there are ants the size of dogs in India.

    BTW Froylein, Jewish tradition says the first Jewish texts, the Chumash, were written 3,200 years ago. Wellhausen and his Lutheran critics say, only 2,600 years ago. More modern critics say, 2,900 years ago. (And Robert Alter says: is there any significance in the difference?)

    So a date for Jews in the Rhineland 4,000 years ago sounds unlikely. But there seems strong evidence that a Jewish merchant community existed in southern France well before the Common Era.

    Irish Goy, you need to read the narrative _before_ Joshua. And modern historians’ understanding, for example, Paul Johnson or H.H. Ben Sasson.

    The religious Jewish view is that a) Israel was promised to the Jews from the moment of Creation. And b) that the Canaanites forfeited the squatters’ claim they had due to their immorality. Further, that Abraham and his clan settled there without dispute, as one among eight or so nations there. In fact, there are three or so spots that are especially without dispute — including Machpelah, in Hebron, purchased freely.

    Modern historians are often skeptical of the Joshua narrative. They say instead that there were Hebrews in separate communities throughout the land, as far back as about anyone else. Another group of Hebrews, fleeing from Egypt, may have arrived, unified the Hebrews there under one banner, and seized the land in its entirety.

    • DJStahl, Trier is not part of the Rhineland; Judaism existed as a set of beliefs shared by a group long before the codification of its holy scriptures. Jewish foklore, not exegesis, attributes the authorship of the Pentateuch to Moses, which is believed to have existed well before 3,200 years ago, same for settlement. The oldest codified Jewish scripture is the book of psalms as far as can be told, which is approximately 3,000 years old. Would anybody seriously suggest there had been no Judaism before the time of King David? Now, Trier has been found not only to be the oldest city north of the European Alps but the folklore of its ties to the Middle East (that’s where the Treverer Celts stem from) has found more and more factual evidence, which would make it more than 4,000 years old. The Treverer were famed goldsmiths in an area that has got no natural resources in gold, which only gives a vague idea of how far their trade routes reached. It seems rather unlikely that there would be no Jewish life of some sort in one of the most important trade cities of the early post-Neolithical age, which also had trade connections with the Middle East and the community of which spoke a language closely related to Hebrew.

      I wonder, how do you conclude from the stories of creation (there are two, the first one in the Bible stems from 587 BCE) that Israel had been promised to Jews ab ovo?

  • Editor, and JD Adler, a couple minor points.

    As a recent writer pointed out — he’s a genuine former Communist Party member, and his book was a best-seller in France — the Romans didn’t issue a formal order of expulsion after the Bar Kochba War.

    But they massacred hundreds of thousands of Jews. Shipped hundreds of thousands more out of the country to the slave markets in chains. Made it a capital crime for a Jew to attempt to return. And made it a capital crime for any ship captain to assist this.

    And they changed the name of the country, and renamed Jerusalem “Aelia.”

    By around 300 CE, the Jewish population was so sparse there, and the country enough like a dust bowl, that the Talmud project there, the Talmud Yerushalmi, was halted and left incomplete.

    JD — you’ve left out the third part of Hillel’s famous response to the Roman soldier, “standing on one foot.” That is, a 25-words-or-less summary: 1) Do not do to another what you wouldn’t have him do to you. 2) The rest is commentary. 3) Go and learn that commentary.

    Elsewhere Hillel offers another tripartite saying, this one, somewhat unusually, a “ko’an,” that is, stated as question, without a specific answer: 1) If I am not for myself, who will be for me? 2) If I am only for myself, what am I? 3) And if not now, when?

    Consider duplicate bridge. Same hand of cards, played by different players. In earlier history, Jews were powerless, and had to manage as well as they could in that situation. Today, it’s the Jews in Israel who have the political power. And they have to decide how to manage that, as ethically, and as near to Jewish values and thought, as they can.

    It’s not a matter of relinquishing all political power, as, say, the Amish do, relying on the Pennsylvania state police for their safety. Nor is it about blending with everyone else. If that were the priority, as Communists and others advocate, then who would be there to uphold specific Jewish values?

    Can any of us say that there’s one system that’s optimal for all of humanity? Well, the Communists and the Islamists do say that, re their respective different systems.

    But to claim to know that sounds unlikely. Even arrogant.

    Far better that each culture have its own place to develop itself fully and optimally. Let each attempt to perfect itself, and become a role model that the rest of humanity would desire to emulate.

    This was the principle that informed hundreds of communities in the US, and others elsewhere in the world. Oneida. New Harmony. Deseret.

    This seems a more modest, realistic, less-oppressive path to attempt to improve the human condition.

    I think this is the idea of Israel.

  • The Orthodox view is that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (at Divine dictation) around 1,200 BCE. That’s the timeline in the ArtScroll, a fairly standard series. The first commentary by Rabbi Shlomo Yitschaki, called “The Prince of Commentators,” explains how Genesis demonstrates the right of the Jews to the land of Israel. It’s from a Gmara. R’ Shlomo Yitschaki lived in Troyes around 1,000 CE.

    As far as Judaism existing prior, the traditional view is that it began with the Patriarchs, before the Egyptian bondage, or about 200-400 years prior, depending on the commentator.

    Noah is considered a saint, but not in the strictest sense a Jew.

    A quick Wikipedia-walk doesn’t support what you say about the Treveri. It says that Jerome said their Celtic was similar to that of the Galatians of Asia Minor, but the Galatians weren’t all that near Israel, and arrived in Asia Minor relatively late.

    The medieval _Gesta Treverorum_ claims the Treveri are descended from an Assyrian, a son of Ninus, the eponymous founder of Nineveh. Also in Asia Minor. Also not a Jew.

    Trier is a city within Rhineland-Palatinate, Rheinland-Pfalz. It looks to be about 50 miles from the Rhine River, up a tributary.

    Not saying you’re wrong about the Treveri-Jewish connection, but do you have any links?

    • Wait, you provide Wiki info? Makes perfect sense… Are you aware of when the Kingdom of David is supposed to have existed? And ArtScroll is as standard to Jewish history reading as the Watchtower is standard to gospel exegesis. I’m certain that you are aware that much of Genesis is Priestly Source, interpretatively and explanatorily written under the impression of the Babylonion Exile. The first story of creation (Gen 1 – 2a) is Priestly Source for instance.

      And please try to understand that the heydays of the Middle Ages are much later than the Roman days, in which the Romans already referred to Trier as “Augusta Treverorum” – “the city of Augustus in the land of the Treverer”. (An aside, Medieval thinking is much more foreign to us than current Pygmy thinking. Medieval understanding for example had it that the youngest source written was the authentic one; a concept that appears rather bewildering to us now.) Do you know where Asia Minor was situated (hint, it’s even farther away from Assyria than Trier is from the Rhine River; Uriah and his wife stem from the area where it was going to be) and that it was a late Antiquity Roman colony? Did you know that the Galatians made a move back east after they had settled for a longer while in Western Europe? “Celtic”, BTW, is a collective term for various tribes; there’s no Celtic ethnicity, race or language. Also, again, I said that the Treverer maintained trade connections with the Middle East and not that the bulk of them were Jewish. As for literature on the matter, there are recent essays in German, which, adhering to the strict regulations publishers enforce here, only are available in print (at hefty prices, too). There’s no straight connection between Trier and the Rhine River as the highlands in between are rather rough with steep mountains. The track alongside the Moselle River is about 80 miles, the Roman road – the first paved one there – cut through the highlands north of Trier. It is generally understood that Trier was more dependent on the Moselle River development-wise than on the Rhine River, which would have required the Treverer to travel through hostile territory east of the Rhine River. Mythological, religious and language patterns bearing similarities from the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the areas of Western European Celtic settlement suggest there was no substantial contact between the Treverer & other tribes in their area and those living east of the Rhine River.

