In the GRAND scheme of things, what matters?

I understand it. I talked to god yesterday about his divine plan, and how he plans to revise it. Maintaining a working hell as well as the earth itself is straining his heavenly economy, so he's started a merger of sorts. Hell and earth are in the process of merging, since most humans go to hell anyway, and the present state of the earth kind of makes hell an improvement anyway for those who cross over, which kind of goes against the point of hell.
This merger is scheduled to be complete by 2024, but yesterday he said he was way ahead of schedule.

C.I., I think Finn (presently on ignore by me at his request) was referring to our use of "JWs" for "Jehovah's Witnesses", not for "Jews". At least that's my hope.

I'll repeat what both of us posted for your "enlightenment."

Good to know someone in the know.

Glib nonsense yet again.

No, I very definately meant Jews. CI is an anti-Semite.

BTW, I think I simply asked you to leave me alone. If you've chosen to "ignore" me, no sweat off my nose.

C.I., in all the many years of my reading your posts I've never--not once--seen any indication of anti-semitism in you. And, while I am a gentile, I am also a sponsoring member of Jstreet.

That's because those who call me "anti-Semite" don't understand the term/definition.

Actually, I'm very grateful to Jews for the opportunities they have provided me during my working years. My first job after college was at Florsheim Shoe Company, and they promoted me to Audit Manager after working as a Field Auditor for 3.5 years. After Florsheim, I worked at several more companies, and at two companies, I had Jewish bosses who treated me very well.

I have visited Israel two times since then, and love their country and people. Both times, we had excellent local guides.

Where Zionists are clueless is that I advocate for the equal treatment of all peoples, races, gender, sexual orientation, minorities, and all humans.

Their ignorance doesn't bother me.

Same with me, and the reason I joined Jstreet, to advocate for the " two-state solution" and the protection of Isreal.

Israel is an issue on which I find it hard to take a stand. I have too much information and too little sense of what to do with it. At this point it's a choice, and that in itself is unacceptable.

Well, in general I am opposed to much of what the Isreali government does with regard to Palistinians, but I'm very sympathetic to its needs for international security. I think my views--as ambivalent as they sometimes are--are close to those of my friends who are Jewish American liberals.

I totally agree.

The way I was taught this, is that Israel was established after WW2 as a kind of restitution to Jews after what the Nazi's did to them.
The justification for choosing the area in the middle east for Israel was that this was the area the Jews were abducted from by the Egyptians in the Old Testament. Some claim it was the area in the world that already had the largest concentration of Jews, but already in 1945 there were more Jews in the USA than anywhere else.
In the hundreds of hundreds of years since that biblical abduction happened, other people have settled in the area. You don't have to know much to understand that this conflict was designed the very moment the state of Israel was established where it is today. In many ways, the Jews are doing what was done to them by the Nazis.

But like I said, I have too much information, and too little sense. This is my perspective, and I am very glad that I don't have pick a side in that particular conflict.

We understand all "that" history. The biggest problem isn't that Jews have settled into Israel, it's how they treat the Palestinians - taking away their property without any legal rights. THAT'S WRONG!

That's the issue; not the two thousand year history.

Well, as I see it the history is relevant in that it serves to justify their claim to their "promised land". Granted that the history in question is this group's "mythology"--we all have them--but as far as I am concerned every group's mythologies are sacred stories (narratives) serving to validate contemporary claims. Their meaningfulness lies beyond fiction and truth; they are what are now called narratological (cultural-ideological) "evidence" for political claims.

I see what you're saying; it's based much on cultural belief that has been carried over for generations.

That still doesn't excuse their treatment of the Palestinians. We are, after all, living in the 21st century where most understand right from wrong, legal issues, and property ownership.

Cannibalism was practiced by many cultures, but they have learned through knowledge and education that eating other humans can't be excused based on cultural heritage.

My guess is that it's not really about cultural heritage or even the treatment of the Palestinians. I bet that somewhere, someone is getting richer and more powerful for every day the conflict rages, and that's what it's about.

C.I., I agree, there is no excuse for such treatment. By the way, as I understand it no anthropologists have found direct evidence for cannibalism anywhere; they only have rumors propagated by peoples about their hated neighbors. There is historical evidence of "ritual cannibalism"--e.g., attempts to appropriate the strengths (mana) of dead enemies by eating parts of them.
Headhunting is another matter (e.g., tribal peoples of the Phillipines). Both practices putative or actual are inhibited perhaps more by governmental prohibition as much as by education.
Cyracuz, we see much evidence in the U.S. of fundamentalist Televangelists collecting money supposedly to support Isreal from their aggressors. Some say they are stirring up the flames of regional conflict to encourage the advent of Armagedon in our time. What insanity if that is true.

I like to think that the Isreali beneficiaries of televangelists' generosity are just taking their benefactors for a ride. The benefactors probably realize this and don't particularly care because they are also taking their own American fundamentalist constituents (donars for the Jewish cause) for a ride

JLN, I learned about Fiji's cannibalism when I visited there in 1998. Here's a good article on Wiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannibalism