The Jews of Iran and the 'destruction of the state of Israel'
sliverstain
Posts: 340
First, hello all, first time poster today, long time lurker. Just couldn't hold back anymore!
I start this thread as a continuation of a post i made in another, and it concerns this misnomer about Hezbollah, Islamists, whatever, wanting the "destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish Peoples."
There is alot of bullshit spouted by our politicians in support of the Israeli actions in Lebanon. Mostly it comes down to this. Hezbollah, the Jihadists, Hamas, Iran etc, al want the destruction of the state of Israel. The inmplication of this, and most commentators actualy easily confuse the two, is that this destruction of the stae means the destruction of the jewish people. Trust me, it doesn't.
Can anybody show me where any Islamic leader has stated their wish for the destruction of the Jewish people.
Do not ever confuse "People" with "The State".
The State of Israel is a bastard, western enforced anomaly. Jews and Muslims, and with Arab peoples before them, lived together in peace, harmony and respect for 3000 years.
This conflict has its roots in the Zionist dream of Eretz Israel from the late 19th century.
The destruction of the state of the Israel is therefore a very valid claim. If Hezbollah, as people say, supported by Iran, as people say, wanted to wipe the jews from the earth, then maybe they would start with the Jewish members of the Iranian parliament, or the wider jewish community in Teheran and Iran. Surely they would, wouldn't they?
I want the government of my country dismantled and destroyed. But I don't want one single countryman to die because of it.
Nation states are cancers on humanity, herding and shepherding mankind into little corners from where we are sent to fight and die athen procreate and consume.
There's lots of information out there, but heres a snippet of what Jewish life is like in Teheran. Yes, that hptbed of evil and anti-semite extremism (sic) has a thriving , bustling Jewish community. The largest in the Middle East, after Israel itself.
IRAN: Life of Jews Living in Iran
Iran remains home to Jewish enclave.
By Barbara Demick
TEHRAN - The Jewish women in the back rows of the synagogue wear long garments in the traditional Iranian style, but instead of chadors, their heads are covered with cheerful, flowered scarves. The boys in their skullcaps, with Hebrew prayer books tucked under their arms, scamper down the aisles to grab the best spots near the lush, turquoise Persian carpet of the altar. This is Friday night, Shabbat - Iranian style, and the synagogue in an affluent neighborhood of North Tehran is filled to capacity with more than 400 worshipers.
It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this most virulent anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country.
While Jewish communities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria have all but vanished, Iran is home to 25,000 - some here say 35,000 - Jews. The Jewish population is less than half the number that lived here before the Islamic revolution of 1979. But the Jews have tried to compensate for their diminishing numbers by adopting a new religious fervor.
''The funny thing is that before the Islamic revolution, you would see maybe 20 old men in the synagogue,'' whispers Nahit Eliyason, 48, as she climbs over four other women to find one of the few vacant seats. ''Now the place is full. You can barely find a seat.'' Parvis Yashaya, a film producer who heads Tehran's Jewish community, adds: ''We are smaller, but we are stronger in some ways.''
Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools. It has two kosher restaurants, and a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles, its reading room decorated with a photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khomeini protection
Iran's Jewish community is confronted by contradictions. Many of the prayers uttered in synagogue, for instance, refer to the desire to see Jerusalem again. Yet there is no postal service or telephone contact with Israel, and any Iranian who dares travel to Israel faces imprisonment and passport confiscation. ''We are Jews, not Zionists. We are a religious community, not a political one,'' Yashaya said.
Before the revolution, Jews were well-represented among Iran's business elite, holding key posts in the oil industry, banking and law, as well as in the traditional bazaar. The wave of anti-Israeli sentiment that swept Iran during the revolution, as well as large-scale confiscations of private wealth, sent thousands of the more affluent Jews fleeing to the United States or Israel. Those remaining lived in fear of pogroms, or massacres.
But Khomeini met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a ''fatwa'' decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Similar edicts also protect Iran's tiny Christian minority.