  • You seem a bit muddled, including in understanding what I said.

    I never said ArtScroll is Jewish history. That’s a false attribution on your part. I said it’s a standard Orthodox source. It represents the Orthodox view of the date of the Pentateuch.

    All the dates of what’s called “higher criticism,” which began among German Lutherans about 200 years ago, are more recent than 1,200 BCE.

    Haven’t heard the Galatians ever were in Western Europe. Do you have a citation?

    I am aware of the viewpoint that “there’s no Celtic ethnicity, race or language.” The current outlook of anthropologists inspired by Ernst Gellner, who say there’s no such thing as ethnicity of any sort. It’s usually associated with a Marxian perspective; Marxist doctrine generally rejects the idea of ethnicity or nation. This outlook is accepted by some historians who lean Marxian. However, I would not say it’s generally accepted, outside the Gellner school.

    So regarding the Treveri evidently you have no citations.

    Bibliography?

    The Moselle River empties into the Rhine, eighty miles away. It’s what’s called part of the Rhine basin. Trier, on the Moselle, is in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. River traffic on both rivers would have linked Trier with the Rhine proper.

    Assyria included parts of Asia Minor as well as parts of Mesopotamia.

    Assyria was a province of Rome for about three years, 116-8 CE. Its history goes back much further. The legendary ancestor of the Treveri, Trebata, is supposed to have been a son of Ninus, the legendary founder of Nineveh. Many centuries before it was seized by Rome.

    I may be back here in a few hours —

    • You seem a bit muddled in understanding what I said. You refer to ArtScroll as “standard” in context of a Jewish timeline, thus elevating it to generally accepted source of information, which it is not.

      It’s not just a viewpoint that there is no Celtic ethnicity, race, or language. It’s a fact. “Celtic” is an umbrella term for several tribes that couldn’t be classified as “Germanic”, “Slavic” etc. Original Bavarians are Celtic, their Bavarian language is totally different from and not related to other Celtic languages e.g. Welsh, Gaelic etc.

      However, this was not about whether ethnicity existed in general.

      Galatians were notorioisly members of a collective of Celtic tribes called “Volcae”. They came to nowaday-Turkey as hired soldiers and eventually settled there. (Just like the Hethite Uriah was a hired soldier and it’s a safe bet that those hired soldiers weren’t cherry-picked one from each tyribe at a time.)

      Regarding the Treverer, I’ve got essays included in books, which you can’t read. (Assuming that German language teaching over there is comparable to English language teaching over here, you’d have a better take on German topography if you’d learnt German.)

      As for Trier and how it’s linked to the Rhine River, let’s say you’re projecting modern takes on infrastructure on times far gone. The Moselle River only became navigatable over long stretches when barrages were built in recent history.

      I happen to live in Rhineland-Palatinate and am keenly interested in local archaeology. Let’s say that your assumptions of how things must have been lack as one of my professors would have put it “historical thinking”.

      Please note again that you’re talking about different periods in time that are several centuries removed from each other. When the Assyrian Empire stretched into nowaday-Turkey, not quite bordering in extension on what would centuries later become the Roman colony Asia Minor, there was no Asia Minor.

      Assyria, BTW, also covered all of today’s Israel, part of the Sinai peninsula, and stretched into today’s Saudi-Arabia and Iran from 900 to 607 BCE. That was well during the time of Jewish settlement in today’s Israel. To think that there was no cultural rub-off between groups that already showed shared cultural origins appears to be wishful thinking.

      History is like those three-dimensional puzzles where peaces might fit in shape in spots where they don’t belong as the complete image shows, and there can be repeated and similar patterns with the pieces not fitting in shape.

  • Many people here love to wax poetic but often their method is hand-waving and playing loose and fast with the facts.

    You are correct in demanding that Froylein defend the broad generalizations and ask for sources for these wild claims.

    • Yosef, anybody who refers to Wiki, and, as I’ve checked, doesn’t go beyond the introductory paragraphs on the Wiki entries and takes the information from there as is reflected in the highly similar wording, is not seriously interested in facts. Have you dedicated any time to reading any of the works I mentioned above? If not, well, difficile est saturam non scribere.

  • What I wrote, just a couple posts up, is:

    “The Orthodox view is that Moses wrote the Pentateuch (at Divine dictation) around 1,200 BCE. That’s the timeline in the ArtScroll, a fairly standard series.”

    You respond:

    “You seem a bit muddled in understanding what I said. You refer to ArtScroll as “standard” in context of a Jewish timeline, thus elevating it to generally accepted source of information, which it is not.”

    ??

    I think I see the problem.

    In normal English usage, “Orthodox” with an initial capital means “strictly-religious Jewish.”

    The conventions of capitalization in English are different from those in German. Had I written “orthodox” instead of “Orthodox,” I think you’d be right to question this.

    You’ll note I included the phrase, “at Divine dictation.”

    ArtScroll is a standard in the religious Jewish community.

    For translation, I prefer to recommend the Hirsch Pentateuch. But ArtScroll has many handy features, like charts and timelines. It also leans much to the right, so it’s appropriate to cite in this context.

    You write:

    “Regarding the Treverer, I’ve got essays included in books, which you can’t read.”

    …still no citations.

    If it were worthwhile, easy enough to have these essays translated locally. Plenty of people I know are native speakers of German. And I’m not far from a large university, which might have these books.

    You write:

    “As for Trier and how it’s linked to the Rhine River, let’s say you’re projecting modern takes on infrastructure on times far gone. The Moselle River only became navigatable over long stretches when barrages were built in recent history.”

    Usually “barrage” in English is applied to tidal rivers. Weirs existed in many places in ancient times.

    “Navigable” may depend on what sort of boat you mean.

    And “long stretches” would more likely refer to upstream from Trier, more than downstream where the river would get larger. Cities are often built at “breaks in transit,” so it’s a reasonable inference that the Moselle was navigable from Trier to the Rhine, eighty miles away, to the boats used in ancient times.

    And prior to barrages, or weirs, traders typically “portaged” around parts of rivers that weren’t navigable.

    In any case, land traffic would have followed the banks of the Moselle. With the high mountains you mention, any trade, by land or by river, would have followed that valley. And your claim is that Trier had trade with the Near East in ancient times. Seems likely that Trier’s main trade was as part of the Rhine network, eighty miles downstream.

    You write:

    “When the Assyrian Empire stretched into nowaday-Turkey, not quite bordering in extension on what would centuries later become the Roman colony Asia Minor, there was no Asia Minor.”

    In English usage, “Asia Minor” refers to the region primarily. The term is synonymous with “Anatolia.”

    In English usage, there was no Roman colony “Asia Minor.” It was called simply “Asia.” And not a colony, BTW, but a province. Under the Byzantines, it became “Phrygia.” It included Pergamon and Ephesus, but not the eastern part of Asia Minor.

    Similarly, writers in English have used the term “Palestine” for centuries, usually without intending to refer to the Roman, and later, Byzantine, province or sub-province that existed, in various shapes, from about 135 to 635 CE.

    You write:

    “Assyria, BTW, also covered all of today’s Israel, part of the Sinai peninsula, and stretched into today’s Saudi-Arabia and Iran from 900 to 607 BCE. That was well during the time of Jewish settlement in today’s Israel. To think that there was no cultural rub-off between groups that already showed shared cultural origins appears to be wishful thinking.”

    If the legendary Trebata did found Trier, that may have been before the era of Assyrian dominance in Israel. Assyria in fact seized the northern kingdom about 723 BCE. And for a time after, it likely received tribute from the southern kingdom, Yehudah.

    The Gesta Treverorum says Trebata arrived in Trier around 2,000 BCE.

    Certainly Assyrian culture seems to have influenced ancient Israelite culture. Whether Israelite culture influenced Assyria is less certain. So a supposed emigration by Assyrians into Western Europe in ancient times may not have had much Israelite influence. Canada, for example, is heavily influenced by the US, but the converse is not true. There was the prophet Yonah…

    The history I’ve seen says the Volcae, a Celtic confederation, formed in the neighborhood of Vienna about 2,300 years ago. Some went as far west as Toulouse, stopping along the way to settle. Others sacked parts of Greece, and some of these went further east, and became the Galatians of Asia Minor.

    This is consistent with Jerome’s observation that the language of the Treveri resembled that of the Galatians.

    Not clear how this relates to the legendary Assyrian, Trebata, heading west to Trier, about 1,700 years before the Galatians arrived in Asia Minor.

    • In English usage, referring to the timeline used by a certain publishing body is contextualising the reference.

      It is not the distinction between “orthodox” and “Orthodox” that gives me the right to question your assertion, but the context in which you use the label “standard”.

      Now, for Rineland-Palatinate again, it shows you don’t know the landscape and still apply your modern takes on infrastructure on circumstances that were utterly different back then. The American Heritage Dictionary defines barrage as [a]n artificial obstruction, such as a dam or irrigation channel, built in a watercourse to increase its depth or to divert its flow. This definition would go in line with my usage of the word, but it doesn’t support your claim regarding English vernacular.
      Again, your wishful thinking of how it should have been is tainted by a modern understanding of infrastructure and a definite lack of “historical thinking”.

      “Asia Minor” is a technical term in English as much as in other languages. The claim that it was simply called “Asia” is pretty nonsensical considering that the name given to it by Romans back then was “Asia Minor”. To employ the American Heritage Dictionary again, a colony is [a] region politically controlled by a distant country; a dependency. It is synonymous with the Latin “provincia”, but not with the English “province”, which therefore may be used in the name of Roman pronvinces as technical terms but does not convey the same connotations as “provincia” would have done to native speakers of Latin.
      Also, look up “Asia Minor” and “Anatolia” in a historical atlas. You’ll see that they are not synonymous, and even less diligent language usage doesn’t make them be.

      The history you saw on Volcae is taken from the English Wiki site, which is rather lacking to say the least.

      I’m not sure whether you’re aware of that, given your city of residence, but cultural exchange happens through trade. It even happened during the Crusades, which brought Europe Gothic architecture, spices, etc.; it happened during the French war on Russia, which left a huge amount of French vocabulary in Russian just to name two examples. In conducting trade with the Middle East and in speaking a language the people there would understand as well as any German can understand Dutch (as long as both sides are sober), cultural exchange was inevitable.

      As for sources on the Treverer, look up more recent publications by the Rhineland-Palatinate Landesamt für Denkmalpflege or the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Trier, which often serve as publishers for findings in local history. Beware though, even in translation it might be a tougher read than Wiki articles, particularly since German academic writing adheres to a different stylistic standard of being more elitist, more technical, less introductory and loaded with tons of footnotes, which makes such works less pleasant for casual reading than American academic writing, which rather goes for elaborate annotations at the end of a book and a style that serves to address and appeal to a broad readership.

      And please, stop giving me that Wiki fodder.

  • ArtScroll is a standard source for religious Jews.

    If you’re not confusing “orthodox” with “Orthodox,” then your objection to ArtScroll remains unclear.

    You make an error in saying the key aspect is “infrastructure.” And certainly you’re making errors about technology and trade. Boats that traveled rivers 3,000 years ago were small. They didn’t need a particularly deep river. Often they could be portaged. You seem to believe that because large modern vessels have such a deep draught that the Moselle today needs weirs, that boats in ancient times needed them too.

    Carlo Cipolla would often say, “The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.”

    You also seem to assert that trade up and down a river valley only occurs via the water. Doubtful in the extreme.

    The difference between “barrage” and “weir” is mostly a matter of diction. As Arlo Guthrie said, you can “roast a cake.”

    The American Heritage dictionary you cite says “Asia Minor” and “Anatolia” are the same.

    Your vague reference to any unspecified “historical atlas” is worse than citing Wikipedia.

    You can try Theodor Mommsen’s _Die Provinzen, von Caesar bis Diocletian_ to clear up your error here. It’s a volume of his _Romische Geschichte_.

    In the English translation, it’s p. 22 of Vol. VIII, “The Euphrates Frontier.”

    Mommsen’s work is a century old, but probably still useful for this. In history as in other fields, sometimes a text can remain a reference for a long time, and sometimes it becomes outdated. You cited Graetz earlier; he’s generally considered out of date.

    Your error regarding between “colony” and “province,” though, is somewhat significant, and a matter not just of diction but of definition.

    Both in Latin and in English, the two are very different. And when speaking in English about a Roman matter, it’s particularly important to be precise.

    In Roman usage, a “colonia” generally was a town settled by military veterans. In some instances, it simply was the term for a garrison town, of a particular status. Derives from “colonus,” a farmer.

    A “provincia” was a country ruled by a Roman magistrate. Not necessarily distant; Provincia in France was adjacent to Italy.

    In English as in Latin, a “colony” implies a community from the mother country settled in a new place, the culture different from the local. A broader meaning than the Roman use, but still quite distinct from a province.

    You wrote:

    <<". To employ the American Heritage Dictionary again, a colony is A region politically controlled by a distant country; a dependency. It is synonymous with the Latin “provincia”, but not with the English “province”>>

    The American Heritage dictionary you cite gives your definition of “colony” as the third.

    But the first one there is, “A group of emigrants… who… remain… intimately connected with the parent country.”

    Do you think you’re being completely honest in citing the third definition without acknowledging the first? And you decry Wikipedia…

    You say you’re near Koln. And just a country away from Provence.

    I wouldn’t be surprised they’ve found a few Middle Eastern artifacts at some lower layers in digs near Trier. But that doesn’t mean there was much cultural contact. Such artifacts may trade through many hands.

    Italy has had tomatoes for centuries, but this doesn’t mean they know much about the Lenape or the Mohawks, or spoke those languages.

