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Subject: The American debt to Israel.
Hamilcar    4/20/2010 11:04:52 PM
Want to know why Americans owe this debt? Stay tuned.
 
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Hamilcar    J. Robert Oppenheimer   5/2/2010 12:57:18 AM
I hate the buggy HTML on this board.
 
H.
 
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Shirrush    Well Hamilcar...   5/2/2010 7:10:02 AM
With all the respect and the admiration due to the contribution of American Jewry to the USA's greatness, it appears that this group has mostly dissociated itself from Israel, and has gone its own way, which has very little in common with Israel-the-nation.
A large majority of the American Jews have wholeheartedly rejected the harsh, primitive and exclusively ethnocentric faith we in Israel call Judaism, along with most of its traditions except for Bagel and Matzo Balls, and have adopted a liberal screed with totally new, and contrary central tenets, such as feminism, homosexuality, exogamous marriages, and, above all, an unbreakable loyalty to the Democratic Party.
 
On the other hand, Israel's establishment, tied down as it is by its unchanging coalition obligations to the religious parties, has never accepted the Reform movement and its strange conversions as Jewish and entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return, and it is not surprising that payback swiftly ensued, with American Jews largely behind the election of B.H. Obama, and their support of his anti-Israel policies.
 
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Hamilcar    Joseph Lieberman   5/2/2010 8:28:39 AM
 

The Jewishness of Joseph Lieberman

Opinion

By Daniel Treiman

Published November 24, 2006, issue of November 24, 2006.

Joseph Lieberman may have held on to his Senate seat, but it?s safe to say that there were plenty of Jews who weren?t celebrating with him on election night. Indeed, Lieberman — one of the greatest political path-breakers in American Jewish history — has long been a controversial figure among his fellow Jews.

This has been a source of continuing consternation to Lieberman?s Jewish boosters. Following Lieberman?s narrow defeat in this summer?s Democratic primary, Newsweek?s resident Reform rabbi, Marc Gellman, wrote: ?Joe Lieberman did not lose the Democratic primary because of his support for the war in Iraq. He lost because of his lack of support from Jews.? Similarly, when Lieberman?s 2004 presidential run fizzled, disappointed supporters loudly lamented the failure of America?s Jews to line up behind their co-religionist.

While these laments may be overwrought — after all, if we insist that our fellow citizens judge Lieberman by his merits and not his religion, shouldn?t Jews be expected to do the same? — it is also true that in some precincts of the Jewish left, revulsion wouldn?t be too strong a word to describe what he evokes.

Discomfort with Lieberman is partly explained by the fact that this pioneering Jewish politician is far from your typical American Jew. For starters, there?s his Orthodoxy, a stream of Judaism that represents only a tenth of American Jews. More significant is his very public use of faith-based language — particularly jarring to a community that has long seen a high wall of separation between church and state as the best guarantor of its place in American society. Finally, some on the Jewish left resent the fact that the country?s most liberal ethnic group has as its most visible representative an aggressively centrist politician.

Yet for all the ways in which Lieberman is atypical, there is also something very Jewish about his politics. Indeed, some of the hostility he arouses on the left, which often seems disproportionate to his transgressions — recall that his voting record earned him a respectable 76% lifetime rating from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action— is the result of a civil war raging within Jewish liberalism for more than half a century.

From the battles between fellow travelers and anti-communists in the early days of the cold war to the dueling worldviews of the largely Jewish staffs of The New Republic (which offered a lonely endorsement of Lieberman?s presidential candidacy) and The Nation (which hasn?t shown him much love), Jewish liberals are a fractious family. And Lieberman is the closest thing we have to a standard-bearer — however imperfect — for a particular kind of Jewish liberalism: skeptical of race-conscious public policies, vocally opposed to the ideological excesses of the academic left, bullish on America?s potential to advance the cause of freedom abroad and hawkishly pro-Israel.

Like many young Jews of his generation, Lieberman went south to Mississippi as a civil rights volunteer. Like many Jews, he would grow uncomfortable as the civil rights movement abandoned colorblind liberalism for racial preferences. In the 1990s, Lieberman repeatedly criticized affirmative action based on racial and gender preferences as divisive and un-American — a position he quickly abandoned on being named Al Gore?s running mate and drawing fire from black Democrats.

