.
I see the BBC delights in telling us that Israel is concerned about the number of violent attacks happening in Judea/Samaria (or “West Bank” in BBC talk). The attacks flagged up are being carried out by Jewish settlers. The BBC helpfully shows an accompanying still from the alleged video taken by a pro-Palestinian group Yesh Din to demonstrate just how vicious the Jews living in this area can be. One could be forgiven for thinking that the Palestinians are innocent little lambs. There is never any mention of the barbarity that Palestinians show towards these “settlers. Then again, presenting these people as the aggressors is all part of the ongoing Palestinian propaganda campaign- lapped up and regurgitated by the BBC.
Anonymous | 19.08.08 – 4:43 pm
Thank you for all your research.
I am no fan of religion, but I would rather compare Ultra Orthodox Jews with other Ultra Orthodox religious fanatics, such as Christians, who abhor gays etc. and are sometimes militant about things that offend them, not the fundamentalist Islamic hate-mongers you seem to prefer equate them with.
I fear that your decision to equate Ultra Orthodox Jews with Islamic fundamentalist hate-mongers whose death-wish and obsession with Paradise appears to have few redeeming features, puts you and I irreparably on different sides of the fence.
All I can say is that if the articles that support your case ARE truly representative of Ultra Orthodox Judaism, and your theory that they are a malevolent force for evil is correct, then thank God (or anyone else out there ) that Israel is 70% secular.
In any case, I know which ‘battalion of hardcore religious fundamentalists’ I would rather meet on a dark night.
Sue | 19.08.08 – 5:46 pm
I know which ‘battalion of hardcore religious fundamentalists’ I would rather meet on a dark night.
Yes, no doubt you do. But if you were an Arab, you might prefer to meet the other lot.
But the truth is the most savage thing you’re ever likely to meet on a dark night is your neighbour’s dog.
One of the advantages of your position on the secular high ground of the diaspora is that you can foment hatreds on the internet that will never come back to bite you.
David Preiser (USA) | Homepage | 19.08.08 – 5:23 pm
Don’t be silly. There’s no such thing as a group of armed haredim going around beheading secular Jews.
No they don’t behead them, they throw acid in their eyes.
http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2008/07/acid-attack-on-14year-old-girl-in.html
Or beat them to a pulp.
The Sick Charedim of Ramat Bet Shemesh
http://haemtza.blogspot.com/2008/01/sick-charedim-of-ramat-bet-shemesh.html
I’m waiting for a statement from the Orthodox Jew who was brutally attacked by zealots yesterday in Ramot Bet Shemesh. I hope to have it soon.
In the meantime, if you are offended as I am about the ongoing Orthodox Jew-on-Orthodox Jew violence in that city please take twenty seconds today to do something about it. My suggestions:
http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2008/01/call-to-action.html
No Reform synagogue has ever been blown up by the haredim.
No, they burn Christian churches and Bibles instead.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/985362.html
Gosh, are there many of these guys?
“But if you were an Arab, you might prefer to meet the other lot.”
If you were an Arab and you met some hardcore religious fundamentalists they would be just as likely to tear you limb from limb if you did an unIslamic deed as you very well know. You are talking real nonsense actually, and there was I trying to be conciliatory.
How the hell do you know what savage things I have met or am likely to meet?
Me!
Foment hatreds!
Blimey. That is richer than a very very rich thing.
Are you speaking on behalf of the BBC?
Your whole post has something of the night about it, and your own words spoken anonymously, are unlikely to come back to bite you too.
Vance back on the embarassingly cringeworthy Judea/Samaria thing.
No, that WAS the name of the area, after the Jews conquered it a few thousand years ago (having earlier been Caanan). It is NOT the current name of area, and has not been for quite a long time.
The BBC is anti-Israeli and it always reports in that way. The Balen report says so.
Hugh:
Gosh, are there many of these guys?
Hugh | 19.08.08 – 7:02 pm
Yes, I expect there are at least…several.
That proves conclusively that Haredi Jews are as bad as the ROP. I suppose that’s why the BBC is so reluctant to jump to conclusions about the ethnicity of terror suspects. They could easily be you-know-whos.
They {Haredim} are the direct counterpart of Moslem extremists. Haredim claim to follow the Halachi rules as forever binding. The Halachi gives licence to kill secular Jews, to show no kindness to them. It also relegates women to being the property of their fathers and husbands
[…]
Sound eerily like their equivalents in the RoP to me.