Just as it radically transformed Muslim society, the revolution changed the Jews. Families that had been secular in the 1970s started keeping kosher and strictly observing rules against driving on Shabbat. They stopped going to restaurants, cafes and cinemas - many such establishments were closed down - and the synagogue perforce became the focal point of their social lives.
Jewish school in Shiraz
Iranian Jews say they socialize far less with Muslims now than before the revolution. As a whole, they occupy their own separate space within the rigid confines of the Islamic republic, a protected yet precarious niche.
Jewish women, like Muslim women, are required by law to keep their heads covered, although most eschew the chador for a simple scarf. But Jews, unlike Muslims, can keep small flasks of home-brewed wine or arrack to drink within the privacy of their homes - in theory, for religious purposes. Some Hebrew schools are coed, and men and women dance with each other at weddings, practices strictly forbidden for Muslims.
''Sometimes I think they are kinder to the Jews than they are to themselves. ... If we are gathered in a house, and the family is having a ceremony with wine or the music is playing too loud, if they find out we are Jews, they don't bother us so much,'' Eliyason said.
''Everywhere in the world there are people who don't like Jews. In England, they draw swastikas on Jewish graves. I don't think that Iran is more dangerous for Jews than other places.''
Some problems exist
Testimony from Jews who have left Iran suggests more serious problems than those cited by Jews inside the country. In written testimony to a congressional subcommittee in February 1996, an Iranian Jew complained of being imprisoned for two years on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel. He also said his arrest was preceded by harassment at work and pressure to convert to Islam. Inside Iran, Jews say that they frequently receive alarmed telephone calls and letters from relatives in the United States concerned about their well-being, but that they themselves do not feel physically endangered. Their major complaint is the inability to visit family in Israel, and what they say is inadequate funding for Hebrew schools, which are administered by the Iranian Ministry of Education.
Although many Jews hold jobs in government ministries or within state-owned firms, they say they are unlikely to rise to top positions. In addition, Iran's strict Islamic law, or ''sharia,'' contains many discriminatory provisions toward non-Muslims.
Jews 'part of Iran'
Still, Jewish leaders say their community has far stronger roots in Iran than other Middle East Jewish communities, which were virtually eradicated by massive immigration to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. Esther, the biblical Jewish queen who saved her people from persecution in the fifth century B.C., is reputed to be buried in Hamadan, in western Iran. The grave of the Old Testament prophet Daniel lies in southwestern Iran.
''We are different from the Jews of the diaspora. You see the name 'Persia' in the Old Testament almost as often as the name 'Israel.' The Iranian Jews are very much part of Iran,'' said Gad Naim, 60, who runs the old-age home in Tehran. Iranian Jews trace their history to the reign of Persia's King Cyrus. As the Bible tells it, Cyrus conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C., liberated the Jews from captivity, and raised funds for the rebuilding of their destroyed temple in Jerusalem. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem at that time was accompanied by a large migration to the lands that were then Persia, and now Iran.
In Esfahan, an Iranian city fabled for its intricate Persian tile work, the first Persian Jews were settled under the reign of Cyrus. The ancient city was once known as Dar-Al-Yahud (''House of the Jews'' in Farsi), and as late as the 19th century it was the home of 100,000 Jews, according to Elias Haronian, head of Esfahan's Jewish community.
Today, the city is a repository of Jewish lore. It has a cemetery with Jewish graves 2,000 years old, stunning synagogues and Jewish mausoleums with tiles to rival those of the mosques - but a population of only 1,500 Jews.
What happened to the Jews?
Some converted centuries ago. Indeed, in Muslim villages surrounding Esfahan, a distinctive Jewish dialect of Farsi is spoken, and Muslims still follow certain Jewish rituals, such as lighting candles on Fridays. Others left for Tehran, or for California or New York. Some went to Israel.
