Question re: Israel and US relationship

[26 Inf]

Big, big, fan of Judaism, not so much a fan of Zionism, not a fan of the Israeli Government per se.

If you are running behind the religious theology of the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis, you ought to be familiar with Exodus 32 and 33:

Exodus 32:8-10:
8 They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'"
9 The LORD said to Moses, "I have seen this people, and behold, they are an obstinate people.
10 "Now then let Me alone, that My anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them; and I will make of you a great nation."

If you need the Cliff's Note interpretation - in verse 10 God tells Moses that the Israelites have angered him enough that he is transferring the covenant from Abraham's lineage to Moses' direct lineage, but Moses intercedes for the Israelites, and in verse 32:14 he convinces God to change his edict:

14 And the LORD repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people.

He is still a little upset, so this, parent to kids, 'get out of my face before I let you have it':

Exodus 33:3 - "Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way."

Most folks don't have a full grasp of Zionism, or for that matter, Jewish history.

First of all, the Romans won. A majority of the Jews in the Roman Empire probably converted to Christianity during the first five centuries AD following the official Jewish expulsion of Christians from synagogue worship. It is a common misunderstanding that following the destruction of the temple and Jerusalem in the Jewish-Roman wars of ad 70 and 135, the Jews of Palestine were driven from the land as a people and that modern diaspora Jews are their descendents. Actually, there never was a great “dispersion” or “mass exile” of Jews following the Jewish-Roman wars of ad 70 and 135. Most of the Jews were “people of the land” (Am Ha’aretz), peasant farmers generally indifferent to politics but devoted to their homeland. Keeping a low profile, they remained in Palestine, many becoming Christians and Muslims under Byzantine and Arab rule. As mentioned earlier, Jews of the Diaspora, including the ancestors of today’s northern European, Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim, continued to be largely the descendents of proselytes. Today, dark-eyed, brown-skinned Palestinians are more likely to be Abraham’s physical descendents than the light-skinned northern European Ashkenazim displacing them. This has been acknowledged by Jewish historians, including two of the founders of the modern state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi:

To argue that after the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt Jews altogether ceased to cultivate the land of Eretz Israel is to demonstrate complete ignorance in the history and the contemporary literature of Israel . . . The Jewish farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil, which had been watered with his sweat and the sweat of his forebears . . . Despite the repression and suffering, the rural population remained unchanged” (Eretz Israel in the Past and in the Present, Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi, 1979; in Hebrew, translated by Sand, p.198).

The fellahin [Arabic-speaking Palestinian peasants] are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab victors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers, and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement. Even in their former habitations, the Arabians did not engage in farming . . . They did not seek new lands on which to settle their peasantry, which hardly existed. Their whole interest in the new countries was political, religious and material: to rule, to propagate Islam and to collect taxes http://questions.org/attq/are-todays...aelite-tribes/

It was more rugged for the Jewish people who left the middle-east, for the next 1800 years or so they were hectored unmercifully by primarily, Christians and Catholics. High points:

