Posted by panch from pool0168.cvx25-bradley.dialup.earthlink.net (209.179.216.168) on Saturday, July 20, 2002 at 10:06AM :
Jeff sez.....
: *** I'll tell you that I think the Jews are
: a very resilient and educated people on the
: whole. On the other hand, I disagree with
: many of the policies of the State of Israel,
: but I make it a point to distinguish between
: "Jews", "Israelis", and
: "Zionists".
++A fellow from Israel responds...and I stick my nose in....
OK. This is a very sensitive subject. I recently keep hearing all those people
who think that Zionisim is some sort of racism. I must say that this is far
from the truth. Zionism and racism have nothing in common. To understand that,
one have to understand what zionism really is.
In short, zionism is the belief that Jews should return to and live in Israel,
the Promised Land. As a historical movement, Zionism began in western Europe
in the late nineteenth century. It quickly became in important in eastern
Europe as well.
+++That's true. It did start in Western Europe, though it was mostly popular in Eastern Europe.
Tens of thousands of Jews took up this belief and thousands
immigrated to Israel (than called Palestine by the british).
++++One can't help but interject that saying it was "caled Palestine by the British" has the sound of the beginning of an effort to de-legitimize the country. It became called "Israel" by the Jews. What's in a name? Plenty. If you're trying to imply that one group has any more right to call a country by whatever name it chooses. Either everyone has a right to call a country what they want to...or no one does.
By the 1920s,
Jews were establishing farms (mostly communal farms called a "kibbutz"),
building in the cities, and re-establishing a new Jewish presence in
Palestine. In 1948, the Zionists who lived in Palestine declared the new,
independent nation of Israel. Zionism was largely a secular movement, although
there were some religious Zionists. Even the secular Zionists, however, used
the Hebrew Bible to create a new Jewish culture in Israel.
++++ It speaks well of the Arabs that they had no problem in allowing Jews to buy land and live in communes all around them. They had no reason to hate anybody, as Jews had been living there among them for centuries. It was later events...the Holocaust in Christian Europe that sent your people running for their lives to Palestine, that started the trouble. It wasn't your fault certainly...what options were left? But it wasn't the fault of the Palestinians either.
+++You skip over a lot of history, and none of it ancient, when you say Israel was "established" in 1948. Orthodox Jews have never accepted the creation of Israel by human hands. It was suppposed to be brought about by Yahweh, not by people. And just how was it that Israel was established? When had the countries in the United Nations ever shown any solicitude or concern for Jews that they "established" Israel for them? Why?
+++It is one thing for Jews to buy a lot of land in Miami Beach, Florida...it is another thing to "declare" it a new State, or country.
+++Zionism may well be compared to Fascism when it uses its own history book as a "promisory deed" to declare any place a new nation. It is YOUR history book,,,it is YOUR claim that god wanted you to live there someday.
++++The Shoshone Tribe in Florida has something better than a deed from god...it has a treaty signed by Congress years ago promising them the entire state. Will Jews give back the land to its rightful and legal owners?
+++The trouble with having a deed from God, is the obvious,,,it gives one the feeling that any crime they commit in the act of securing that deed is divinely sanctioned...is okay by the Lord. This can bring people very close to creating a Fascist state...the best kind, because it has God standing behind it. It's your version of god...not theirs.
+++Abdul Azziz, first king of Saudi Arabia said it best,,,in a political war there can be compromise...in a religious war, you have to kill everybody. Fascism makes god supreme...odd isn't it?
+++Sharon recently tried to make "Israeli Only" sections...denying Arab Israelis the right to be full citizens of a land they occupied for centuries as well...people who were granted citizenship when Israel was "established". It certainly looks a lot like Fascism to make second calss citizens of them based upon their religion or ethnic origin.
+++Besdies which, the Right Wing in Israel is as close to the real fascist thing as you guys should ever want to approach.
+++Any time you use a book peculiar to yourselves, with your own god in it, with his directives to only you...you are walking down that road...because you wind up excluding people based upon their religious affiliation and ethnic origin...as Hitler and so many other Christians did with your people.
I know that the Arab countries are trying to give the word zionism a bad
meaning, but it's just another part of their Anti-Israel propaganda.
++++By "Arab-Israel" propaganda do you mean that both sides are engaged in propaganda, or just the Arabs are...directed at the Israelis, or about the Israelis? You want to be real specific cause we want to know what we mean before arguing about it.
++++The Arabs are no more the saints here than you are. People take what they can seize and hold onto...every theft and murder in history can be backed up...especially if it's your god doing it and you won. You would sound more reasonable if you just said Israel belongs to you because you took it...and you will use Settlements and the rest of it as a means of seizing as much more as you can. That at least makes you appear honest about it. No one seriously believes that someone who shows up on their doorstep with a "get out" order from their own god...signed 3000 years ago, is any kind of a legal document. Just take the land and be done with it.
Now that you know what Zionism really is, you can see that the Assyrians could
use a similiar movement to re-establish the ancient Assyria.
++++Unfortunately I am ignorant of what Zionism really is...I'm going to read up on it and get back to you. For such a benign sounding explanation of Zionism as you just gave...it hardly satisfies when we see what is happening over there. Hitler too felt he'd covered the ground pretty well in HIS book . Obviously, there's more here than meets the eye.