''It is not that life is so difficult for us, but a minority is a minority... We are like a glass of water in the sea,'' Haronian said. Haronian, a petroleum engineer, worries less about persecution than about the faltering Iranian economy, the lack of job opportunities for his four children, and the shortage of suitable Jewish spouses. ''There are very few Jewish boys here. There are so few of us,'' said his 17-year-old daughter, Shirin. At Esfahan's Hebrew school, students confided that they are deeply torn between a love of their homeland and a desire to escape from the stifling isolation of Iran.
The decision to stay or go may rest largely on Mohammad Khatami, a relatively progressive cleric who won a landslide election May 23 as the next president of Iran. Although he is virulently anti-Israel in his public comments, Khatami was considered sympathetic to the Jews during his term as Iran's minister of culture and Islamic guidance. He paid a campaign visit to a social club for Jewish women in Tehran. ''We expect more freedom, an easier life, not just for Jews, for everybody,'' said Farangis Hassidim, an administrator of Tehran's Jewish hospital.
Not everyone in the Jewish community favors liberalization of Iranian society. Arizel Levihim, 20, a prospective Hebrew teacher, said Judaism has fared better within the confines of Iran's strictly religious society. ''I believe it is good for women to keep their head covered. I think it is good to restrict relations between boys and girls,'' Levihim said. ''I agree with the ideals of the Islamic republic. These are Jewish values too."
Source:-
http://www.sephardicstudies.org
Also;- http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iranjews.html
http://www.virtual.co.il/communities/wjcbook/
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/communities/comm_reg_mideast.html#
I start this thread as a continuation of a post i made in another, and it concerns this misnomer about Hezbollah, Islamists, whatever, wanting the "destruction of the state of Israel and Jewish Peoples."
There is alot of bullshit spouted by our politicians in support of the Israeli actions in Lebanon. Mostly it comes down to this. Hezbollah, the Jihadists, Hamas, Iran etc, al want the destruction of the state of Israel. The inmplication of this, and most commentators actualy easily confuse the two, is that this destruction of the stae means the destruction of the jewish people. Trust me, it doesn't.
Can anybody show me where any Islamic leader has stated their wish for the destruction of the Jewish people.
Do not ever confuse "People" with "The State".
The State of Israel is a bastard, western enforced anomaly. Jews and Muslims, and with Arab peoples before them, lived together in peace, harmony and respect for 3000 years.
This conflict has its roots in the Zionist dream of Eretz Israel from the late 19th century.
The destruction of the state of the Israel is therefore a very valid claim. If Hezbollah, as people say, supported by Iran, as people say, wanted to wipe the jews from the earth, then maybe they would start with the Jewish members of the Iranian parliament, or the wider jewish community in Teheran and Iran. Surely they would, wouldn't they?
I want the government of my country dismantled and destroyed. But I don't want one single countryman to die because of it.
Nation states are cancers on humanity, herding and shepherding mankind into little corners from where we are sent to fight and die athen procreate and consume.
There's lots of information out there, but heres a snippet of what Jewish life is like in Teheran. Yes, that hptbed of evil and anti-semite extremism (sic) has a thriving , bustling Jewish community. The largest in the Middle East, after Israel itself.
IRAN: Life of Jews Living in Iran
Iran remains home to Jewish enclave.
By Barbara Demick
TEHRAN - The Jewish women in the back rows of the synagogue wear long garments in the traditional Iranian style, but instead of chadors, their heads are covered with cheerful, flowered scarves. The boys in their skullcaps, with Hebrew prayer books tucked under their arms, scamper down the aisles to grab the best spots near the lush, turquoise Persian carpet of the altar. This is Friday night, Shabbat - Iranian style, and the synagogue in an affluent neighborhood of North Tehran is filled to capacity with more than 400 worshipers.
It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this most virulent anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country.
While Jewish communities in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria have all but vanished, Iran is home to 25,000 - some here say 35,000 - Jews. The Jewish population is less than half the number that lived here before the Islamic revolution of 1979. But the Jews have tried to compensate for their diminishing numbers by adopting a new religious fervor.
