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Subject: Third Intifada just starting.
Shirrush    10/9/2008 3:08:58 PM
And it's inside Israel.
 
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Shirrush       10/30/2008 6:21:10 PM

I actually went point by point in my response to you. I am no prophet, and it doesn't take one to see the glaring problem of political membership within jewish sovereignty. I can't give you specifics of what sort of jewish political initiation would be b/c there is no people like the Jews, so by definition it would be unique. But I did list a criteria of 3 ingredients in such a filtering mechanism of political membership within israel
 
1. It must be consequential -  Some oversimplified generic loyalty test that has no real meanings in it, will not do!
 
2. It has to be substantive - It must be based values and traditions and not on race or blood.
 
3. It must be authentic - It must represent the Jewish people and it particularistic Jewish values (not hellinistic/european values)
 
The status quo is no longer tenable, b/c the Arab Israeli is getting larger in number and more belligerent in temprament. The longer the Jewish majority waits the harder it will be to solve. If a generation of Israeli's know that there is a problem, why let it fester and aggregate more strength and leave it to the next generation to solve with greater difficulty.


Ezekiel, I am aware that you are trying to get somewhere with this Jewish sovereignty idea of yours.
As a fact on the ground, Jewish national sovereignty in the modern sense is a very recent thing, 60 years old to be precise, and it is not surprising that it is still somewhat fuzzy around the edges.
 
Even your yearning for authentic, non-Hellenistic Jewish values can be applied only within the context of a Jewish theocracy. Something like that did happen at one time in history, only that is wasn't really a Judean-Jewish theocracy but rather an African-Israelitic one, and it held sway over much of Ethiopia for a couple of centuries. It got nowhere and was destroyed for being too fanatical and uncompromising to be able to adapt to the area's changing geopolitics in the seventeenth century.
 
An overwhelming majority of the Jews today reject theocracy and embrace democracy, which is the least-bad political system we have experienced in our 40-something centuries of recorded history.
Also, nobody really agrees with anybody else about what the extent of these Jewish values really is: Haredi jewishness demands that women shave their heads, Sfaradim think that revering the Saints is important while others will have none of it, and also tend to agree with me that separating between the sexes at celebrations and in education looks Islamic and must therefore be sinful.
 
Even within the context of the biblical Kingdoms of Yehuda and Israel, which were nothing like the nation-states we have today, there never was anything like a Jewish supremacy or even a Jewish majority. There always was a wide variety of idol-worshipping and human-sacrificing Heathens residing within the rather fluid boundaries of Eretz Israel, and even the Prophets never made any demands on them such as the ones you suggest we make on the minority today.
 
So, for the sake of practicality in our evolving Jewish state, I suggest we keep treating the Arab minority according to "European" values, which are themselves derived from the Tora, that urges us to remember that we were foreigners, or minority ("gerim") in Egypt.
 
What we should really not tolerate is Palestinism. If you are an Israeli citizen, you must be loyal to the Jewish state. You will be respected as an Israeli Arab, but you must forgo allegiance to any foreigh, and hostile, national entity. If you feel Palestinian, go live in Palestine!
Most democratic states make such demands on their citizens. Turkey even goes a bit too far on that IMO.
 
The demographic threat is a load of bunk. Fact is, Israeli-Arab fertility is dropping, fast, at the same time as Jewish fertility is on the increase, no doubt thanks to the Haredi sector.
You may have a role ensuring that this Israeli identity incorporates as many Jewish values as possible. Indeed, the best way to solve the problem with Israeli Arabs is to assimilate them, and only an open, liberal Jewish society can succeed in defeating Islam. Believe me, a long, hard look at those Israeli Arabs that surround me in my everyday environment has convinced me that this might be happening already, in spite of the appearance of the exact opposite phenomenon ex
 
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Ezekiel    to answer    10/31/2008 3:20:36 AM




I actually went point by point in my response to you. I am no prophet, and it doesn't take one to see the glaring problem of political membership within jewish sovereignty. I can't give you specifics of what sort of jewish political initiation would be b/c there is no people like the Jews, so by definition it would be unique. But I did list a criteria of 3 ingredients in such a filtering mechanism of political membership within israel

 


1. It must be consequential -  Some oversimplified generic loyalty test that has no real meanings in it, will not do!

 


2. It has to be substantive - It must be based values and traditions and not on race or blood.

 


3. It must be authentic - It must represent the Jewish people and it particularistic Jewish values (not hellinistic/european values)

 


The status quo is no longer tenable, b/c the Arab Israeli is getting larger in number and more belligerent in temprament. The longer the Jewish majority waits the harder it will be to solve. If a generation of Israeli's know that there is a problem, why let it fester and aggregate more strength and leave it to the next generation to solve with greater difficulty.