Mid-1400’s – Jew’s kicked out of many European Countries – some return to Israel
1500’s – first ghettos established.
1543 - Martin Luther wrote ‘On the Jews and Their Lies’ which contained these gems: the Jews are a "base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision and law must be accounted as filth”; they are "full of the devil’s feces ... which they wallow in like swine”; the synagogue is an "incorrigible whore and an evil slut.” Luther advised Christians to carry out seven remedial actions:
1. to burn down Jewish synagogues and schools and warn people against them;
2. to refuse to let Jews own houses among Christians;
3. for Jewish religious writings to be taken away;
4. for Rabbis to be forbidden to preach;
5. to not offer protection for Jews on highways;
6. for usury to be prohibited, and for all silver and gold to be removed, put aside for safekeeping and given back to Jews who truly convert; and
7. to give young, strong Jews flail, axe, spade, spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their noses.
1615 – King Louis, XIII, of France: “ all Jews must leave the country within one month on pain of death.”
1619 - Shah Abbasi, of the Persian Sufi Dynasty, increases persecution against the Jews, forcing many to outwardly practice Islam.
1727 – Catherine I, of Russia: "The Jews... who are found in Ukraine and in other Russian provinces are to be expelled at once beyond the frontiers of Russia."
1862 - During the American Civil War General Grant issues General Order № 11 (1862), ordering all Jews out of his military district, suspecting them of pro-Confederate sympathy. President Lincoln directs him to rescind the order. During this period, Polish Jews are given equal rights. Old privileges forbidding Jews to settle in some Polish cities are abolished.
1871 - Speech of Pope Pius IX in regard to Jews: "of these dogs, there are too many of them at present in Rome, and we hear them howling in the streets, and they are disturbing us in all places."
1881–1884 - Pogroms sweep southern Russia, propelling mass Jewish emigration from the Pale of Settlement: about 2 million Russian Jews emigrated in period 1880–1924, many of them to the United States (until the National Origins Quota of 1924 and Immigration Act of 1924 largely halted immigration to the U.S. from Eastern Europe and Russia). The Russian word "pogrom" becomes international.
1891 - Expulsion of 20,000 Jews from Moscow, Russia. The Congress of the United States eases immigration restrictions for Jews from the Russian Empire.
1899 - Houston Stewart Chamberlain, racist and antisemitic author, publishes his Die Grundlagen des Jahrhunderts which later became a basis of National-Socialist ideology.
1915 - The World War I prompts expulsion of 250,000 Jews from Western Russia.
1917–1921 - Attacked for being revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries, unpatriotic pacifists or warmongers, religious zealots or godless atheists, capitalist exploiters or bourgeois profiteers, masses of Jewish civilians (by various estimates 70,000 to 250,000, the number of orphans exceeded 300,000) were murdered in pogroms in the course of Russian Civil War.
1933–1941 Persecution of Jews in Germany rises until they are stripped of their rights not only as citizens, but also as human beings. During this time antisemitism reached its all-time high. The Reich Flight Tax is used to expropriate funds from Jewish emigrees.
1938 July 6–15 - Evian Conference: 31 countries refuse to accept Jews trying to escape Nazi Germany (with exception of Dominican Republic). Most find temporary refuge in Poland. See also Bermuda Conference. The only country willing to accept a large number of Jews was the Dominican Republic, which offered to accept up to 100,000 refugees on generous terms.
1939 - The "Voyage of the damned": S.S. St. Louis, carrying 907 Jewish refugees from Germany, is turned back by Canada, Cuba and the US.

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[jerrysimons]

I trained with some IDF rotor pilots back in the mid '90s here in the US, then spent some time in Israel visiting one of their bases. Nice guys and gals. Many have ties to the US thru grandparents, cousins, and are probably the most pro-American people you could ever meet wearing the uniform of another nation. They love anything American.

Not too hard to figure out why the relationship between the President and the State of Israel is so bad right now. POTUS is an anti-Colonial Marxist, Islam sympathising, Anti-Semite.

Yes exactly. The only thing shocking is the extent to which genuine propaganda and disinformation from Barack Hussein's regime is so freely disseminated and accepted in the mainstream -- as if, in Bibi, congress was inviting an enemy of the state to dictate our legislature. Which, ironically, is exactly what Barack Hussein would like to do: ignore and outright detest the fact that Congress is a co-equal brach of government to the executive branch as if he alone held power dictate law.

http://tabletmag.com/scroll/188814/the-correction

Why all the fuss right now? There are two useful ways to approach the question. The first is to try and imagine what would not have been a violation of the shifting rules of “protocol.” Indulge me here. Imagine John Boehner coming up with the idea to invite the prime minister of Israel to speak. Singularly committed to the sanctity of bipartisanship—the idea, that is, that no decision in Washington should be made without the benign approval of both parties—Boehner then calls the White House. “I have this crazy idea,” he says. “How about a speech from Bibi?” On the other end of the line, crickets. “The thing is, John,” say the Democrats, “we don’t really like Bibi, and his Iran policy is not really the one we’re trying to promote. Mind scrapping the whole thing?” Fighting back a tear, Boehner agrees. “Sure thing, guys,” he says. “Sorry for bringing it up. See you later at the congressional gym.”

