Apr 17, 2012 -- 4:32PM, BDboy wrote:

Apr 17, 2012 -- 12:47PM, CharikIeia wrote:

It's funny how Dos & Co. complain about pro-Jewish mainstream media, and you, Squirrel & Co. complain about anti-Jewish mainstream media. I guess as usual, the truth lies somewhere in-between... but then, truth may be something that only I care for, as several admissions to open partisanship & bias have proven.

 

>>>>>>> I agree with you. These counter claims are made simply to "Respond" to valid criticism of Israeli policies!!

Which often mislead people.

Here are some facts...

Jews lived in many parts of Arabia, Iran for thousands of years in relative peace with Christians and Muslims of those areas. Life of Arab Jews became risky once local population saw violence by the state of Israel. As a result many Jews from different arab countries were forced to migrate from their own lands.

BDBOY

Your statement is counter-factual. Life in arabia for Jews had been risky and precarious since the Arab invasions. Jews lived subject to the official apartheid rules of Islam and were frequently attacked and always abused by the Muslim majority throughout the Arab Muslim world. 

Jews were deported en masse by Arab governments and/or were forced by Arab governments to leave their homes. It had nothing to do with Israeli actions, unless you consider the fact that Israel was successful in defending itself from the invading Arab armies sufficient cause.

Please stop telling lies. You might also wish to consider departing your fantasy world concerning Israeli policies of which you are seriously misinformed. It is easy enough to get accurate information concerning Israeli policies. Israel maintains very accessible web sites which will provide you with this information. Please feel free to use these web sites. 

Chari wrote:

Why do you think general Gantz of the IDF, whose weird statement is the topic of this thread, feels responsible for the welfare of Jews who are neither Israeli citizens nor live in Israel?

This statement is indicative of the problem which many people have in understanding why there is an Israel and what Israel means both to Jews and the world.  As Susha wrote, part of the purpose of Israel is to create a safe haven for Jews.

Before there was an Israel, Jews had no one on whom they could rely for protection from either governmental actions or mob violence. As an often oppressed minority (even in our own land) Jews were voiceless and powerless against these forces. A strong and sovereign Israel is a signal to the world that, as the sayings go, "We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!" and/or "We are here - get used to it!"  Only Israel has been able to rescue Jews and Jewish populations under threat around the world. No other country has done so or would do so. No other country would even think of doing so. We all know the sorry history of the "great democracies" in letting Jews go to their deaths for the "crime" of being Jewish. I would think that any European should know and understand this. But, perhaps, all the "feel good" pan-European post nationalism nonsense has robbed people of their historical knowledge and their good sense.    

BD,

If the Jews lived in perfect safety among the Muslims before the State of Israel was created, how do you explain the behavior toward the Jews on the part of the Almohads which took place about 700 years before the State of Israel came into existence?

Habesor 

Char,

Re: protecting Jews at home and abroad

I am writing the following as a Zionist. When the Zionist movement began, back in the 19th century, there were already different opinions within the movement about the nature of the "Jewish Problem". The early Zionists like Pinsker, Hess, Herzl and several others were very impressed by the contemporary "Scientific" analysis of society. They applied the same sort of analysis to the Jewish situation in Europe. I won't go into the complexities of these analyses but one element was the determination that anti-Semitism was caused by the Jews being an undefinable group within modern nationalistic society. It was argued that once the Jews had a modern state of their own, their position in western society would become recognizable and the fear of the Jew, which, they felt, caused anti-Semitism would come to an end.

Over the years experience has shown this not to be the case. Indeed the early Zionists made precisely the same error as the early Jewish enlightenment/assimilationists who argued that once the Jews wore the same clothes, spoke the same language and modeled their religious institutions after the Christian Church, the fear of the other, on the part of their neighbors, would come to an end and the Jews could live alongside their Christian neighbors in peace. Both the Zionists and the assimilationists were wrong for the same reason; anti-Semitism was not caused by anything the Jews did or were, it was caused by the anti-Semites.

We Zionists should not be surprised that Christian religion based anti-Jew ideology which morphed into  anti-Semitism which was based on the bogus "science" of racism; has morphed once again into anti-Zionism which is based on bogus anti-Colonialism, bogus humanitarianism, bogus liberalism or bogus "scientific" socialism.

Though this one aspect of Zionist ideology has proven woefully invalid, other aspects have, so far, proven valid. First and foremost is that a Jewish state can and does provide a safe haven for persecuted Jewish communities. Second that a Jewish state offers the opportunity, for the first time in a couple of thousand years, for a Jewish community to physically defend itself. We, in Israel, receive help from other states, especially American military aid, but we are not totally dependent on that help.

Finally, Israel is the agent for Jews around the world to help each other. Israel received and absorbed millions of refugees. A good part of the resources used in that project came from Jews around the world who took on a major part of the financial burden involved in that humanitarian project. (This at a time when the Arabs were getting financial help from the UNRWA, a bogus humanitarian organization, to prevent the absorption of Arab refugees into their countries and keep them, penned up in refugee camps for generation after generation.)  

The difference between Jewish nationalism and Arab nationalism is that Jews love our own people more than we hate the Arabs, while the Arabs hate the Jews more than they love their own people. Strangely, there are anti-colonialist liberal leftist socialists who see this as a positive attribute of the Arabs. The comment by Benny Gantz simply reflected this aspect of the Zionist idea.   

Habesor