''The funny thing is that before the Islamic revolution, you would see maybe 20 old men in the synagogue,'' whispers Nahit Eliyason, 48, as she climbs over four other women to find one of the few vacant seats. ''Now the place is full. You can barely find a seat.'' Parvis Yashaya, a film producer who heads Tehran's Jewish community, adds: ''We are smaller, but we are stronger in some ways.''
Tehran has 11 functioning synagogues, many of them with Hebrew schools. It has two kosher restaurants, and a Jewish hospital, an old-age home and a cemetery. There is a Jewish representative in the Iranian parliament. There is a Jewish library with 20,000 titles, its reading room decorated with a photograph of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Khomeini protection
Iran's Jewish community is confronted by contradictions. Many of the prayers uttered in synagogue, for instance, refer to the desire to see Jerusalem again. Yet there is no postal service or telephone contact with Israel, and any Iranian who dares travel to Israel faces imprisonment and passport confiscation. ''We are Jews, not Zionists. We are a religious community, not a political one,'' Yashaya said.
Before the revolution, Jews were well-represented among Iran's business elite, holding key posts in the oil industry, banking and law, as well as in the traditional bazaar. The wave of anti-Israeli sentiment that swept Iran during the revolution, as well as large-scale confiscations of private wealth, sent thousands of the more affluent Jews fleeing to the United States or Israel. Those remaining lived in fear of pogroms, or massacres.
But Khomeini met with the Jewish community upon his return from exile in Paris and issued a ''fatwa'' decreeing that the Jews were to be protected. Similar edicts also protect Iran's tiny Christian minority.
Just as it radically transformed Muslim society, the revolution changed the Jews. Families that had been secular in the 1970s started keeping kosher and strictly observing rules against driving on Shabbat. They stopped going to restaurants, cafes and cinemas - many such establishments were closed down - and the synagogue perforce became the focal point of their social lives.
Jewish school in Shiraz
Iranian Jews say they socialize far less with Muslims now than before the revolution. As a whole, they occupy their own separate space within the rigid confines of the Islamic republic, a protected yet precarious niche.
Jewish women, like Muslim women, are required by law to keep their heads covered, although most eschew the chador for a simple scarf. But Jews, unlike Muslims, can keep small flasks of home-brewed wine or arrack to drink within the privacy of their homes - in theory, for religious purposes. Some Hebrew schools are coed, and men and women dance with each other at weddings, practices strictly forbidden for Muslims.
''Sometimes I think they are kinder to the Jews than they are to themselves. ... If we are gathered in a house, and the family is having a ceremony with wine or the music is playing too loud, if they find out we are Jews, they don't bother us so much,'' Eliyason said.
''Everywhere in the world there are people who don't like Jews. In England, they draw swastikas on Jewish graves. I don't think that Iran is more dangerous for Jews than other places.''
Some problems exist
Testimony from Jews who have left Iran suggests more serious problems than those cited by Jews inside the country. In written testimony to a congressional subcommittee in February 1996, an Iranian Jew complained of being imprisoned for two years on trumped-up charges of spying for Israel. He also said his arrest was preceded by harassment at work and pressure to convert to Islam. Inside Iran, Jews say that they frequently receive alarmed telephone calls and letters from relatives in the United States concerned about their well-being, but that they themselves do not feel physically endangered. Their major complaint is the inability to visit family in Israel, and what they say is inadequate funding for Hebrew schools, which are administered by the Iranian Ministry of Education.
Although many Jews hold jobs in government ministries or within state-owned firms, they say they are unlikely to rise to top positions. In addition, Iran's strict Islamic law, or ''sharia,'' contains many discriminatory provisions toward non-Muslims.
Jews 'part of Iran'
Still, Jewish leaders say their community has far stronger roots in Iran than other Middle East Jewish communities, which were virtually eradicated by massive immigration to Israel in the 1940s and 1950s. Esther, the biblical Jewish queen who saved her people from persecution in the fifth century B.C., is reputed to be buried in Hamadan, in western Iran. The grave of the Old Testament prophet Daniel lies in southwestern Iran.