Anonymous | 19.08.08 – 4:40 pm
Not at all. All of the instances of extreme Jewish violence you cite have been condemned by the vast majority of Israelis and Jews throughout the world.
Please point me to evidence of the vast majority of Muslims condemning Islamist terrorism.
You won’t find it here, for example:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks
Perhaps you can find a similar List of Hassidic Terror Attacks For The Past 2 Months?
Would you like me to find links showing Palestinians celebrating and handing out sweets after 9/11 and other terrorist atrocities?
Sorry, no equivalence – no cigar.
Anonymous | 19.08.08 – 6:53 pm |
No, they burn Christian churches and Bibles instead.
So long as we’re moving goal posts, I submit that “Messianic” Jews (i.e. Carites or Lubovitch), aren’t really Jews anymore. They worship someone else.
Zoran wrote: The so-called ‘settlers’ have no right to be there. They are on land unlawfully occupied by Israel.
Israel has perfect right to be there – in Israel. It is Muslim Arabs who have no right to be there. Most of the ME was civilised, until it was turned into a Muslim disaster area, all of which was done at the point of a sword, and after much slaughter, as the Koran so admirably recommends.
Lebanon, a once civilised nation in that area, with freedoms unknown in the ME except Israel, is fast becoming an Islamic despotic nation.
We in the West, and Britain particularly, face the same catastrophe that Lebanon has undergone. I hope that history never records 2066 – The Muslim Conquest”, as one of the seminal events of British history. But given the clueless behaviour of our political elites, I wouldnt bet on it.
“The BBC is anti-Israeli and it always reports in that way. The Balen report says so.”
As I understand it the Balen report says no such thing. What it does say is that the BBC’s “experts” in the region are so utterly clueless about the history and complexities of the region that their reporting is embarrassingly inadequate and uncontextualised. It would be nice to see it to confirm though.
DP111 | 20.08.08 – 1:17 am
There were many Arabs in what’s now Israel + West Bank long before Islam even existed.
There were many Arabs in what’s now Israel + West Bank long before Islam even existed.
Proof?
Define “many”.
There has always been a Jewish presence in what has always been Eretz Yisroel (The Land of Israel) long before Islam, the Romans, the Ottomans, etc., etc.
I hate debating with people who even under the cover of Internet anonymity still post as Anonymous.
MYTH:
“Palestine was always an Arab country.”
“The BBC is anti-Israeli and it always reports in that way. The Balen report says so.”
As I understand it the Balen report says no such thing.
Cockney | 20.08.08 – 8:25 am
Has the Balen Report been released and no one bothered to tell me? After the BBC has spent a truckload of subscribers’/taxpayers’ money to stop its distribution?
Link please.
There were many Arabs in what’s now Israel + West Bank long before Islam even existed.
Anonymous | 20.08.08 – 8:28 am
There were Jews (including Samaritans) and Byzantine Christians most of whom had Greek or Roman ancestry. Nabateans who were Semitic but spoke Aramaic not Arabic were around but largely in the surrounding desert regions.
But Arabs – who would be recognised today as Arabic – still in Arabia.
“Has the Balen Report been released and no one bothered to tell me?”
Rumour and conjecture dude 🙂
deegee:
I hate debating with people who even under the cover of Internet anonymity still post as Anonymous.
deegee | 20.08.08 – 12:56 pm
So do I. Did I mention that before?
Here we have a particularly slippery example, who said:
“One of the advantages of your position on the secular high ground of the diaspora is that you can foment hatreds on the internet that will never come back to bite you.”
Anonymous | 19.08.08 – 6:31
….the last bit of which is a glaring example of pot kettle black, and the first part is a glaring example of ‘go and live in Israel or shut up you Jew’ syndrome.
Although this Anonymous is probably a BBC spokesperson, he doesn’t even come clean about that.
If you can’t think of a name Mr. Anonymous, I’ll let you borrow one from my modest name library.
BBC Spokesperson.
Mervyn ( BBC)
Felicity Beeboid.
Clevercloggs.
Nasturtium.
Feel free.
Sorry, Joel has already been taken.
deegee | 20.08.08 – 1:17 pm
But Arabs – who would be recognised today as Arabic – still in Arabia.