    Germany has had potatoes for centuries, but this doesn’t mean they had much cultural contact with the Iroquois.

    Except via Karl May, of course, but he arrived centuries after the potato.

    Sorry you’re creating a fog about the “Volcae.” I agree that Wikipedia is a casual reference, and I wouldn’t rely on it for anything important. Certainly not for anything controversial.

    However, the articles do have footnotes, and they often may be useful. If you were saying something different from the Wikipedia article, with good citations, it might be worth debating. So far you haven’t.

    The raid by the Gauls on Greece is famous, and mentioned in every history text. The statue is also famous, known to anyone who’s taken an art history class. And the history of the Galatians, in Asia Minor, also is well-known.

    How are you doing with addressing the chronology problems in your argument? You don’t seem to have addressed that.

    The Galatians arrived in Asia Minor around 2,300 years ago. The legendary Trebeta left for Trier 4,000 years ago. And the Jewish patriarchs lived, according to Jewish religious tradition, about 3,700 years ago.

    No one I’ve read says the Galatians ever traveled west. They arrived in Asia Minor 1,700 years after the legendary Trebeta had left.

    And Trebeta left hundreds of years before the earliest date for the Jewish patriarchs.

    Secular scholarship is less certain about the patriarchs, and places the start of Jewish nationhood more recently than 3,700 years ago.

    Thanks for the vague publication references. In the US the convention for citation is usually a specific title, author, publisher, city, and year. Page numbers are also helpful. In citing a journal article, the citation would name the author, the article, the journal, the date, and the page number. You claim that the German approach is more rigorous, but so far it seems much laxer.

    • You make an error in claiming that I’ve said the key aspect is infrastructure. I’ve said you’ve got a flawed take on what infrastructure was like, and it still remains flawed as an instance mentioned below clearly shows.

      The difference between “barrage” and “weir” appears to be that there are more meanings to “barrage” than to “weir”, while the difference between “roasting” and “baking” is a technical one. You cannot roast a cake before or instead of baking, because dough is too moist for roasting, no matter what a folk singer says.

      The American Heritage Dictionary does not say Asia Minor and Anatolia are the same, but that the terms are usually considered synonymous. However, I’ve laid out sufficiently above why this is not the usual case here as the reference was to Asia Minor as Roman territory.

      I am absolutely honest in citing the third definition of a dictionary entry as a) the definitions must be listed in some order or another, b) a variety of definitions mean that a word can denote all of the described (If you called a person a “faggot”, would that mean you called them all of the possible meanings of that word?), c) there is no hint whatsoever that the definition I cited was in any way uncommon or outdated.
      Thanks for repeating what I explained about the difference between “colonia” and “provincia” in Latin.

      And no, saying you should refer to any historical atlas (preferably a recent one that can / does take data gathered through archaeology into account) is not worse than you reiterating your assertions based on what English Wiki pages say. I suppose you could also run a Google image search, but I don’t condone of violating copyrights by scanning and posting copyrighted material online, which often is the case with maps.

      I hope you’re aware there’s a slight difference between travelling the Atlantic Ocean on a (funded) ship and travelling trade routes that could be covered on foot, on horseback etc. (a path the one or the other determined pilgrim still takes these days). I suppose in your attempt at creating an analogy, you’ve also read up on how the potato arrived in today-Germany and what it took to spread it. As I said, your take on past infrastructure is somewhat flawed by modern thinking.
      I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt assuming that you simply don’t get the difference between maintaining ties and thus establishing cultural exchange and cloning culture in different locations.

      Graetz is not generally considered out of date but has been accused of bias because of his politically tainted interpretations of history and his fervent language. (I know ultra-Orthodox take issue with his assertions of Dov Ber’s propensity for alcoholic beverages in lieu of charisma.) This is not to say that I don’t see his determination to differentiate and at that evaluate, but just because I agree or whatnot with his evaluations doesn’t make his factual works invalid. (Historical writing during those days smack in the middle of the conflict between nationalism, democratic tendencies and reactionary forces – the latter granted university positions BTW – was often politically flavoured.) However, since popular culture is often employed in religious argument, I think it’s fair to refer to the author who first compiled comprehensive works on Jewish history and the history of the Jews.

      The “vague publication reference” I gave you was precise enough for you to find a whole host of literature on the matter with ease were you inclined so. And since we’re at suggesting books you’ll never read, how about something on the history of languages by, e.g., David Crystal?
      Regarding citations, it’s conventional to also name the editor of a work and, if applicable, the series it was published in; it’s also the year the work was first published in alongside its number of edition. I’ve seen that most researchers in the US employ the same standards that are considered the norm in Germany, which means you don’t mention the publishing house. That would also mean that in citing a journal article, you’d reference the editor / editing organisation, the issue number + year. Page numbers conventionally go into footnotes but not into bibliographies in Germany (respectively into the annotations in the English-speaking world but not into bibliographies); I’ve not only seen that to be the case doing individual reading, but also in what was expected from us as standard procedure by our American professors. However, I hope you are aware that each and any professor is entitled to demanding their own standards of citation from their students just as academic journals require certain standards of citation from their contributors. There can be universal agreements between faculties on national and international levels on how to reference citations and bibliographies as has been done in Catholic religious education, but that is not generally the case so far. Note also that changes made in citations for abbreviating or grammatical purposes are signified by square brackets. So, if you were in any way familiar with proper citation, the entry from the American Heritage Dictionary you referred to above would have been cited as, “A group of emigrants [. . .] who [. . .] remain [intimately connected] with the parent country”, and not as “A group of emigrants… who… remain… intimately connected with the parent country.” (For comparison purposes, if anybody else still reads this, the original entry is, “A group of emigrants or their descendants who settle in a distant territory but remain subject to or closely associated with the parent country”). Note also that if you abbreviate a line you cite by omitting pieces of information, you must not change the intention of the original line through your omissions because that is dishonest. Note also that Wiki standards of citation are not the norm across publications. Now please stop giving me that faux-sophistication as you’ve clearly shown your lack of familiarity with the proper etiquette of citations. Did I mention German universities conventionally fail students that refer to Wiki?

  • The only thing that supersedes this Duitske talking heads arrogance is her ignorance and a lack of a true grip on life, she is so full of it and cant tell the difference between semantics and reality, you all need to stop getting drawn into her wasted life and let her move off to irritating worthless like minded left wing nut jobs like herself.

    • Hey Mal, still upset I don’t buy into your fascist little worldview driven by nothing but fear? Lovely. Hope you’ll have a great life. Racists like you are not welcome here.

  • Froylin – Once again the shining beacon of arrogant ignorance lights up this forum, show us the money honey!

    Please do point out a single statement of racism that I have made, show me one derogatory comment I have made against a single person of colour in the context of race and I will happily accept that I am racist. But alas, for as the lying worthless leftist that you are you can’t tell the difference between anti muhammadan and racist, your skewed left wing ideologue and arrogance can’t accept a point of view that differs from yours.

    Unlike you I take the word of G-d seriously and at face value, I make no attempt to reinvent or diminish the meanings of what G-d states, some of us are born to be scholars while some of us are born to be warriors and defenders of the people.You on the other hand are neither, you would trade all that we are, our lands and our heritage for a false idealistic concept of peace with a nation that as a perpetual and eternal enemy bears us only ill will, an evil nation that will do all that’s in its power to wipe us from the planet.