This scenario, of course, is idiotic—yet it’s precisely the one so many Obama supporters have been strongly promoting in tones of heavy outrage this past week. Which leads me to the second, more useful way of thinking about the conflict, namely asking why Bibi is so intent on making a speech that was bound to piss off the White House and its itchy-fingered defenders.

http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and...3OsqCTm4q9C.01

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/The-app...ypes=og.shares

[26 Inf]

Although history is replete with more horrors to the Jewish people, the present middle-eastern problem, began with the Ottoman's and what happened to their Empire after they backed the losers in WWI.

Zionism - (Hebrew: צִיּוֹנוּת, translit. Tziyonut, after Zion) is a nationalist and political movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel (also referred to as Palestine, Canaan or the Holy Land). Political Zionism began in In 1896, Theodor Herzl, a Jewish journalist living in Austria-Hungary, published "The Jews' State" in which he asserted that the only solution to the "Jewish Question" in Europe, including growing anti-semitism, was through the establishment of a state for the Jews.

A year later, Herzl founded the Zionist Organization (ZO), which at its first congress, "called for the establishment of a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law". Serviceable means to attain that goal included the promotion of Jewish settlement there, the organization of Jews in the diaspora, (People who have suffered mass dispersions of an involuntary nature, such as the expulsion of Jews from Judea) the strengthening of Jewish feeling and consciousness, and preparatory steps to attain those necessary governmental grants. Herzl passed away in 1904 without the political standing that was required to carry out his agenda of a Jewish home in Palestine.

Although Zionism as an organized movement is considered to have been founded by Herzl, the history of Zionism began earlier. The Hovevei Zion, or the Lovers of Zion, were responsible for the creation of 20 new Jewish settlements in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.

In 1881–1882 the Tzar sponsored a huge wave of pogroms in the Russian Empire and a massive wave of Jews began leaving, mainly for America. So many Russian Jews arrived in Jaffa (now Tel Aviv) that the town ran out of accommodation and the local Jews began forming communities outside the Jaffa city walls. However the migrants faced difficulty finding work (the new settlements mainly needed farmers and builders) and 70% ultimately left, mostly moving on to America.

Dissatisfaction with Zionism by Orthodox Jews: By 1904, cultural Zionism was accepted by most Zionists and a schism was beginning to develop between the Zionist movement and Orthodox Judaism. In 1904, Herzl died unexpectedly at the age of 44 and the leadership was taken over by David Wolffsohn, who led the movement until 1911. Under Herzl's leadership, Zionism had relied on Orthodox Jews for religious support, with the main party being the orthodox Mizrachi. As the cultural and socialist Zionists increasingly broke with tradition and used language contrary to the outlook of most religious Jewish communities, many orthodox religious organizations began opposing Zionism. Their opposition was based on its secularism and on the grounds that only the Messiah could re-establish Jewish rule in Israel.

Widespread pogroms accompanied the 1905 Russian Revolution. The vicious pogroms led to a wave of immigrants to Palestine. In 1909 a group of 65 Zionists laid the foundations for a modern city in Palestine.

The Jewish population of the USA increased about ten times between 1880 and 1920, with the immigration of poorer, more liberal and radical, "downtown", Eastern European immigrants fleeing persecution. It was not until 1912, when the secular "people's lawyer" Louis Brandeis became involved in Zionism, just before the First World War, that Zionism gained significant support. By 1917, the American Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, which Brandeis chaired had increased American Zionist membership ten times to 200,000 members. American Jewry thenceforth became the financial center for the world Zionist movement.

As in the US, England had experienced a rapid growth in their Jewish minority. About 150,000 Jews migrated there from Russia in the period 1881–1914. With this immigration influx, pressure grew from British voters to halt it; added to the established knowledge in British society of Old Testament scripture, Zionism became an attractive solution for both Britain and the Empire.

In the search for support, Herzl, before his death, had made the most progress with the German Kaiser, joining him on his 1898 trip to Palestine. At the outbreak of war in 1914, the offices of the Zionist Organization were located in Berlin and led by Otto Warburg, a German citizen. With different national sections of the movement supporting different sides in the war, Zionist policy was to maintain strict neutrality and "to demonstrate complete loyalty to Turkey", the German ally controlling Palestine. OOPS! When the war started in 1914, with Tsarist Russia on the Allied side, most Jews still viewed Russia as the historic enemy of the Jewish people and there was tremendous support for Germany. In much of Eastern Europe the advancing Germans were regarded as liberators by the Jews.

In the United States, still officially neutral, most Russian and German Jews supported the Germans, as did much of the largely anti-British Irish American community. Britain was anxious to win US support for its war effort, and winning over Jewish financial and popular support in the US was considered vital.

In January 1915, two months after the British declaration of war against the Ottomans, Zionist and British cabinet member Herbert Samuel presented a detailed memorandum entitled The Future of Palestine to the British Cabinet on the benefits of a British protectorate over Palestine to support Jewish immigration.

Both sides against the middle. In 1916 Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca (in Arabia), began an "Arab Revolt" hoping to create an Arab state in the Middle East. In the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence British representatives promised they would allow him to create such a state. They also provided him with large sums of money to fund his revolt. SHADES OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA!! Think ol' Hussein bin Ali, isn't gonna be mad?

Henry McMahon (British diplomat and Indian Army officer who served as the High Commissioner in Egypt from 1915 to 1917) had exchanged letters with Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca in 1915, in which he had promised Hussein control of Arab lands with the exception of "portions of Syria" lying to the west of "the districts of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo". Palestine lay to the southwest of the Vilayet of Damascus and wasn't explicitly mentioned. That modern-day Lebanese region of the Mediterranean coast was set aside as part of a future French Mandate. After the war the extent of the coastal exclusion was hotly disputed. Hussein had protested that the Arabs of Beirut would greatly oppose isolation from the Arab state or states, but did not bring up the matter of Jerusalem or Palestine.

On the basis of McMahon's assurances the Arab Revolt began on 5 June 1916. However, the British and French also secretly concluded the Sykes–Picot Agreement on 16 May 1916. This agreement divided many Arab territories into British- and French-administered areas and allowed for the internationalization of Palestine. Hussein learned of the agreement when it was leaked by the new Russian government in December 1917, but was satisfied by two disingenuous telegrams from Sir Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner of Egypt, assuring him that the British government's commitments to the Arabs were still valid and that the Sykes-Picot Agreement was not a formal treaty.

In August 1917, as the British cabinet discussed the Balfour Declaration, Edwin Samuel Montagu, the only Jew in the British Cabinet and a staunch anti-Zionist, "was passionately opposed to the declaration on the grounds that: (a) it was a capitulation to anti-Semitic bigotry, with its suggestion that Palestine was the natural destination of the Jews, and that (b) it would be a grave cause of alarm to the Muslim world"

Hussein called on the Arab population in Palestine to welcome the Jews as brethren and co-operate with them for the common welfare. Following the publication of the Declaration the British had dispatched Commander David George Hogarth to see Hussein in January 1918 bearing the message that the "political and economic freedom" of the Palestinian population was not in question. Hogarth reported that Hussein "would not accept an independent Jewish State in Palestine, nor was I instructed to warn him that such a state was contemplated by Great Britain". Continuing Arab disquiet over Allied intentions also led during 1918 to the British Declaration to the Seven and the Anglo-French Declaration, the latter promising "the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations.

The Arabs expressed disapproval in November 1918 at the parade marking the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. The Muslim-Christian Association protested the carrying of new "white and blue banners with two inverted triangles in the middle". They drew the attention of the authorities to the serious consequences of any political implications in raising the banners. Later that month, on the first anniversary of the occupation of Jaffa by the British, the Muslim-Christian Association sent a lengthy memorandum and petition to the military governor protesting once more any formation of a Jewish state.

On November 1918 the large group of Palestinian Arab dignitaries and representatives of political associations addressed a petition to the British authorities in which they denounced the declaration. The document stated:


...we always sympathized profoundly with the persecuted Jews and their misfortunes in other countries... but there is wide difference between such sympathy and the acceptance of such a nation...ruling over us and disposing of our affairs.