You have forgotten the Arabs settled in Samaria by the Assyrians and the Ghassanids, who arrived from Yemen in the early third century CE and as Azdis would be recognized as Arab today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghassanid
David Preiser
“I submit that “Messianic” Jews (i.e. Carites or Lubovitch), aren’t really Jews anymore. They worship someone else.”
WTF is this “someone else “rubbish – perhaps you would like to be more specific for the benefit non-religeous posters here .And besides , are they more or less jews than the israeli gays that preen themselves on the beaches at Tel Aviv
geoffrey sturdy | 20.08.08 – 9:18 pm |
The Lubavitchers worship their late Rebbe Menachem Schneerson as the Messiah. I’m not exaggerating.
Oh, they play it down in public. There’s even something of a schism between those who believe in Schneerson as The Messiah and those who realize the expiration date has passed. But there are plenty of believers.
(This is not the same thing as “Messianic Jews” who believe in Jesus and wear Jewish religious paraphernalia.)
Let me be very clear on this: I grew up interacting with these people, and have been to Sabbath religious services at “770” (the big headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn).
There is a segment of the Saturday morning prayers during which Jews read the weekly portion of the Torah aloud to the congregation. This is a tradition that goes back to when Ezra the Scribe started the practice of regular public readings after Cyrus the Persian allowed the Jews to go back after Nebuchadnezzar kicked them out in the 6th Century BCE (as described in Nehemiah, Chapt. 8 ). Before then the king did it, only once a year. The first section of the weekly portion is also read during Monday and Thursday morning prayers, but on the Sabbath it’s the whole portion, and a more elaborate procedure.
Studying Torah is supposed to be the most important element of a Jew’s life, according to the ultra-orthodox mode of thinking. The Talmud and all the peripheral materials are all about understanding Torah, Jewish Law, and the rest of the books of the Old Testament. But Torah is the heart of the whole thing, and the public reading of Torah is vitally important to the Jewish tradition. The only actual requirement for a male to become Bar Mitzvah is by saying a certain blessing before and after a bit of it is read. The Torah even has it’s own holiday to celebrate completing the last portion of the year before starting all over again the following week.
In short, it’s a big deal. The reason I went through all that is to put the attitude of the Lubavitcers at “770” in perspective. During the Torah segment of Saturday morning prayers, the place is a madhouse. Many of the men and boys are praying at their own pace, reading from different parts of the service, and in their own rhythms and intonation. It’s nothing like the organized, regulated, call-and-response most people are used to (regardless of religion). The ones who aren’t praying are either shouting loudly at one another across the room, discussing some scholarly matter, discussing who’s house they’re going to for the big meal afterwards, climbing on top of one another in search of an empty seat (literally), or just chatting idly. The women peek through a few small windows from their cloistered balcony high above it all.
All this creates a background hum, on top of which is the real object of everyone’s attention: the conga line of men and boys singing the “Yechi, the Lubavitch chant which translates as “He is our Lord, our Teacher and our Rabbi, King Messiah forever and ever.” (Members of the younger generation often have this inscription round the edge of their yarmulkes.) Round and round they go, louder and louder, all morning long, while half the room is trying to have a good pray. It goes without saying that there is a giant, Big Brother-like poster of Schneerson surveying his realm, complete with that little incantation printed on it.
This gets so bad that the rabbi in charge of the proceedings has to shout at the top of his lungs and pound a very large book against a pillar in order to get a moment’s silence so people could hear the Torah reading. This yelling and banging often has to be done continuously, as every few seconds the conga line starts up again, louder than before.
Worshiping their departed leader was more important to them than their God’s own words. They worship someone else now as the Path. They are as much Jews than the early Christians were, and not so far from today’s “Messianic Jews”. This goes on at their headquarters.
For “Carites”, I should have written “Karaites”, and they’re another story altogether.
As for the preening gays, they’re just engaging in a Biblically proscribed lifestyle. If they start worshiping Jesus or Cthulu or L. Ron Hubbard, than they are no longer part of that faith.
(Ethnicity and genetics are another argument altogether, and I’ve gone on long enough.)
The extremist, gun totin’, Jewish settlers are well known for :
1–stealing and hanging onto land that is not theirs.
2–killing any Palestinian who dares to attemp to regain his land.
3–general thug-like actions.
They are the Storm Troopers of the Israeli right wing, let loose, condoned and unpunished by “the only democatic state in the Middle East”.