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Anti-Semitism: the Big Lie
Does God Bless America?
Slavery
Islam: tolerating intolerance?
Respecting God
Military Salute
9/11 Inside Job?
Seeking Jesus
The Cult of Christ
Desecration
Religious indoctrination is child abuse
I am prepared to accept that it exists as a folk-memory in many parts of central and eastern Europe. It is something that people are brought up with, distrusting Jews even if they have never knowingly met a Jew. In parts of Europe where the Nazis were particularly efficient Jews are as much of a mythological figure as witches, something you don't expect to see.
Spontaneous and natural resentment against Jews just does not happen very much these days in Britain. Not the natural resentment that can be triggered by immigrants, outsiders, “bogus asylum seekers” and the like. Such resentment is perfectly understandable. (Why do otherwise bright people have difficulty understanding the difference between the concept of “understandable” and the concept of “excusable”?) When people feel threatened and there is an easily identifiable out group close to hand it is quite understandable that they can become a focus for resentment. A perfect example of this is feminism, which seeks to blame all the problems and insecurities of women upon men, refuses to see difference of condition as anything other than evidence of malign conspiracy and dresses its own fears up with its own version of science, which is a science that is subservient to ideology. Feminism is an evil perversion of science in just the same way as the racism of the Nazi era was. There is no moral difference between “Nordic science” and “Feminist Science”, perhaps one day this will be recognized widely.
Any group that can be defined can be hated. Definition is step one towards oppression. However it does not follow that everything that can be defined as alien must be defined as hated. As far as I can see most of my contemporaries can identify Jews as a group, ascribe particular characteristics to the group and use this experience/prejudice to make decisions. And that is as far as it goes. There is no fear or hatred of Jews. Only the arseholes who want to play at being Neo-Nazis make anything of anti-Semitism, and these groups are tiny in size, if ever they have a march it is always very short and/or circular; their shows of strength are as impressive as the yapping of Yorkshire terriers. I cannot see there ever being a time in which Jews were not identifiable and so there will always be the idea that anti-Semitism is rife, just under the surface. But if that is true then it is equally true to say that the English are about to go to war with the Scots and have redheaded people stuffed into gas chambers. Resentment of Jews is as low as it could possibly be without actually hypnotizing people into not noticing the differences between people.
There is some violence aimed at Jews in Europe, much of it comes from working class Muslims. The liberal do-gooders don't like to acknowledge the fact that minorities can be despised and picked on by other minorities, it offends their sense of what's right (other peoples) and what's wrong (people like their bloody parents).
The problems of Israel have little to do with hatred of Jews, racism or anti-Semitism. The problems of Israel are caused by Zionism. Zionism is the God given imperative to create a Land for the People of Israel. God doesn't make it easy by leaving the land uninhabited or by telling the people that are living there that they are no longer welcome, that is down to the Jews themselves.
Zionism is an absurd idea to be allowed to go unchallenged. A people claim they have a mandate from God to occupy a certain land and the rest of the world listens to them. Barmy.
The bulk of the Jewish people left Palestine in 70 CE and other people moved in and made their home there. Over nineteen centuries ago. That is a long time ago. In that time the ancestors of many people who are now living in England, the USA and Australia were living along the North Sea coast between Holland and Germany. What would be the response of the world if I declared that God wanted the Anglo Saxon people to go home and reclaim their lands, evicting the people living there now and putting them in concentration camps? Derision, to put it mildly. But what is the great difference between this obvious crackpot idea and Zionism? Can a claim of Holy authority and sincere religious conviction really excuse such a ridiculous idea?
Where does the idea that a people deserve a homeland come from? Haven't we buried the idea that people could walk into a land and dispossess the original inhabitants and create their own state? Perhaps it is no surprise that the only ally that Israel has is the USA, because a belief in the legitimacy of such tactics helps their people sleep more comfortably in their beds. The British sometimes complain that the Germans hog all the sunbeds round the Spanish holiday swimming pools by putting towels on them in the middle of the night but that is nothing compared to walking out on a country, emigrating several more times and finally flying in with a Brooklyn accent and saying to the Arabs that have been there on the same land for centuries that have come to reclaim their property.
What part does the persecution of Jews down the ages play in this tragedy? The general public as a rule does not care to excuse great crimes today because of the traumatic effects of a troubled past when concerned with individuals (you were abused as a child? I'm so sorry, carry on raping me...) so why are we more inclined to listen to such pleas when they refer to the traumatic effects on previous generations of a people? It makes little sense to me. Two wrongs do not make a right, and a wrong done your grandfather can hardly excuse your crimes today.
Since the Jews left Palestine whole new cultures have arisen there. New people have built new civilization and culture which to them is as sacred and traditional as that enjoyed by the Jews. The majority of the Jews have been out of Palestine for more than three and a half times longer than there have been any people of European or African descent in America. Would the Mayor of New York hand back Manhattan and put all the non-native American people in concentration camps?
Why is it different for Jews? Is the answer simply down to the idea that Jews worship the same God as Americans and the Palestinians don't? If God says his people deserve a land then they do, end of story. Is that it?
I admit it, I don't understand Zionism, the Jewish problem or the Palestinian problem. To me it looks like everybody else is simply assuming the bit that explains why Zionism actually makes sense was taught to the rest of the class when they were in the toilet, they can't explain it but they seem sure there probably is a good explanation, there has to be, somebody would have noticed... Everybody else acts as if it makes sense, they can't all be wrong, can they? Maybe they can. Would you care to explain it to me?
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Israel has never been humanity's Top Nation despite the claim of being God's chosen people. For a couple of decades lost way back in the mists of time she managed to be reckoned with among the great powers of the age, but never numero uno. All she has to show for that is one rather modest wall that seems to be in permanent need of repointing that doesn't hold a candle to the ruins of the truly great civilizations. Are temples built by men or gods? By either reckoning the Yahwehists are in the second league. |