Ezekiel, I am aware that you are trying to get somewhere with this Jewish sovereignty idea of yours.

As a fact on the ground, Jewish national sovereignty in the modern sense is a very recent thing, 60 years old to be precise, and it is not surprising that it is still somewhat fuzzy around the edges.

 

Even your yearning for authentic, non-Hellenistic Jewish values can be applied only within the context of a Jewish theocracy. Something like that did happen at one time in history, only that is wasn't really a Judean-Jewish theocracy but rather an African-Israelitic one, and it held sway over much of Ethiopia for a couple of centuries. It got nowhere and was destroyed for being too fanatical and uncompromising to be able to adapt to the area's changing geopolitics in the seventeenth century.

 

An overwhelming majority of the Jews today reject theocracy and embrace democracy, which is the least-bad political system we have experienced in our 40-something centuries of recorded history.

Also, nobody really agrees with anybody else about what the extent of these Jewish values really is: Haredi jewishness demands that women shave their heads, Sfaradim think that revering the Saints is important while others will have none of it, and also tend to agree with me that separating between the sexes at celebrations and in education looks Islamic and must therefore be sinful.

 



Even within the context of the biblical Kingdoms of Yehuda and Israel, which were nothing like the nation-states we have today, there never was anything like a Jewish supremacy or even a Jewish majority. There always was a wide variety of idol-worshipping and human-sacrificing Heathens residing within the rather fluid boundaries of Eretz Israel, and even the Prophets never made any demands on them such as the ones you suggest we make on the minority today.

 

So, for the sake of practicality in our evolving Jewish state, I suggest we keep treating the Arab minority according to "European" values, which are themselves derived from the Tora, that urges us to remember that we were foreigners, or minority ("gerim") in Egypt.

 

What we should really not tolerate is Palestinism. If you are an Israeli citizen, you must be loyal to the Jewish state. You will be respected as an Israeli Arab, but you must forgo allegiance to any foreigh, and hostile, national entity. If you feel Palestinian, go live in Palestine!


Most democratic states make such demands on their citizens. Turkey even goes a bit too far on that IMO.

 

The demographic threat is a load of bunk. Fact is, Israeli-Arab fertility is dropping, fast, at the same time as Jewish fertility is on the increase, no doubt thanks to the Haredi sector.


You may have a role ensuring that this Israeli identity incorporates as many Jewish va
 
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HERALD1357    An American back from Dragonland.   10/31/2008 4:49:21 AM
If you have a wasps nest in your back yard, you don't spend your free time poking it with a stick.
If you live in a town with a large Arab community, you don't look for opportunities to start trouble.
And in this country, Jews do worse things to other Jews than Israeli Arabs do
.
I don't pretend to understand everything or anything that happened there in Acco. If the police failed, fix them. If the laws failed fix the laws, but know this: if you have a viper in your back yard, you don't coexist with it, you kill it.     
 
Furthermore......about the question of citizenship and of rights: the Jewish people need a Jewish state. I know that means deliberate discrimination and legal exclusion for Christians and arabs. I know that means a certain amount of inequality in law inside Israel. Its not American fair in concept, but I don't care about that. Here is why.......
 
I am half German by blood. Not a day goes by, that I don't remind myself of that. One of my great great grand cousins was SS. First the German laws failed, and then that law was perverted, and then the Jewish peopkle were "legally" murdered by men, like that bastardBlood guilt is very real to me in my family history, as well as the damned PRC's persecution of same type along the same lines.
 
I don't ever want to see the Holocaust happen to anyone again. 
 
Do whatever you have to do to protect yourselves and SHOVE THE MORALIZING and AGONIZING over this event.
 
The dead don't argue morality. They are just dead.
 
Quoting me.
 
Herald
 

 
 