    You on the other hand are a worthless soulless coward, there have been many like you before and there will be many like you again, the kind, (I still do not believe you are a true Jew) of person that we are repeatedly warned of, a twister of truth and a detractor of facts and reality, a leftist historical revisionist negating Jewish authenticity and identity. I emphatically believe that you are only true to the belief in your own self worth and that misleading propaganda is your endgame.

    In you blinded ignorance you misconceive fear for preparedness, while cowardly fools like you seek ways to piss away our heritage and the future of our people, I stand guard at the gates of Judaism, ready to defend and die to protect as is our G-d mandated duty, even if it means defending people like your skank ass.

    Yes I know you would not want a racist like me protecting your worthless oxygen thief hide, but out there is a very brave soul, that will one day soon, have to do it, it’s why we are here. You are that terrified screaming turd that the fireman has to risk his life to go back for, all because you refused to deal with and take action all the while you were being engulfed in smoke still claiming that there was no fire.

    As for me being a fascist, you claim to be of higher intelligence and yet seem not to know the meaning of the word fascist, surprising to say the least! I have absolutely no political ideology, I have a distinct disdain for any and all forms of politics and government, I do not believe that any single current political system can or ever will work as they are all financially and selfishly motivated, I believe in the total and absolute right of free choice of all people of all races to live in total and unhindered freedom from government and religious control where ever they may be.

    I believe that our G-d given freedom is the most important attribute that would ultimately factor in to achieving a truly altruistic society. This cannot be achieved through any current political ideology of any type.

    And finally to your unwelcome mat, it’s this intense need for liberal socialists degenerates like yourself to always shutdown freedom of speech and thought that contradicts you, which defines who and what you really are. It’s that inherent fear that we that sound the alarm bells will actually be listened to that frightens you most, the fact that we may muster support in defence of our cause threatens socialist liberal retards like yourself to death as we are not controllable by you smoke and bulldust antics and leftist philosophy so you would rather silence us than allow us the freedoms that you demand.

    I do not ask you to leave, I do not ask you to shut the #*ck up either, on the contrary and unlike leftist fascists like yourself, I welcome your posts as they enlighten and show the mindset of what we face and what it will take to deal with it, and although I may not agree with you I still want to hear what you have to say so that I may learn about who and what you are as these are important factors as to the future of the Jewish people and their survivability.

    So all the while you keep orating through the wrong orifice I will contently and very vocally continue with my calling, and yes I really do have a great life, and for this I thank G-d daily and I am ready to pay back just as soon as he calls, are you?

    • Online on the holy Sabbath, oh true believer?

      And read up on what “fascist” means. The term fits you quite well.

      I’ve caught you lying respectively trapped in your ignorance above. I’m a contributor to this site, you are not. If you were a decent, god-fearing human being as you proclaim to be, your register wouldn’t be what it is.

      Farewell, Mal. May god have mercy on you.

  • As I stated before, you are nothing more than a leftist bag of hell driven foul smelling hot air, you have never caught me lying as I have never lied, I have only stated my personal opinions.

    I don’t need to read up the meaning of the word fascist as I am well versed in its meaning and see it exemplified in your espoused diatribe. You may consider yourself a contributor to this site but I see no evidence of value to your contribution. You are a cantankerous argumentative heffa with whom I have yet to see anyone agree with, if you consider this contributing, good luck to you on that.

    I have also never claimed to be G-d faring or overly pious person and although I am the first to admit that I am one heck of a sinner, unlike you pathetic and worthless self obsessed soul, I am a 100% true believer in the one and only true G-d of Israel, not the conceptualised pile of camel dung you make up.

    And although I am not in keeping with the Sabbath, the battle against our national interests does not cease on the Sabbath and as history has taught us, the enemies of our people like yourself know only too well when and how to attack us, whether it be verbally or militarily, my duty to defend is and always will be steadfast even on Shabbos.

    In closing the truth in the glaring difference of which we are shows in the arrogance of your typed word, in all of your references to G-d, you are so worthless and lazy you literally won’t lift a little figure to engage the shift lock key to type out His name in capitol reference to simply acknowledge His station. Don’t forget to vigorously come out in defence of this now.

    Well wishes from you are as worth full as well wishes of the puffti mufti of Jerusalem and about as meaningful, and the great and wonderful G-d of Israel does bless me and shows me mercy every day of my life, every morning when I wake I know that I do this in His will and in His glory and I thank Him for this and when the time comes I will be more than willing to pay to Him for that to which I am indebted to Him, without wilfully misguided question or misinterpretation, and if it means defending your heffa ass it’s what I will do no matter how distasteful it may be.

    For a precise interpretation of heffa please follow the link shown
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=heffa

    • Have fun grooming your lies. Anybody who cares can read above how I found you to be lying. In claiming to know His will, you are committing a severe act of blasphemy which bespeaks your ignorance of the religion you claim to adhere to. Using the hyphen instead of a vowel in “god” is nothing but bad spelling; it’s not religiously mandated cause last time I checked, English was not the sacred language of Jews. If you capitalise “god”, you use the word as a name which you may not do when a) proclaiming to know his plan, b) claiming you’re following his way (cf. a)), and c) cursing as in the context of all three it would be using His name in vain, i.e. as a tool. The capitalisation belongs into praise, not into rants or plain explanatory text. You’re not just a sinner, you’re a hypocrite for soiling the name of the Divine and His creation with your hateful conduct while claiming to follow His ways.

      I hope you’ve at least learnt what Judaism has got in store for false prophets.

  • Again accusation with no proof in evidence from the morally indignant heffa, please do point them out so that everyone can see, I welcome it and the scrutiny, and I have no objection to being corrected by my piers or my moral superiors.

    You are at the very least a very dishonest person, as at no point have I ever proclaimed to be a prophet or to know His plan, I have also never claimed to be following in His way, unlike you I am not arrogant enough to believe that I am not a sinner, but what I do know is what he has provided me through the prophets to read, unlike the nazi propagandist heathen that you are, I don’t cherry pick what I want to believe to suit my needs, but accept it in its entirety, and accept all the warnings of things to come.

    Unlike you, I do not try to negate them as meanderings of ancient old fools and selectively follow what suits my needs; All I am doing is preparing for what I believe is inevitable and will be with us soon. I accept my fallibility and know that there will be a time for paybacks at which time I will no doubt do some serious penance.

    Now why all of a sudden do you seem to find the need or effort to use your degenerate little nose picking finger to engage the shift lock key in reverence to Him when until now you were indifferent to its value, this shows just how two faced a heffa you are. Respect for our Creator is religiously mandated in every context, not just when skanks like you determine its merits, and by putting a hyphen in place of the o prevents me from taking or uttering His name in vain even in a written form, but this too is way over the values of your two faced head.

    Fortunately for me you would not know blasphemy from your rectum and as English is not a “sacred” language, and as I do not accept your definition of cursing, as any and all words in any language are no more than derivatives for descriptive emphasis, and don’t mean a damn thing other than that which they describe, in other words f*ck means to copulate and that when I refer to a walking talking asshole that means you, other than that they are just simple descriptive sounds forming words for interpretation and communication, and just because repugnant miscreants like you don’t like the animation that certain words imply and therefore determine them as cursing just does not make it so.