+++No thank you...I want no "similar movement" to establish Assyria. There are huge differences between you people and us. The most important being that we denied our ancient religion and culture while you adamantly held on to yours in the face of unspeakable horror visited upon you for your loyalty. As Christain Assyrians we too are extolled for having remained faithful...but not to Ashur. The religion that brought us greatness, that benefited your own people so much, apparently wasn't worth clinging tenacioualy to...we abandoned it for an offshoot of yours YOU didn't even want...and the religion we are now expected to die for...that gave us only misery and sorrow, is Christianity...reformed Judaism by any other name. Therefore...we are nowhere near the same predicament you are in...and neither do we have an unbroken line extending clear back to the very source of our ethnic pride, streangth and greatness. Besides...we can hide out in any number of Christian countries...they made sure you couldn't.
: ****
: "There were no 10 tribes of Israel taken
: away. Nebuchadnessar took about 4000 members
: of the Royal Family, of the people... of the
: Jews that he defeated. They were not subject
: to slavery. They were not mistreated in any
: way. There are several, several records of
: people going to work for Sargon the second -
: the Assyrian king - going as charioteers, as
: mercenaries, as business men... the Assyrian
: empire was the most wealthy and powerful one
: of its day. The city of Babylon was an
: amazing city. Many, many Jews remained in
: Babylon even when Cyrus captured babylon and
: set them free. Many of them returned. Many
: of them remained there. Jews have been in
: Mesopotamia since they were first taken
: there - and they have remained there. There
: were no 10 tribes. Cyrus Gordon, the
: orientalist, has written about this as have
: many, many others."
You mixed two different events. The lost of the 10 tribes indeed happened (and
there is an archiologic evidances),
+++There is none. If there was any, I'm sure you would have been quick to produce it.. Mind you...I don't care if he did take ten tribes away. As far as I can tell, there is plenty of proof that Israelites chose to remain...and why wouldn't they? Even today not every Jew wants to move back to Israel.
but it was in the Assyrian period and not
the Babylonian's. Nebuchadnessar was the king of Babylon, while Sargon the II
was the king of Assyria.
+++Jews were indeed sent away to finishing school in Assyria and Babylon and Egypt. Where do you think those desert tribes learned how to build and and gained sophistication and culture AND got half their biblical stories...in goathair tents on a desert? There is sound archaeological evidence that the birth of Moses is foreshadowed in the birth of Sargon the Great...that Noah is taken from the Epic of Gilgamesh...how about quoiting your souces?
After the death of king Solomon, the 12 tribes of
Israel have seperated into two kingdoms - Israel and Judah. Israel was the
kingdom of the 10 tribes, and it's capital was Samaria. Judah was the kingdom
of the other 2 tribes - Benjamin and Judah and it's capital was Jerusalem. The
Assyrians were very tolerant to the 2 kingdoms, but Samaria rebeled, and
Sargon exiled a very large part of the Samaritans and spread them all over the
Assyrian empire. In exile, the Samaritans lost their national idenity and was
assimelated into the Assyrian culture. The Assyrians was tolerant to the
exiled Samaritans as well as to the Samaritans that was left in
Samaria/Israel, and they worked in many different jobs in the Assyrian empire.
It is very important to note that the assyrians did not exiled the people of
Judah and did not destroy Jerusalem.
In the rise of the Babylonians, the Jews (people of Judah) made a political
mistake and supported the Egyptians instead of the Babylonians. In return,
Nebuchadnessar destroyed the temple and Judah lost it's independence. After
another rebelian, Nebuchadnessar destroyed Jerusalem and exiled all the Jews.
That's the story.
+++That part is true...there is still no evidence whatsoever of any lost tribes...whatever Jews were taken away benefited from the experience...that's a very important part of the story. When Cyrus released them all after conquering Babylon many of them chose to stay. They had settled in, were successful, enjoyed life in what was one of the most magnificent cities of the world...and continued learning from the Babylonians and Persians. The cosmopolitan Jew of the modern era owes far more to his experience among the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians and Arabs than he ever got from living in mud huts in the Valley of Jezreel.
But I glad that you have such a good opinion about us, and as I said earlier
in my first message, I hope you get your land back, and that our two countries
will be good allies.
++++I wouldn't want my land back at the price you've had to pay. And I doubt any of you would have left European capitals for Haifa as you didn't want to leave Babylon centuries ago. Had the Christians of Europe and America not treated you as they had for 1500 years, you would have far preferred to remain among them, and the Jews who did migrate back to Palestine would have lived in peace with their Arab brothers and sisters as they had done for centuries...given the natural tendency of some humans to be brutes.
++That's the part that really hurts. I wouldn't mind at all if you were shooting rubber bullets into fat white Germans...they asked for it. But when we see you killing people who look exactly like you do...who are now the hunted ones having their businesses ruined, their property destroyed, forced to live in camps where they can be easily terrorized because of their "association"...even for being family members of actual fighters....it all smacks of brutality such as was done to your people...and not by Arabs either.
+++You are playing with fire...I would rather not....but then as Christians we have options Christians didn't allow you.
-- panch
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