David as a symbol dates way back to the Hindus like the swastika. The Khazar kingdom used it to identify themselves as Jewish. And the Khazar kingdom is where most of your Ashkenazi genes originated. Proof of Khazar kingdom usage of the Star of David?
You do realize that a six-pointed star is a common geometical symbol and has been for thousands of years and in parts of the world that never knew Jews, don't you?
This is bs. Those examples are not examples of Religious States. Please check your own Jewish Virtual Library for the statement showing how Jews identify Israel as a "Jewish State". Judaism is not defined as secular in any dictionary I know of or by any rabbis I know of.
Of course those are not examples of religious states, because Israel is not a religious state. And of course 'Judaism' is not defined as secular because 'Judaism' means 'the Jewish religion," the religion of the Jewish people. The religion and the people are not identical.
"Jews view themselves as a people first that just happens to have our own religion." What planet are you on? Your atheistic views about what constitutes Judaism are a completely recent phenomenon and if you went back in time about 50 years ago telling your fellow Jews that Judaism is not a religion would gain you nothing but scorn.
Again, you miss the point by confusing the issue. Judaism is a religion, but the Jewish people is not identical with the religious community. Indian tribes like the Iroquois, for example (one of my great-great-grandmothers was a Seneca) have their own religions that are unique to their tribe, yet you wouldn't describe the Iroquois tribe as a religion, would you? The Jewish people created the Jewish religion. The people had to exist first for the religion to come into being.
for Jews of European and Central Asian descent to claim the Holy Land as their "homeland" is absurd on the face of it.
Why? If they are part of a transgenerational national community that traces its origin to Palestine, that has preserved the history of its connection to Palestine, and in every generation has established settlements in the land to maintain that bond, who are you to say that it's not their homeland? The Seminoles who were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma after the Seminole Wars still view Florida as their homeland. Is that absurd, too?
If every ethnic group claimed such nonsense after they've moved to other lands, become citizens of other lands, there would wars like you'd never seen before. Chinese Muslims do not claim Mecca or Saudi Arabia as their homeland, why should Ashkenazis have that right that no other ethnic group has? To claim it just goes to prove Jews believe themselves special and above normal rules of social integration.
Irrelevant and illogical. First, it was only relatively recent in history, the late 18th and 19th centuries, that Jews were allowed to become citizens of some Western European and North American states. Second, Jews have always considered themselves a people in their own right; Chinese Muslims consider themselves Chinese who practice the Muslim faith. As for the "normal rules of social integration," historically those rules have been imposed by conquering powers on subaltern peoples forcing them to "integrate" and abandon their identity against their will. Is it wrong for a people to want to preserve their culture and identity?
Niciendo, go to Israel and ask the settlers there why they are there. You post national propaganda and not what most Israelis themselves believe.
Most Israelis are secular and non-religious. Also, the document I quoted is the official constituent document of the State of Israel. It is what Israel itself believes about itself.
There are people who believe that the United States was intended to be a Christian nation and that God has given it to evangelicals to make a Christian kingdom on earth, but our founding documents institute a secular republic. Which one is correct and why do you feel Israel is different?
Without that deed claim in the Bible shared by Christian Gentiles, I seriously doubt Jews would ever have convinced European and American powers to takeover Palestine.
Wrong. President Truman pushed through American support for the vote for partitioning Palestine.
Irrelevant. Truman came along long, long after Jews had already established themselves in the land, long after control of the territory passed from the Ottoman Turks to the League of Nations, long after the League resolved to create a Jewish homeland.
That attachment is based on Jewish myths of origin, i.e. the deed to Canaan given to Abraham.
No. That attachment is based on the 1000 years of Jewish life in the land, which did not end even after the defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt, and the connections -- both physical and emotional -- between the Diaspora communities and those still resident in the land in the subsequent centuries. Sorry, but no matter how many times you repeat the same lie it doesn't magically become true.
Of far longer standing is the fact of non-Jewish Semitic peoples living in Palestine. You don't seem to know the history of Canaan and like many Zionists believe the people of the ancient Canaanite kingdoms somehow just faded away.
On the contrary, you appear ignorant of the history. The Jewish people originated from those Canaanite peoples. It began as an alliance among the subaltern classes in Canaanite city-states and semi-nomadic Canaanite shepherds in the highlands against the feudal vassals of Imperial Egypt (the ruling class of the Canaanite city-states and the Philistine mercenaries). These allied tribes, who formed a confederation called "Israel" whose people intermarried and interbred with the other native peoples of the land. The Jebusites, Amorites, Hivites, Girgashites etc. never went anywhere: they became "Israel."
The fact is these people inhabited and controlled Canaan/Palestine for a great many centuries, from the ancient Canaanite kingdoms to the Arab Palestinian populations that took control after the Romans kicked the Jews out of Palestine.
Peoplehood is a cultural phenomenon, a matter of consciousness. Where are the Babylonians and Assyrians? Their cultures have faded even though their descendants no doubt are still around. Their descendants, however, do not view themselves as Babylonians and Assyrians but as Syrians and Lebanese and Iraqis and Kuwaitis. After the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, all of the native peoples of Palestine were displaced and lost to history except for the Israelites, the Judeans, who preserved their identity (although 10 of the 12 tribes of their confederacy were scattered and lost).
The Romans did not "kick the Jews out of Palestine." Many fled, many were enslaved, but many also stayed. The Romans did not have the ability to deport entire populations. Moreover, the Arab Muslim conquests did not occur until the 7th century, so there is a sizable gap in your history.