    In finality G-d in His Devine wisdom does tell me and teach me to hate all evil, I repeat, ALL EVIL, He also teaches me that any and all forms of mahmudanisim and islam are pure and utter evil and are in no way of Him, and that any and all forms of defence of it, even that which you propagate and stand for are just as degenerate and evil. He also teaches me that I am obligated to despise evil at all occurrences and that when it strikes at either Him or the Jewish people I am obligated to defend it too my last breath.

    Unlike you, I am a sinner and I know it, but I am neither the hypocrite nor the two faced degenerate bile spewing elitist islam defender that you have shown yourself to be.

    • Mal,

      You are at the very least a very dishonest person, as at no point have I ever proclaimed to be a prophet or to know His plan, I have also never claimed to be following in His way, [. . .]

      but above you wrote,

      [. . .] and the great and wonderful G-d [sic] of Israel does bless me and shows me mercy every day of my life, every morning when I wake [sic] I know that I do this in His will and in His glory [. . .]

      Unlike you, I do not try to negate them as meanderings of ancient old fools and selectively follow what suits my needs

      You’re online on the Sabbath.

      Now why all of a sudden do you seem to find the need or effort to use your degenerate little nose picking finger to engage the shift lock key in reverence [sic] to Him when until now you were indifferent to its [sic] value, this shows just how two faced [sic] a heffa you are.

      Read closely and try to understand my explanations on when to capitalise and see when I capitalised. It might be worth considering that the god you refer to that

      [. . .] in His Devine [sic] wisdom does tell me and teach me to hate all evil, I repeat, ALL [sic] EVIL [sic], He also teaches me that any and all forms of mahmudanisim [sic] and islam [sic] are pure and utter evil and are in no way of [sic] Him [. . .]

      is not the god of Judaism as this is distinctely not part of Jewish doctrine.

      DJ Stahl, to keep it brief as I haven’t got much time now:

      the technical difference between roasting and baking is that baking cannot be done in dry heat as the moisture in the dough inevitably leads to humid heat. Roasting usually involves that the roasted good is being moved along a flame or a hot surface (think coffee beans or real toast) or a rotisserie chicken, often for a brief time at comparatively high heat in comparison to baking, so a turkey in an oven would actually be baked. This counts all when it comes to food as pottery is a different thing altogether; in German we say that pottery gets “burnt”. So the dictionary isn’t quite precise there, which goes to show that the editors sustain on take-out. 🙂

      Please note that the order of entries under one term in a dictionary does not reflect common use or validity of use as you’ll find different orders across different dictionaries, less comprehensive editions (e.g. pocket editions or dictionaries as tiny as the Langenscheidt Liliput series, which is about the size of a thick matchbox) leave out definitions, but that doesn’t make those definitions less valid. As I explained above, the denotation I implied is in no way marked as uncommon, outdated, or archaic. To list the other entries would therefore be considered “banal” (banalities are also a sure way to get failed over here). It is therefore not incorrect to cite the third definition by any standard I had to adhere by as a student (of linguistics and literary analysis among other subjects) and the standards I (and the rest of faculty) request from my students. Please consider that the first round of PISA, the Program for International Student Assessment carried out by the OECD, which tested reading comprehension skills of 15-year-olds across member countries found that even American private school students have got severe problems contextualising. It can be expected from a 15-year-old to take the most precise pick among different denotations without listing alternative options. American private school students failed as badly at tasks demanding just that – they scored as low as German low-level or special ed high school students at age 15. While I don’t want to give PISA too much credit for several reason, it did show that American students have a hard time being precise. So, if what you lay out is the norm across American schools, namely to employ banalities, then there’s little surprise that American students didn’t do well at tasks that required them to be precise and to contextualise. (I’ve still got all the task sheets and press releases on the first round of PISA on an old harddrive as well as a longer essay that got to be presented at the Goethe Institut in Melbourne on press reception of and reflection on PISA; compare more than 70,000 pages of press coverage in Germany to roughly 70 pages in the US and Canada combined). From an educational and (German) academic point of view particularly with regards to academic output, my approach was not incorrect.

      We are in agreement on that “colony” is used in English denoting what the Latin “provincia” means. As you appear to agree, the meaning of “colony” and “province” in English has changed in so far that the original meaning of “colonia” and “provincia” cannot be satisfactorily explained through either. To use “colony” for “provincia” therefore wouldn’t be confusing; it would be precise. I have seen no different in British history writing covering Roman life in Britain. The not uncommon thing to do, as you would do in writing a CV in a foreign language, is to employ the terminus technicus and to give the explanation in brackets or a parenthesis set off by commas or dashes or vice versa.

      I referred to Graetz because popular history was employed in both the post as well as in follow-up comments. Graetz is particularly of interest when it comes to Medieval Central European Jewish history, to which the findings of Cairo or Qumran are of no influence (as they weren’t known to people back then, naturally).
      I find the possibility that there may well have been Jewish life of some sort in Central Europe long before it was known – based on recent findings on how the Treverer legend actually had a lot of truth to it, that trade with the Middle East was conducted, and that there was a strong linguistic bond which would have made cultural exchange much easier – rather exciting to say the least. And it is in no event unlikely that this exchange took place considering that there was trade between Israel and Central Africa as well as the Far East and the Middle East way back as well, so distance did not matter all that much. (Let’s not forget the cultural influence East-Siberian shamanism had on Babylonian and Greek mythology and eventually also on Jewish customs.)

      Oh, before I forget: there was trade between Trier and Koblenz (Confluentes), but at a later point – in Roman history. The Romans first cut a road across the Eifel, built a few villae there, and founded cities / settlements like Andernach (Castellum Antunnacum; that’s close to where CI Caesar would cross the Rhine River into Germanic territory), Bonn and Cologne before. They all predate Koblenz by a couple of years as far as is known, but their Roman roots pretty much overlap so it’s more of a petty race between those cities as to which one was first. There had been some sort of settlement in all locations before, some dating back to the Stone Age, but those were not city-like (traits typical of early cities include high population density within a confined territory, gainful employment not (only) in agriculture, hence a need for trade with the surrounding rural parts, certain administrative institutions / hierarchies etc.), but there is no evidence so far for Celtic trade via that axis, and, as I’d mentioned before, the shortcut via the Rhine River would have landed any Celtic merchants in hostile territory plus crossing the Rhine River wouldn’t have been an easy task. As far as is known, Romans introduced ships to the waterways here. A famous sculpture from around 220 CE depicts a ship loaded with whine barrels. It was found in Neumagen, about 40 kilometres down the River Moselle.

      My objection to ArtScroll is the same objection I’ve got to Watchtower and like publications.

      I’ll try to see whether any historical atlas of mine has also been published in an English edition. But please bear with me as I’ve got lots to take care of and it’s annoyingly hot these days (German homes haven’t got AC by default) and plenty of my books are still wrapped up in book shipping boxes as I’m building new bookshelves to organise them better (when it’s not quite as hot plus I’m not the most tool-savvy person around). (There are thousands of them as I prefer to get books for myself instead of checking them out from a library.)

      Oh well, this wasn’t all that short… Anyhow, I go to NYC a lot, so if you like, we can continue this conversation over a cup of coffee at some point.

      • Ok, I’ve looked up maps in one historical atlas (Dr Walter Leisering (ed.), Historischer Weltatlas, Berlin 1997, 102nd edt.) I’ve now been able to dig out. None of the maps of the Antiquity in that one labels Asia Minor or any region in the greater area “Anatolia”. In addition to Asia Minor, there are Bithynia, Galatia, Lycaonia, Lycia and Cilicia from about 200 BCE until 117 CE. Assyria had shrunk to a small territory east of the Tigris River, in addition there were Syria and Phoenicia on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Judaea at that point reached from the Golan in the North to the southern end of the Dead Sea in the South and slightly north-east of the Dead Sea in the North. South of Judaea was Arabia, which included Petra and all of the Sinai Peninsula. An economy map of the Roman empire shows trade routes reaching into the Far East, present-day Egypt, south into the Sahara, west as far as Western Europe extends and north as far as Britain with more extra-territorial routes than the aforementioned leading to northern Germany (Lübeck area) and the today-Baltic states (I once read Romans loved buying amber from the Baltic for crafting fancy drinking vessels). On another map, the Roman Empire under CI Caesar and Augustus still knows no Anatolia, but in its later location, Asia Minor has extended to cover Mysia, Lydia and Caria, then there are also Galatia, Lycaonia, Lycia and Pamphylia (as a combined territory / conquest), Pontus, Cappadocia etc. Assyria still is West of the Tigris River but has grown considerably as has Syria, partly at the expense of Phoenicia. Judaea has shrunk on its Eastern and Southern borders and now does not include all of the Dead Sea anymore. A later map of towards the end of the Roman Empire shows no Asia Minor anymore but a larger Lydia, Caria and Lycia in its place plus an extended Galatia; Judae has become part Syria, part Palestina.
        The earliest mention of Anatolia I find in this atlas is on a map of the Osman Empire from 1326 to 1683 CE. There only a small bit of Anatolia extends into former Asia Minor, which has mostly been replaced by Germian, Karasi and Saruchan. Then a map of the area in 1550 labels Northern Turkey Anatolia and Southern Turkey Karaman. Then in 1740, Anatolia is determined to be located in the area of former-Asia Minor while the rest of today-Turkey is Karaman and Armenia. A map of Europe under Napoleon I. shows Anatolia to cover Western Turkey and it remains so after the Congress of Vienna, part of Southern today-Turkey then is part of Syria but under Egyptian reign. A pre-WW1 map of 1914 simply labels all of today-Turkey “Osman Empire” with a distinct Armenian territory, but the area is called “Turkey” in a map of the area at the outbreak of WW1 (Turkey joined on 2 November 1914), which it apparently remains to be called from then on. At that point, it covers parts of today-Iraq, -Iran, -Syria, -Armenia, and -Israel; areas which were subjected to the League of Nations after WW1. Afterwards, there are mostly changes on the Eastern borders of today-Turkey.
        I’ve got more detailed atlases among the wrapped-up books, but this one already shows that Anatolia and Asia Minor have never been congruent territories at any point and “Anatolia” appears to be a much, much later term altogether.

  • Per Merriam-Webster, the first definition of “infrastructure” is abstract — the systems and organization of an institution, etc. I’ve been using the second and third definitions, that I’ve heard more often, referring to the physical infrastructure.

    In this case, I’ve been referring to what physical improvements have been made on the Moselle. Whatever these may be seems irrelevant.

    The question seems to me whether there was trade and traffic between Trier and Koblenz via the Moselle valley in ancient times. Whether or not they had ways to deepen the river then seems irrelevant.

    I’ve encountered “weir” often enough in this context; “barrage” is a bit more exotic in this context, and appears used only when referring to rivers that connect directly to the sea.

    The definitions of “roast” and “bake” are the same technically. The American Heritage dictionary says both are cooking with dry heat, typically in an oven. It adds that “bake” is usually mentioned in the context of pastry or bread. As Arlo sagely pointed out, in idiom one never “roasts” a cake.

    My American Heritage dictionary says, “Anatolia. Asia Minor (see).”

    Further on, it says, “Asia Minor. Formerly Anatolia. [then the phonetic spelling] The western peninsula of Asia, lying between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and including Asian Turkey.”

    The way we’re taught here is that the definitions in a dictionary are ordered, the most common meaning being given first.

    So to cite the third definition without acknowledging the others that are understood as more common is incorrect.

    We aren’t in agreement in how you use “colony.” Again, in English usage, when historians write about Roman history, they use “province” for “provincia,” never “colony.” Or they leave it as “provincia.” Often when they refer to a “colonia,” they leave the Latin spelling.

    Although the English words have diverged in meaning from the original Latin, to use “colony” for “provincia” would be too confusing.

    You don’t have to post anything you don’t want to. But a specific reference to a particular atlas, with the name, publisher, publication date, and page number, would be more persuasive.

    Graetz is a classic, certainly. But citing him is a bit like citing Macauley or Herodotus. You won’t find him as assigned reading in any course on Jewish history. Perhaps on Jewish historiography. The standard today is probably still H. H. Ben-Sasson, far more up to date. Paul Johnson’s popular history is also well-regarded.

    Graetz published long before Goitein was even born, certainly long before Goitein’s work on the Cairo Geniza was published. A huge amount of discovery and analysis has been accomplished in Jewish history since Graetz. Difficult to imagine anyone consulting him today as an accurate reference.

    Wow, German universities sound tough, if they “fail” students who cite Wikipedia. Here we just caution them that such citations aren’t acceptable for a formal paper.

    But this is far from a formal academic paper. This is more a casual conversation.

    I’m not particular about the etiquette of citation. Here the MLA handbook is often used, but different disciplines have their own conventions.

    However, without a specific title, author, publisher, and page number, it is very difficult to check any reference. Without such references, it is difficult to verify what you say. And the onus I think is on the person who makes the assertion.

    I apologize if my tone has seemed intemperate at times. It’s easy to err that way when writing online.

    Still interested in hearing why you object to ArtScroll.

  • Thanks for the picture Esme`, its true a picture does say a thousand words and this one speaks volumes, it explains this nazi miscreants extreme low self esteem and need to dominate, if she smells as bad as she looks not even the obscure view through the bottom of a bottle of Jack Daniels will help, I guess it clarifies why her need or search for self worth is met with an eternal quest to reach messianic status. Yes you are right, dialogue is simply a waste of time and her cerebrally challenged or skewed overview of all that she reads is not worth the time or effort to rectify or debate as it is pointless, thanks again I feel comforted with your valued opinion.

    I have only one question left, can you hear her howl at the moon on the Rhineland?

  • Well, yes, a turkey in an oven actually is baked. That’s why the terms are the same. The difference is just the context. The distinctions that you make, regarding moisture in the dough, and the motion of the rotisserie chicken, aren’t present in the definitions in the American Heritage dictionary.

    Perhaps these distinctions are there in German words.

    I have to hold with Arlo in this, as I do in most things.