During the 1960s, many liberal Jewish university professors recoiled at the student rebellions of the era, repulsed by what they saw as wild assaults on institutions they had struggled so hard to enter. Jewish academics have been among the leading critics of poli

 
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Hamilcar    You can begin an entire industry off of him.   5/5/2010 12:02:47 AM
 
H.
 
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Nichevo       5/6/2010 11:28:55 PM

With all the respect and the admiration due to the contribution of American Jewry to the USA's greatness, it appears that this group has mostly dissociated itself from Israel, and has gone its own way, which has very little in common with Israel-the-nation.

 
My rabbi used to say that Israel could survive without US government funding but not without the support of American Jews.
 
 
 
A large majority of the American Jews have wholeheartedly rejected the harsh, primitive and exclusively ethnocentric faith we in Israel call Judaism, along with most of its traditions except for Bagel and Matzo Balls, and have adopted a liberal screed with totally new, and contrary central tenets, such as feminism, homosexuality, exogamous marriages, and, above all, an unbreakable loyalty to the Democratic Party.

 
Well that's not me but I admit the broad truth of the crack that we "earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans."  Don't quite know what to do about that.  But I am not alone.  In fact the many Orthodox/Chasidic (highly religious) American Jews are probably much more on your side of the argument - and they are the ones who are breeding (btw you guys need to keep up with the Arabs, no?).  In fact it is often said here that US Jews are more aggressive towards the Arab problem than Israelis are and that we are making problems for you to do a deal.  Me, I still can't figure out what the big problem was with Kahane.
 

On the other hand, Israel's establishment, tied down as it is by its unchanging coalition obligations to the religious parties, has never accepted the Reform movement and its strange conversions as Jewish and entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return, and it is not surprising that payback swiftly ensued, with American Jews largely behind the election of B.H. Obama, and their support of his anti-Israel policies.

I am curious - how does that work?  I am a bar mitzvah from the great Reform Temple, Emanu-El in NYC.  My father is Jewish but my mother is not.  In fact I often worry about how to go forward and have a Jewish family.  Do I get in under the Law of Return? 
 
I will say that American Jews cannot have understood BHO's impact on Israel - but in any case I do not see the linkage you draw.  I will also say that Israel has made its own mistakes as well. 

 
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Shirrush    Nichevo   5/8/2010 3:44:35 PM
Your Rabbi is wrong. Israel can survive without any American support, and probably will have to as well.
The next generation of the American "Jewish" leadership is already leading the struggle for Israel's demise anyway.
The Haredi Jews you depict are not more than a large iron ball shackled to the Israeli society's collective ankle, so what if they breed?
According to Talmudic jurisdprudence, by which Jewishness is matrilinear and tradition goes after the father, you are not Jewish, but you are apparently entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return's provisions AFAIK. You will, however, run into difficulties with the rabbinical bureaucracy that governs civil law if you even attempt to get married, or, God forbid, need to be buried.
Since you cannot see what is wrong with Meir Kahane, you probably do not need to bother with the exhausted conversion studies the Orthodox establishment would require of you, would you decide to become Jewish as per the Orthodox definition.
Kahane has insulted the Jewish people by adopting the hateful behavior of its worst persecutors. May he NOT rest in peace.
 
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Nichevo       5/9/2010 10:12:17 PM

Your Rabbi is wrong. Israel can survive without any American support, and probably will have to as well.

Well, if so, you would do best to remove a number of inefficiencies in your economic system, not to mention some things I have heard about corruption in Israel.  Also, I understand that rudeness and hygiene are problems which appear to the unlearned visitor's eye. 
 
Of course you can always increase technology exports to China, who will doubtless be a good market until they can steal it from you, if the benevolence of the US is irrelevant.
 
Then again, freedom from having to cooperate with us would free your hands - to do what?  As below you evidently regard transfer as beyond the pale; presumably as regards killing them, kal vahomer; so which way out of this fix?
 
The next generation of the American "Jewish" leadership is already leading the struggle for Israel's demise anyway.

Yeah I understand J Street is a problem.  Same liberal leftist values - equating Judaism to leftist creeds - that you seem to embrace.
 
The Haredi Jews you depict are not more than a large iron ball shackled to the Israeli society's collective ankle, so what if they breed?

 
 Um ok, maybe you should put them on trains and ship them to KSA then.  If you find that disgusting, that's how I view your remark.
 
