truth
Tnanks, Walter. Very interesting.
Walter, Interesting info on those 250,000 having no religion. What is a Jew?
cicerone imposter wrote:Walter, Interesting info on those 250,000 having no religion. What is a Jew?
Well, someone of Jewish belief.
I would think that someone who professes to be Jewish is a Jew. And that someone who is a citizen of Israel is an Israeli. But as Israel is a Jewish state, it gets a little difficult. In fact it cuts to the heart of the matter. Found this in today's newstatesman magazine, John Pilger writing about Israel
"In understanding Israel's enduring colonial role in the Middle East, it is too simple to see the outrages of Ariel Sharon as an aberrant version of a democracy that lost its way. The myths that abound in middle class Jewish homes in Britain about Israel's heroic, noble birth have long been re-inforced by a "liberal" or "left wing" Zionism as virulent and essentially destructive as the Likud strain.
In recent years the truth has come from Israels own "new historians", who have revealed that the Zionist "idealists" of 1948 had no intention of treating justly or even humanely the Palestinians, who instead were systematically and often murderously driven from their homes. The most courageous of these historians is Ilan Pappe, an Israeli-born professor at Haifa University, who, with the publication of each of his ground breaking books, has been both acclaimed and smeared. The latest is A History of Modern Palestine, in which he documents the expulsion of Palestinians as an orchestrated crime of ethnic cleansing that tore apart Jews and Arabs coexisting peacefully. As for the modern "peace process", he describes the Oslo Accords of 1993 as a plan by liberal Zionists in the Israeli Labour Party to corral Palestinians in South African style bantustans. That they were aided by a desperate Palestinian leadership made the "peace" and its "failure" (blamed on the Palestinians) no less counterfeit. During the years of negotiation and raised hopes, governments in Tel Aviv secretly doubled the number of illegal Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, intensified the military occupation and completed the fragmentation of the 22 per cent of historic Palestine that the Palestine Liberation Organisation had agreed to accept in return for recognising the state of Israel".
Katya, je zegt dat je uit Limburg komt, maar location = USA. Nieuwe woonplaats, studie etc?
A Jew is not necessarily one who is "of Jewish belief". Being a Jew is nowadays more than going to the shul - it is in many cases linked to a sort of nationalistic feeling. You can be both Jew and an Atheist for example. The first Zionists were not religious for example, but socialistic. In many early kibbutzim, it was not allowed to build a shul. But I don't think that those people in those kibbutzim can not be classified as Jewish because they are not religious.
Herzl is said to be the founder of modern Zionism (kind of follower-up to the east-European "Hovevei Ziyyon" ("Lovers of Zion") who promoted the settlement of Jewish farmers and artisans in Palestine. I wouldn't call him really a Socialist.
And at the First Zionist World Congress in Basel, participants represented all social strata and every variety of Jewish thought - from Orthodox Jews to atheists and from businessmen to students.
truth
Rick, if you do not distinguish between ethnic Jews and religious Jews, then all the Jews I know in the U.S. (who happen to be atheists) are fooling themselves. By the way, I was speaking the other day with a very bright Jew on the subject of Isreal's dilemma. His conclusion was a tragic, "I don't know what we can do." He acknowledged the atrocities of Sharon's policies while at the same time insisting that Isreal must survive as a state. Frankly, as much as I admire Jewish society and its achievements, I would not want to be a Jew in these days. At the same time I would not want to be a Catholic (my heritage) or a Muslim.
The most comfortable place to be is in secular humanism.
JLN, I couldn't agree with you more: Being a secular humanist meets all my needs and desires on this planet.
Walter: Zionism was not created by Herzl - he did bring it under attention, and without him the Zionist movement would never have become so big. With the first Zionists I mean the mostly Russian and Romanian Jews who emigrated to Palestine in the 1880's, a decade before Herzl's "Der Judenstaat". They had a socialistic background.
I agree with you JLN. Atheist Jews can not "rely" on the religious arguments that "Israel is the Land which was given to the Jews by G-d". Here in the Netherlands you have a Jewish movement called "Een ander Joods geluid" ("An other Jewish sound"), which consists mostly out of non-religious Jews who DO want Israel to live on (most have family there), but meanwhile DO NOT agree with most things Israel is doing in the Palestinian Territories (for example). Jewish leaders and the CIDI (an organization which monitors anti-Semite and anti-Israeli sounds in the Netherlands) accuse them of trying to run away from anti-Semitism by saying the same things as the anti-Semites. Some prominent Dutch Jews from "een ander Joods geluid" - like TV-personality Dieuwertje Blok and old Amsterdam mayor Ed van Tijn - even claimed in a nationwide magazine that Israel was a project that had failed to form a Jewish national home (something they regretted later).
I see your argh, and raise you an Oy!
We're all wondering about that~!
It says so in the book of the film of the book of St Mel that it was true, and thats good enough for me.
So let me get this straight--some Mexican dude, Jesus, got killed by some Jews? Is that what we're on about here? Why is this so difficult? No witnesses?