''We are different from the Jews of the diaspora. You see the name 'Persia' in the Old Testament almost as often as the name 'Israel.' The Iranian Jews are very much part of Iran,'' said Gad Naim, 60, who runs the old-age home in Tehran. Iranian Jews trace their history to the reign of Persia's King Cyrus. As the Bible tells it, Cyrus conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C., liberated the Jews from captivity, and raised funds for the rebuilding of their destroyed temple in Jerusalem. The return of the Jews to Jerusalem at that time was accompanied by a large migration to the lands that were then Persia, and now Iran.
In Esfahan, an Iranian city fabled for its intricate Persian tile work, the first Persian Jews were settled under the reign of Cyrus. The ancient city was once known as Dar-Al-Yahud (''House of the Jews'' in Farsi), and as late as the 19th century it was the home of 100,000 Jews, according to Elias Haronian, head of Esfahan's Jewish community.
Today, the city is a repository of Jewish lore. It has a cemetery with Jewish graves 2,000 years old, stunning synagogues and Jewish mausoleums with tiles to rival those of the mosques - but a population of only 1,500 Jews.
What happened to the Jews?
Some converted centuries ago. Indeed, in Muslim villages surrounding Esfahan, a distinctive Jewish dialect of Farsi is spoken, and Muslims still follow certain Jewish rituals, such as lighting candles on Fridays. Others left for Tehran, or for California or New York. Some went to Israel.
''It is not that life is so difficult for us, but a minority is a minority... We are like a glass of water in the sea,'' Haronian said. Haronian, a petroleum engineer, worries less about persecution than about the faltering Iranian economy, the lack of job opportunities for his four children, and the shortage of suitable Jewish spouses. ''There are very few Jewish boys here. There are so few of us,'' said his 17-year-old daughter, Shirin. At Esfahan's Hebrew school, students confided that they are deeply torn between a love of their homeland and a desire to escape from the stifling isolation of Iran.
The decision to stay or go may rest largely on Mohammad Khatami, a relatively progressive cleric who won a landslide election May 23 as the next president of Iran. Although he is virulently anti-Israel in his public comments, Khatami was considered sympathetic to the Jews during his term as Iran's minister of culture and Islamic guidance. He paid a campaign visit to a social club for Jewish women in Tehran. ''We expect more freedom, an easier life, not just for Jews, for everybody,'' said Farangis Hassidim, an administrator of Tehran's Jewish hospital.
Not everyone in the Jewish community favors liberalization of Iranian society. Arizel Levihim, 20, a prospective Hebrew teacher, said Judaism has fared better within the confines of Iran's strictly religious society. ''I believe it is good for women to keep their head covered. I think it is good to restrict relations between boys and girls,'' Levihim said. ''I agree with the ideals of the Islamic republic. These are Jewish values too."
Source:-
http://www.sephardicstudies.org
Also;- http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/iranjews.html
http://www.virtual.co.il/communities/wjcbook/
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/communities/comm_reg_mideast.html#
The world's greatest empires progress through this sequence:From bondage to spiritual faith; spiritual faith to great courage; courage to liberty;liberty to abundance;abundance to selfishness; selfishness to complacency;complacency to apathy;apathy to dependence;dependency back again into bondage
Post edited by Unknown User on
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Comments
How about a simple logic? Iran said it wants to wipe Israel off the world map. To wipe off a state = to destroy it, and that includes the people inside (not only Jewish). Hizbullah said they want to destroy us, and so far they are doing a good job by shooting missiles upon Israeli civilians.
I don't know what you were trying to prove, but it was really LAME. Million articales won't chage the fact Hizbullah is shooting over my house as we speak.
And I quote; Can anybody show me where any Islamic leader has stated their wish for the destruction of the Jewish people.
Can you?
You don;t grasp the concept of the state, do you? A 'state' is not the people. An example. The allies intended to destroy the Nazi "state", not the German peoples.
Hezbollah, Iran, etc, want the political state of Israel dismantled. Not the people killed. To remove a form of government does not mean killing those that live under that government.