    By the way, he’s playing in Germany July 29-31, in Eisenach, Siegen, and Nuremberg. You definitely should go see him. Bring a crowd; tell him I sent you. I haven’t seen him perform in more than a couple years now. He’s one of the very greatest. And you can straighten him out on the difference between “roast” and “bake.” He’s very accessible.

    Dictionaries in English give the definitions ordered according to how common the usage is.

    “Colony” in English has a general sense of a population from the mother country transplanted to the new territory. That idea isn’t present either in “province” or in “provincia.”

    Since the word derives from the Latin, to apply a Latinate word to something quite different in Roman history would be confusing, and thus is never done.

    Also, a “colonia” in antiquity was a city with its immediate environs; a “provincia” was a much larger region that included several cities.

    In fact, my edition of the American Heritage puts the Roman definition of the English word “province” in the first position. The current edition, at

    http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary

    drops it down to the seventh definition. Such is the decline in classical education in America.

    Re Graetz, I cited Goitein as one example. There’s plenty of new discovery and analysis in medieval European Jewish history that makes Graetz outdated. For example, new discovery of works by Rabbi Asher b. Yechiel, published as I recall by Mossad HaRav Kook. Daniel Matt’s recent work on the Zohar is another example. Another is Daniel Korobkin’s recent translation of the Kuzari — which had great influence upon central European Jewish thought. Lots of other examples.

    In the early modern period, the era of the founding of Chasidism, Arie Morgenstern’s _Hastening Redemption_ has changed scholarship. Also plenty of other examples.

    The Orthodox among the Jews are far more central in the Jewish community than the Watchtower folks are among Christians. The comparison seems incorrect.

    The reason to mention ArtScroll was to give the earliest commonly accepted “traditional” date for the patriarchs, and thus the beginning of the Jews. Even this date is hundreds of years later than the year the legendary Trebeta founded Trier, according to the Gesta Treverorum. And secular scholars generally place the beginning of the Jews at an even more recent date.

    If Celtic traders encountered a foreign frontier in the vicinity of Koblenz, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was impervious. It’s typical of traders to trade across political boundaries.

    I suppose I should look for Leisering’s atlas at the library. How does Mommsen read in the German? In the English translation, he refers to the Roman province as Asia, not Asia Minor.

    And from the title, he evidently translates the Latin “provincia” as “Provinz.”

    Certainly the American Heritage dictionary says “Asia Minor” and “Anatolia” are simply terms for a region, and refer to the entirety of modern Turkey, excluding Turkey’s European portion. You can also see this at Merriam-Webster.com/dictionary. Or

    http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/Asia%20Minor

    This may simply be a difference between English and German usage.

    • DJStahl, just a side-note in case you’ve been wondering, if your comments include more than two links, they’ll be put into the moderation queue.

      As for the baking and the roasting, I dare say dictionary entries cannot be as comprehensive as encyclopaediae. Unfortunately, I’ve lent out my “Longman Language Activator”, which is a pretty handy dictionary of synonyms combined with a thesaurus; it provides ample annotations on usage, sample sentences and differences in usage in different provenances. As far as I’ve learnt from an American linguistics and an American and a British writing prof, the order of entries in dictionaries do not necessarily reflect commonality of use. I’ve seen dictionaries listing translations in alphabetical order even.

      Nuremberg and Eisenach are pretty far away from me, Siegen is not as far but inconvenient to get to, and the concert is on a Friday night.

      A colony is just what Asia Minor was. As for Mommsen’s use of “Provinz”, consider his historical context – the German Empire had established colonies in Africa but occupied a “Provinz” (Preußische Rheinprovinz) on German-speaking soil, so the connotations of his day must have influenced his decision. “Kolonie” in German can as well mean an enclosed enclave as well as a settlement of one’s country outside the territory of one’s state. Since Roman expansion inevitably came with settlement, the English connotations of colony seem to fit rather well. I think I’d explained above that the Latin “colonia” is not synonymous with the English “colony”; “enclave” might be a more fitting term to translate “colonia”. (Think “Colonia Agrippina” resp. “Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium”). I suppose in a comprehensive essay on the matter, one has to resort to the stylistic approach I laid out above, namely giving the terminus technicus alongside a matching translation or maybe a footnote. It might be worth noting that people in academia in Prussia in those days were expected to kiss up to authorities.

      Well, this post was about Jewish migration, not doctrine, and Graetz remains valid there for what he could know. Archaeology was still in its infancy, mind you, but Graetz reported on popular history / folklore – i.e. the legends and tales – in his “Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden” and my particular / original point of concern was the eastward migration of Jews from the Rhineland and areas west of it due to the Rintfleisch and Armleder pogroms. His “Geschichte der Juden” falls into a different category, but as I’ve said before, the post and many comments employed popular history.

      I find it amusing that the American Heritage Dictionary lists Asia Minor and Anatolia as congruent terms in the link you provided and claims it excludes the European part of Turkey while Anatolia for the most part of the existence of the term as well as Asia Minor as a name for a region mostly respectively exclusively in case of the latter referred to the European part of Turkey.

      Please consider that even Roman trade routes avoided the Germanic territories east of the Rhine River. For one, it wasn’t a friendly area to pass through – hostile people, a landscape hard to travel; the river was wider then than it is now, and it would still take a boat or a keen swimmer to cross over to the other side these days. Hmmmm, to add some colour, here’s a picture I took a few weeks ago (CI Cesar built a bridge across the Rhine River pretty much where the horizon is in that photo): http://bit.ly/Rhine_River

      Would it be fair to say that Orthodox are mainstream among affiliated Jews? And when you say “Orthodox”, do you mean “not quite Conservative but I eat OU” or do you mean “frum”? (Most of my friends over there are Chasidish.)

  • Not that unusual that words can acquire a primary meaning that’s nearly the opposite of their original meaning. Among many examples, consider different meanings across the twentieth century of the word “Palestinian.”…

    The best-known explainer of the spectrum within the Orthodox Jewish world is probably the sociologist Samuel Heilman.

    AFIK, the German gov’t recognized two denominations as of about 1850, the Reform and the Orthodox, after Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch of Frankfurt-am-Main declared his community “austritt.” Today incidentally many prefer “stream” to “denomination.”

    The state of Israel, which has one of the two largest Jewish populations in the world, recognizes only the Orthodox. All army chaplains are Orthodox, and all Jewish marriages are by Orthodox rabbis. Secular Israelis have to go through various maneuvers if they wish to avoid this. The state delegates family law to other recognized religious communities, basing its statutes on the old Ottoman Majlis code, so Muslims are married by Muslim clerics, Christians by Christians, Druse by Druze, etc.

    Rabbi Hirsch preferred the term “Torah Judaism.” Most Orthodox nowadays prefer “shomer-mitswah.”

    Chasidish is one variety of Orthodox.

    Nuremberg and Eisenach far? And here I’d heard so much praise of Germany’s vaunted high-speed rail network. And the concert probably starts around 8 PM in Siegen.

  • hi ms sarke,

    may your tribe/family increase…!!!!!
    i wanted to lash out to ms helen thomas but i i just pity her for whatever worth it is….????

    ronie,
    baguio city 2600
    philippines

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