Israel as an independent kingdom had a comparative very short existence. From Canaan's loss of control due to defeat by Egyptian armies around 1200 to 1000 BC when the Israelites moved into the power vacuum created to their ouster by the Assyrians, then brief reinstatement by the Persians (ironic is that!) to Roman control via their puppet regimes in Palestine then to total exile by the Romans in the 2nd century AD. Arab Muslim populations have lived in Palestine for the past 1800 years. Jewish claim to that land is mostly based on Jewish myth of ownership and control of a land they comparatively only briefy did own and control.
So, if I kick you out of your home, I can keep it provided enough time elapses?
Are you seriously morally myopic? Israelis believe they have a right to get rid of the indigenous Palestinian population Because that population is not Jewish. If they were Jewish, Israelis would welcome them with open arms instead armed aggression and occupation because Jews are not happy with Palestinians as Muslim neighbors.
Can you cite any Israeli government policy to get rid of the indigineous Palestinian population because the population is not Jewish? How do you explain the 20% of citizens of the State of Israel who are Arab, 80% of whom are Muslims?
Nope, you just gave Zionist propaganda that uses national state language that does not reference itself back to the Torah deed to Abraham that the common Israeli person firmly believes entitles him or her to the land of Palestine.
And you are just giving anti-Zionist propaganda. The common Israeli person is secular and non-religious and believes that he or she is entitled to the land of Palestine for the secular national reasons I have cited before.
This is pure Zionist propaganda and is completely immoral. Does it not register in your zeal to justify foreign invasion that NO Palestinian was ever consulted or voted upon the decision by European and Americans who controlled the UN in 1947/48?
The Jewish presence in Palestine is not the result of "foreign invasion." Sorry.
Do you believe in democracy at all or is Might Makes Right, the slogan of fascism, yours and Zionists war cry against humanity?
That seems to be the argument you are making.
If foreigners from lands thousands of miles away from America decided to let Chinese have America, would you just lie down and accept this fate? I don't think so, yet Zionists want the world to allow them to invade and crush out of existence Palestinian peoples.
If it was determined that the United States should be given back to the Native Americans, I don't think I would have a leg to stand on to oppose such a deal.
Zionists want to brand resistance fighters to this foreign invasion and occupation "terrorists" as if invasion and occupation by foreigners from Europe and America were totally acceptable movements of people.
So, it's OK to deliberately target civilians if you're "resisting foreign invasion?"
Zionists are insane and that's why Israel remains a morally-challenged state and will until democracy rids the country of Jewish religious control.
So, in your version of democracy, everyone gets a vote except the Jews?
As for Jews buying their land of Israel that also is Zionist propaganda that the Jewish National Fund records reveal to be quite false. The Jewish National Fund, the outfit that oversees the purchase of Palestinian lands shows around 6% of the land actually purchased. the vast majority of Palestinian land has been confiscated from Palestinian owners driven off through early Zionist terror campaigns and the 1967 war.
I'm sorry, but the facts do not support this.
Again, you are morally blind to history of Palestine and the invasion of Europeans and European-American Jews of the land occupied by Palestinians, the great majority for well over a thousand years and even in 1947 the 70% majority.
How is it an "invasion" if the Powers That Be allow you to move in? Moreover, the original partition plan, that 70% majority would have had their own state.
Separation of humanity into two opposed groups, one good, one bad in the eyes of God. Jesus corrected this great error which is the basic reason Christianity is not Judaism
Sorry, but that is not true. Jews are not "good" in the eyes of God and Gentiles are not "bad" in the eyes of God. All human beings are created in the image of God and Jews are commanded to love all human beings -- both their neighbors and the strangers.
Judaism attempts to divide the house of humanity forgetting all about how God found all human beings, "good, very good, indeed."
In case you didn't know, that declaration by God that human beings are all "good, very good, indeed" comes from the Jewish scripture. And the rabbis taught that all human beings are brothers because we share the same father, and no man can claim his blood is redder than another's.
The second great spiritual error is the Jewish misidentification of God as an Alien Being, unknowable, incomprehensible, foreign to the human mind. Jesus brought back the true identification of God as Father with humanity made in Their image, made male and female which of course means God is also Mother. This wisdom was lost with the monotheistic makeover of the Divine Assembly which represented God as a Holy Family, a pluriform monotheism instead of God whittled down into the form and function of an army commander, a god of war, a Lord of Hosts. Where there is a Father there logically must be a Mother, a Son, a Daughter. Abrahamic monotheism is not true to the identity of God which is why Christianity reintroduced the ancient Hebrew relationship of Yahweh as Son to EL Elyon.
I guess you somehow missed the parts of the Jewish scriptures where God is described as a loving father, a nurturing mother, who hears the cry of the poor and comforts the afflicted and is near to all who call upon Him...
Yes, it is Without the myth no rabbi would have ever pushed for a Jewish homeland. Even Jews know that populations come and go through any habitable area's historic development so only God giving Jews a virtual DEED to the land of Canaan would be reason enough to push to claim that deed.
Sorry, but here's another area where your knowledge is lacking. Rabbis didn't push for a Jewish homeland until that homeland actually existed. Rabbis were either hostile or indifferent to Zionism until after WW2. And this "deed" you keep talking about is not the basis for Israel's existence. That the Jewish people originated in Palestine and there created their culture and identity, and have preserved that connection throughout the generations is the basis for Israel's existence, not religious myth.
If I went there I would tie the problems of modern Israel right back to the religion of Judaism and would be told to take that discussion back this board!
Have you never questioned whether your idea that the problems of Israel are traceable to the Jewish religion might not be correct?