Where do Hezbollah state that they want to wipe out the Jewish people?
And a few fireworks flying over your head does not seem to me the work of an organisation that wishes to wipe out "Jewish" people.
The only people ever to have wanted to wipe out the Jewish people, have been Christians.
In further response, you seem to have a me me complex. I state a valid argument and or article, and you relate that to your personal situation. Please stay on topic and add to a discussion, not sideline it and bring a personal attack into it.
Its not big, not funny, and it really isn't clever.
Maybe there are moderators around who wil adhere to the rule sof the board. No personal attacks, constructive discussion only.
Personal attacks, ha? Is that your excuse or answer for anyone who don't agree with you?
The president of Iran said many times before Israel should be wiped off. Try to serach the forum, the last time he said such thing was about 1 week ago. And again, Hizbullah ia shooting me & all northern Israel's civilians in order to kill us, I don't think I need to read any article who claims differently.
You use articles, I use reality outside my shelter's window. If you can't respect that - fine, but don't accuse me for "personal attacks" for nothing.
You use the term YOU, and LAME, after disparaging, with no constructive riposte, a valid, well sourced aricle and opinion.
Hence, it was a personal attack.
Where, and when did he say the Jewish peoples should be wiped off?
How many genocides and crimes against the Jews have Islamists committed?
How many have Christians?
Where in history have the Jewish people been welcomed and protected more than any other? Not Europe. Not Russia. Not the USA.
Have Jews and Muslims, and arabs before them, not lived together peaceably for 3000 years? Does the Qu'ran not say that the Jewish people are of the same "good book"? Does the Qu'ran say that the Jews and Muslims are from the same 12 tribes? Can you not see the suffering inflicted and instigated by the Western, white, Christian powers over the last 120 years or so, since Oil was discovered in arabia, since the west needed a colonial outpost in the region?
No, your POINT was lame, not you. Don't put words into my mouth.
So, you cannot riposte with wel thought or researched critique, just brush it off as LAME.
Mods?
And I quote;
The BBS environment is important...and that's because it's not ok to antagonize and abuse each other while discussing issues...you know, that "reasoned debate" part of the Forum Description?
What about adressing that thought to your self? I read your article, but I really can't find a reason to respond differently to its main claim while Hizbullah is trying to kill me as we speak, and the president of Iran keep saying Israel should be wiped of (again, search the forum, the last time was 1 week ago). The only one with dis-respect here is you, accusing me for "lack of ability to replay after a well thought" and for "personal attacks" just because you couldn't agree with me. Take a good look at yourself before accusing others for you own actions.
As for me - This "discussion" with you is over.
Search a forum? What, do well respected political analysts / commentators who are a dab hand at translating Persian post on here?
The state of Israel is not the people of Israel. The state of israel is on a map, not the jewish people. You really need to begin to understand the differing concepts. Can you do that?
So, using any respected, non-partisan source you want, where did the President of Iran say he wanted to wip the Jewish 'people' from the face of the earth?
As for the rockets firing at you, thank your lucky stars you can live in your home, find a shelter, and not be evacuated north of where another nations military tells you to go, as is happening to the peoples twenty or thirty miles ahead of you. And really, all your crying and whining in the world pales into insignificance to what is being suffered by those same peoples just north of you, but on the wrong side of a border.
http://www.mehrnews.com/fa/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=268324
But no, they're THE AXIS OF EVIL !! The ROOT OF EXTREMISM !!
I cant believe people fall for this shit. We live in a country half full of f*cking idiots.
The concept of the state as a repressive institution, apart from the people, is a somewhat reductive one, which doesn't always register the complexities of how institutions and individuals work in society to construct the ideology of the state as the people. The point is worth arguing, especially since Wikipedia definitions of the state are a bit sketchy.