 

According to Talmudic jurisdprudence, by which Jewishness is matrilinear and tradition goes after the father, you are not Jewish, but you are apparently entitled to Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return's provisions AFAIK. You will, however, run into difficulties with the rabbinical bureaucracy that governs civil law if you even attempt to get married, or, God forbid, need to be buried.

So I understood, thanks for confirming.  So I may not marry a Jewess in Israel?  How about I marry one here and come over?
 
Since you cannot see what is wrong with Meir Kahane, you probably do not need to bother with the exhausted conversion studies the Orthodox establishment would require of you, would you decide to become Jewish as per the Orthodox definition.

Transfer seems the least worst option.  Kahane, as I understood it, claimed to have no hatred for Arabs per se, but he felt that the cats and dogs living together would not work out so well.  Explain where I have misunderstood because that seems to be quite obvious.
 
And I am not aware that hateful behaviour is inimical to the haredim.  Throwing rocks at vehicles on Shabbos?  

Kahane has insulted the Jewish people by adopting the hateful behavior of its worst persecutors. May he NOT rest in peace.


Oh?

War of extermination against the Amalekites

As the Jewish Encyclopedia put it, "David waged a sacred war of extermination against the Amalekites," who may have subsequently disappeared from history. Long after, in the time of Hezekiah, five hundred Simeonites annihilated the last remnant "of the Amalekites that had escaped" on Mount Seir, and settled in their place (1 Chr. 4:42-43).

The Biblical relationship between the Hebrew and Amalekite tribes was that the Amalekite tribes opposed the Hebrews and vice-versa, the former became associated with ruthlessness and trickery and tyranny, even more so than Pharaoh or the Philistines, and must be responded to with ruthlessness:

"8 Then Amalek came and fought with Israel at Rephidim. 9 So Moses said to Joshua, ?Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.? 10 So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. 11 Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. 12 But Moses? hands grew weary, so they t
 
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Hamilcar       5/10/2010 3:52:52 AM

 El Sayyid Nosair shows me that Kerhane may have been an extremist, Shirrush, but he knew his enemy:
 
 

El Sayyid Nosair Trial: 1991 - Positive Identification Introduced, Suggestions For Further Reading

Defendant: El Sayyid A. Nosair
Crime Charged: Murder, attempted murder, and assault
Chief Defense Lawyers: William M. Kunstler and Michael Warren
Chief Prosecutor: William Greenbaum
Judge: Alvin Schlesinger
Place: New York, New York
Dates of Trial: November 4-December 21, 1991
Verdict: Not guilty, murder, and attempted murder; Guilty, assault with a deadly weapon
Sentence: 7-22 years imprisonment

SIGNIFICANCE: Never has the unpredictability of juries been more idly demonstrated than in this case of such seeming straight forwardness.

Just minutes after delivering a speech at a New York City hotel in November 1990, Meir Kahane, militant conservative rabbi and former Jewish Defense League head, was shot down by a gunman. As the assassin fled, he wounded a Kahane supporter. Outside the building, El Sayyid Nosair, a 36-year-old Arab, was tackled by an armed U.S. Postal Service officer. Shots were exchanged, and both men were hit. Following treatment for his wound, Nosair was charged with murder.

Violent clashes between extremist Jews and Arabs on the steps of the courthouse marred the trial's opening day, November 4, 1991. Judge Alvin Schlesinger, plagued by death threats, commented sadly, "I have never seen so much hate. It's beyond reason, principle, and cause."

When lead prosecutor William Greenbaum led off for the state he contended that Nosair alone had fired the deadly bullets. Contrary to several pretrial statements in which he called Kahane's murder "a planned political assassination," Greenbaum neglected to attribute any motive to the accused, apparently feeling that the sheer weight of evidence obviated this customary bulwark of most prosecution cases.

Chief defense attorney William Kunstler argued that the reason for this omission was simple: his client was innocent, just someone who had fled the hotel fearing for his own life. According to Kunstler, Kahane had been murdered by a disgruntled supporter in a dispute over money. "You'll have to decide who shot Meir Kahane," he told the jury. "This case is not cut and dried."

http://law.jrank.org/article_images/gat_0000_0002_0_img0186.jpg" alt="Supporters of El Sayyid Nosair after the jury's surprising verdict. (AP/Wide World Photos)" height="450" width="342" />
Supporters of El Sayyid Nosair after the jury's surprising verdict. (AP/Wide World Photos)
 
Michael Djunaedi, a student, placed Nosair with a gun in his hand just moments after the shooting. "I heard some guys yelling, 'He's got a gun!'" Seconds later, Djunaedi said, postal worker Carlos Acosta and Nosair began firing at each other.  

====================================================== 
Why is this important to me?
======================================================

 
 
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Ezekiel    don't believe everything u hear   5/10/2010 6:17:59 AM
Shirrush,
 
Your explanation of what constitutes jewish identity is correct and needs no further elaboration, and neither what it will mean for and the challenges a non-jew immigrating Israel will face.
 
As for your knee-jerk hate parade when it comes to meir kahane, I would suggest you read a few of his books, instead of the reports about him...sadly, much of his predictions have materialzed in the past 10 yrs...including the US abandonment of Israel, which is taking place by the BHO.
 
He did not want genocide he wanted seperation and jewish law to govern the Jewish state.
 
I can't say I agree with him not based on philosophy but on the dissension his platforms would have generated inside Israel if adopted. Unity for a small a country is essential, and Kahana would have engendered much civil discord due to secular fears, International pressures and Religous furor.But you cast him as the devil incarnate...which doesn't fit with what he actually wrote. For me Kahana provided Israel its other side of the pendulum...if you can have a bi-nationalist europeanesque A.burg/avinieri on one side you can have a kahane who is for an exclusive Jewish state based on mosaic law on the other side. The smear campaign and total lack of democratic norms provided him and his party will have and has had repercussions for Israeli governance. The jewish anxiety he evoked was palpable and made many many people in the israeli establishment very very nervouse...for good reason. He asked basic questions that spoke of the schizophrenic nature in the re-established Jewish state and its quixotic approach to its belligerent neighbors.
 
I have said on these boards many time I am no kachnik, but I do respect what the man stood for, and regard the issues he raised as crucial for the development of the State of Israel, and to ignore them is do so at its peril.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
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Nichevo       5/10/2010 11:46:20 AM
Also, shirrush, this may cheer you:
 

POLL: Obama has Lost Almost Half of his US Jewish Support. And most of what remains is based on denial. . . .

 
 

 

Poll: Obama has Lost Almost Half of his US Jewish Support

 
by Gil Ronen

United States President Barack Obama has lost nearly half of his support among American Jews, a poll by the McLaughlin Group has shown.

The US Jews polled were asked whether they would: (a) vote to re-elect Obama, or (b) consider voting for someone else. 42% said they would vote for Obama and 46%, a plurality, preferred the second answer. 12% said they did not know or refused to answer.   

http://www.frumster.com/track_camp.php?campid=1080" target="_blank">http://info.a7.org/info_en/frumster_300x250_banner_-_apr_2010_-_2.gif" alt="" height="250" width="300" />

In the Presidential elections of 2008, 78% of Jewish voters, or close to 8 out of 10, chose Obama. The McLaughlin poll held nearly 18 months later, in April 2010, appears to show that support is down to around 4 out of 10. 

The poll showed that key voter segments including Orthodox/Hassidic voters, Conservative voters, voters who have friends and family in Israel and those who have been to Israel, are all more likely to consider voting for someone other than Obama.

Among Orthodox/Hassidic voters, 69% marked 'someone else' vs. 17% who marked 're-elect.' Among Conservative-affiliated voters the proportion was 50% to 38%. Among Reform Jews, a slim majority of 52% still supported Obama while 36% indicated they would consider someone else. Among Jews with family in Israel and those who had been to Israel, about 50% said they would consider someone else, while 41%-42% supported Obama.

Fifty percent of the Jewish voters polled said they approved of the job Obama is doing handling US relations with Israel. Thirty-nine percent said they disapproved. ?This rating is not good for a group of voters who are 59% Democratic to only 16% Republican,? the poll's analysis noted.

A majority of 52% said they disapproved of the idea of the Obama Administration supporting a plan to recognize a Palestinian state within two years. 62% said that if given a state, ?the Palestinians would continue their campaign of terror to destroy Israel.? Only 19% thought they would live peacefully with Israel.    

As Obama loses support among members of the influential Jewish voter bloc, possible Republican candidate Sarah Palin seems to be doing her best to woo them to her camp. At Time Magazine?s May 4 dinner honoring the ?100 Most Influential People in the World,? she was sporting a US/Israel flag pin. (IsraelNationalNews.com)

 
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