 
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jastayme3       11/4/2008 2:35:21 PM
Here is a question that is not brought up often but has bearing. How much is a State required to grant
rights that are contrary to it's reason for being? The rights of Americans are the rights of a State that is in
essence a gigantic version of a European style merchant-republic, States whose chief goal was the prosperity of their
citizens(an unpretentious, but at least not pernicious goal). Israel is in fact more like a European ethnic state and must put a
higher emphasis on tribal cohesion then America does. So Israel cannot in fact be blamed for not granting indulgences that America would. America does not necessarily indulge groups that are contrary to it's reason for being(Klansmen, Nazis, Communists and so on have the right to exist as political movements, but don't have the right not to have G-men in their membership).
So the question is not really about "equal rights for all" but about what rights does a non-Jew have in a state whose reason for being is the survival and dignity of Jews, conceived as an ethnic group? One could make an analogy to America and say that at the very least the State of Israel has a right to keep a closer eye on Arabs then it does on Jews just as the American government keeps a closer eye on political fringe groups. Does the State of Israel have the right to make separate laws for Arabs? Not really. For one thing it is in fact contrary to Torah to make separate laws for resident foreigners which in fact minority citizens of an ethnic state necessarily are. For another it is contrary to Enlightenment beliefs(although when you think about it the Medieval custom of giving each "lobby group" it's own laws wasn't an unmixed injustice and "one law for all" wasn't an unmixed good as in practice it often meant everyone had to behave like the dominant group).
Does the state have the right to treat an unruly area as being in effect, in perpetual rebellion? That is how the British treated the Scottish Borders or the Indian Northwest Frontier,  that is how most states have treated Sicily, and indeed that is a fairly logical course of action. In affect it is profiling geographic areas, and maybe it is not an illogical course of action. While cynics will say it is a code word for profileing ethnic or religious groups perhaps that cannot be helped.
How would this go about? Perhaps the police could rate areas by per capita crime. Political crimes could be distinguished from Ordinary Decent Criminal crimes as the former are more dangerous to the States integrity. That is already done instinctively. But maybe there is a way to do this systematically. In fact it is likly enough that they are doing just that.
Much of this is questions, rather then answers. 
 


 
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Shirrush       11/4/2008 4:33:32 PM
Thank you Jastayme. Again, you're a scholar and a gentleman.
 
Ilan Tzadik has a very personal, and decidedly local angle on the Galilee troubles, including some very welcome football exegesis. It's rather funny, but it's in colloquial French and I'm sure it'll be even funnier when you'll attempt to use automatic translation on it. His POV is a bit closer to Battar's than mine, but heck, Battar is local too! I may therefore concede that I have erred, attributing to politics what can be best explained by pure stupidity. Ilan goes a bit further, however, doing his job as a journalist and listening to what his Arab neighbors have to say on the subject. Life goes on atop the powderkeg's lid...

 
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Shirrush    Oy Hatzqel!   11/4/2008 5:25:59 PM
You're not making much of a point here. You do credit the secular Jews of Israel for founding the state, but you also make an almost valid argument of the "real" demographic threat, the one which threatens the Zionist democracy.
I don't mean the Muslim Arabs by that. What you seem to ignore is the considerable demographic buffer called by some "Middle Israel". This comprises a small majority of the Israeli Jews, and it is largely made of mostly non-European, traditionalist but not religious families, who go to Shul on Friday night and drive off to picnic on the Shabbat, and who generally reject any kind of religious or secular militancy. They seldom make noises, conferences abroad or blog entries. They tend to scorn politics and vote for mainstream parties with no particular regard for their agendas. They'll elect Tzippi because she's nice and perceived as uncorrupted, but they'll also consider Sha"ss if the sha"ssnikim in their families ask them nicely, and they'll vote Likud and 'Avoda too without thinking too much about it if they care to go to the polling station at all.
 
The most important feature of this rather amorphic yet extremely inclusivist majority is the slow secretory process of a new culture, in fact, of tomorrow's Judaism. To somehow get the feel of this, you don't have to read anything, just listen.
 
Most of us in the tiny, negligible community of the politically-aware, Zionist Israelis are pretty happy with the  vigorous Haredi birth rate. The slowly dying, highly exclusivist Haredi society, which is separate from the Jewish society, is in fact generating lots of Jews, as increasing numbers of their young are leaving the ghettos and joining Middle Israel which is perfectly willing to accept them. As to the modern Orthodox, "settler" crowd, most of them are in fact moderate, decent folks who are perfectly willing to tolerate the many other forms of Judaism that tolerate and even encourage them in return. 
Our society is extremely diverse and even fragmented, but it is based on a wide pedestal of mutual tolerance and a tightly knotted web of family ties. I have modern Orthodox, Meshugge-Frum, traditional,  secular and even Goyish friends and relatives, but, you know what? We accept each other and that's that. I'm honored to cook kosher if required, and I don't mind a treif meal as long as I'm with friends and family.
 
This chaotic evolution will eventually yield a more homogenous society, which will not necessarily be secular but will certainly be characterized by a lot of Tora values. In order to get an idea of how this will look, just look around you. The USA is certainly not a Jewish society, but it is definitely the result of the evolution of an extremely heterogenous, yet Christian melting pot in a climate of tolerance and social peace, and that's where we're heading too. The Arabs have a place in all that, but they'll probably need to shed Palestinism and Islam in order to belong. Ilan estimates that 10-15% of them are already well underway towards assimilation, see the Fwench article above.   
 
 
 


 
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