If you haven't done so already, I recommend you read Benedict Anderson on nation-state formation and "imagined communities": the state is promoted as, in principle, a perceived representative sum of its peoples, and not just the ideological state apparatus organised to maintain government. Now, it might be the people in power pushing this idea, but the belief relies on active rather than passive acceptance from the people, who see governments, the army, the law and other means of control as representative of their societal needs for maintaining "the good of the people". Unquestionably, the idea of the state relies on continuing dominant concepts of collective national identity, but this sort of nation-state formation depends on the people to say yes, we are part of the nation. (By the nation-state, I don't mean the nationalist state, if you follow.) A state is, in sum, the working concept both of an institution and its supporters, who imagine themselves part of a collective identity bound perhaps by ideology or religion, a will toward collective geographical and socio-economic expansion (the Imperial mindset), or through the maintainance of a national infrastructure.
When you say that the allies tried to attack the Nazi state, rather than the German peoples, you have to recall the utter devastation inflicted upon urban Berlin in the final weeks of the war in Europe. Such conceptual differences as "Nazi" and "German", or "Israeli state" and "Jewish person", are easily abstracted if you merely take the state to be some governmental superstructure that sits above society. Yet state ideology exists not as an abstract ideal but in the very physical infrastructure of town planning, communications, water systems, fuel depots, hospitals, TV stations. To take out a state inevitably involves harming the people by destroying their actual way of life, the way of the state.
I've not an agenda here, politically. I'm just pointing out that state ideology depends on the co-operation of the people - whether through brainwashing and coercion or through genuine, active participation; it's difficult to stay where the state finishes and the people begin.
Great post. Can you send me the York Notes edition for it though ;-)
Simply, the jewish peoples lived in the area now known as Israel, with Muslims, Arabs, for 3000 years. When the west imposed borders and nationhood upon that area, in favour of one group over another, through the 1948 creation of the "State of Israel," the west rubber stamped the beginning of the oppression of the Palestinians / Arabs we see in that area to this very day.
Also, I think that there isn't a Government in the Us or UK, (perhaps maybe the Attlee Government of 1945-51) that actually aimed to serve the people as a whole, rather than the rich elite of those 2 countries.
Town planning, communications, water systems, fuel depots, hospitals, TV stations would exist with or without government, the 'state'. DId these things exist prior to 1948? Could they not ever exist without the 'state' of israel.
It is the 'state' of Israel that Arabs and Muslims have a problem with , as it is the 'state' which oppresses. Not the Jewish peoples.
State ideology does not, nor has it ever, in the West at least for the last 150 years, depended on the co-operation of the people. It has depended on the wealthy minority, the masters of capital, upon a failed system of masked 'democracy' which is no more than the choice of evil over lesser evil.
It is akin to saying I am responsible for the Iraqi war just because I live and vote in the US. What real choice do the people have, outside a bloody revolution and armed insurrection?
Geez, if I just would have known that Iran, Syria, Hamas, Jihadists, and Hezzbollah wanted the destruction of ISRAEL, and not the destruction of the the PEOPLE OF ISRAEL, I would have been a proponet of suicide bombers, Katyusha rockets from the get go. :rolleyes:
High Traffic ART EZI FTJ JSR KPA PCD SYN ULX VLB YHF
Low Traffic CIO MIW
Non Traffic ABC BAY FDU GBZ HNC NDP OEM ROV TMS ZWL
Yes, its a simple concept even those of you out in the boondocks should be able to understand ;-)
I hate the American government and all it stands for, all it has done, oppression, exploitation, murder, international interference, continued support for the destruction of the environment, and I want it dismantled and responsibility given back to the people. I don't want any Americans to die doing that.
Muslims, Arabs, would like the state of Israel and all it stands for, all it has done, oppression, murder, international interference, continued support for the destruction of the palestinians, and they want it dismantled and the region turned back to how it was 60 years ago. They don't want any Israelis to die doing that.
it is this simplification of the issue that i mentioned in another thread that allows people to accept the horrors happening in that region ...
it is much easier to pit "good" vs. "evil" where one side can do no wrong and another can do no right ...
But take post-colonial nation states. Yes, they're often run by a small "elite" who were educated by the former colonisers and now inherit a country, with all the education to speak of economic prosperity, of reclaiming the spoils of the land for the people, but none of the capital (at least for several decades after independence). What ties people together collectively to see themselves as a nation and as part of the sum of a nation-state, given that these crooks are running the show? It's the "us" vs. "them" idea. We saw it in the Irish Free State after independence, we saw it in the Congo/Zaire/Congo ... people say, ah, the colonisers are gone, we must define our nation-state for ourselves. Of course, the bourgeois elite works to protect its own interests; it's always done that. But wrapped up in the idea of any "new nation-state" is the idea of a collective need to protect itself ontologically from further invasion and attack. Which brings us back to the main point of the thread, which somebody else must continue. I'm off, for now.
And pigs can fly. Smarten up. I can sit here and post all day on the statements of Muslim clerics, the Hamas charter, things said by Hezbollah, etc. etc. etc. that talk about such nice things as:
"The Promise of the Stone and the Tree." It tells a story about Abu Hurayra, one of the Prophet's companions who quoted the Prophet as saying: "The hour [the Day of Judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. A Jew will [then] hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: 'O Muslim, O slave of Allah! there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!' - except for the gharqad tree, for it is one of the trees of the Jews."
Oh yeah. Their only problem is with Israel. Pullease.
Irvine 1992, Las Vegas 1993, Mountain View 1994, San Diego 1995, Los Angeles 1996, Los Angeles 1998, Moutain View 1999, San Bernadino 2000, Los Angeles 2000, Irvine 2003, Irvine 2003, Moutain View 2003, Santa Barbara 2003, San Diego 2006, Los Angeles 2006, Santa Barbara 2006
What's the difference between them and Pat Robertson and the thousands of other small town evangilical idiots who preach the same thing in reverse? Why do you ignore them?
You've got to be fucking kidding me. Its bad on this board but THIS is fucking hilarious!
I think the guy does it to get a reaction, honestly. No one could possibly be this ignorant in real life. I'd put him on my ignore list, but I am afraid I'll miss someone else's constructive responses in the threads he starts.
You have racist tendancies to brianjd. What race are you?
State and People are seperate by work hand-in-hand. Shiraz said on another thread that the people aren't responsible for the government (a.k.a the State). That means they are seperate in her mind, and she is an Israeli citizen. If they are not seperate, then we must blame the Israeli citizens for their government's actions. That doesn't mean all Jews either, I won't blame Jews living in Iran. Just Israelis, big difference.
Irvine 1992, Las Vegas 1993, Mountain View 1994, San Diego 1995, Los Angeles 1996, Los Angeles 1998, Moutain View 1999, San Bernadino 2000, Los Angeles 2000, Irvine 2003, Irvine 2003, Moutain View 2003, Santa Barbara 2003, San Diego 2006, Los Angeles 2006, Santa Barbara 2006
Irvine 1992, Las Vegas 1993, Mountain View 1994, San Diego 1995, Los Angeles 1996, Los Angeles 1998, Moutain View 1999, San Bernadino 2000, Los Angeles 2000, Irvine 2003, Irvine 2003, Moutain View 2003, Santa Barbara 2003, San Diego 2006, Los Angeles 2006, Santa Barbara 2006
Irvine 1992, Las Vegas 1993, Mountain View 1994, San Diego 1995, Los Angeles 1996, Los Angeles 1998, Moutain View 1999, San Bernadino 2000, Los Angeles 2000, Irvine 2003, Irvine 2003, Moutain View 2003, Santa Barbara 2003, San Diego 2006, Los Angeles 2006, Santa Barbara 2006
WTF? You putting words in my mouth now brianjd? You must be, because I'm not an American and I wouldn't say I am. All of that is bullshit, you lying bastard. You should be banned permanently from this board for that dishonest quote. I originally respected you as a fierce opposition to my beliefs. Now I know you are nothing by a cheat and a lier. I can take a lot of verbal abuse, but this, this really pisses me off.