Since the creation of Israel, the importance of the Zionist movement as an organization has declined, as the Israeli state has grown stronger. The Zionist movement continues to exist, working to support Israel, assist persecuted Jews and encourage Jewish emigration to Israel. While most Israeli political parties continue to define themselves as Zionist, modern Israeli political thought is no longer formulated within the Zionist movement.

The success of Zionism has meant that the percentage of the world's Jewish population who live in Israel has steadily grown over the years and today 40% of the world's Jews live in Israel.

AND THERE YOU GO

This is only slightly better than what we did to the American Indians.

[SteyrAUG]

Any pro Palestine supporters in this group?

I was once somewhat sympathetic to the injustices originally done to the Arab population of the former territory of Palestine, but that was about 15 years ago. Since then, not as much.

[26 Inf]

My conclusions:

The root causes of the 'Palestinian' problem are directly traced back to the European Nations, as well as America, who carved up the Ottoman Empire. Not totally but damned near.

The Jewish people have been terribly oppressed for 2000 years, primarily by Christian and Catholics.

Because of this it is understandable that the Israel government is pugnacious. As a result the Israeli Government has no TRUE friend because they don't know how to be friends. Who can really blame them for the chip on their shoulder. Problem is that at some point even those whose National interests align with the Israeli Government get tired of it.

It must be galling for the Israelis to have to acknowledge that they owe their very existence to another Nation. I don't think that they should kneel and kiss our ring, but how about not pissing backwards on us? As a Nation, we have routinely put ourselves out there in support of Israel - at the expense national interest in some cases. Yet when has the Israeli government ever done anything to go along with our efforts except on a quid pro quo basis.

What would be the reaction if President Obama decided to address the Knesset without an invitation from President Rivlin or Prime Minister Netanyahu? Regardless of what other person invited them.

I'm sorry, I don't care much for President Obama, and yeah, I get it, partisan politics is the rule of the day, but all the Americans cheering on Netanyahu in this debacle are assisting the Israeli's in disrespecting yet another American President.

Me and mine stand ready to do everything possible to ensure Israel's survival as a nation, even sending my children and grandchildren to fight for them, but ****, they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

[SteyrAUG]

The Jewish people have been terribly oppressed for 2000 years, primarily by Christian and Catholics.

Everyone has been oppressed by everyone. The Romans fed Christian to lions. Every single group of humans on the planet has been subjugated at one time or another by another group who had the military strength or political clout to do it and get away with it.

While the industrial murder associated with the Holocaust was significant by virtue of sheer numbers and indiscriminate application there really are no "chosen people" when it comes to humans being screwed over by other humans.

Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot also achieved appalling numbers and it didn't make it any more or less acceptable that their victims were or were not jewish.

Now I can understand why a person who defines himself as jewish might consider himself "at risk" given historical considerations but objectively they are no more "at risk" than a Danish cartoonist.

That said, I find your conclusions to be pretty much accurate.

[Business_Casual]

Any pro Palestine supporters in this group?

That situation, is to my mind, similar to people from Boston complaining that they can't return to Ulster or Londonderry.

[Doc Safari]

I'm sorry, I don't care much for President Obama, and yeah, I get it, partisan politics is the rule of the day, but all the Americans cheering on Netanyahu in this debacle are assisting the Israeli's in disrespecting yet another American President.

Me and mine stand ready to do everything possible to ensure Israel's survival as a nation, even sending my children and grandchildren to fight for them, but ****, they are indeed a stiff-necked people.

Netanyahu is undoubtedly speaking to Congress to bolster his reelection campaign. People also forget: just because you support the survival of a nation doesn't necessarily mean you agree with everyone living in it.

In the contest of Obama vs. Netanyahu, I hope Netanyahu not only wins the argument but embarrasses Barry in the process. If it's Netanyahu versus a potentially better leader for Israel, well, then, who knows?

But let's reduce this to the common denominator: we might need the nation of Israel in another World War against the Islamic hordes, China, Russia, and North Korea. They certainly will need us.

(If you think we're not headed for World War 3 you haven't been paying attention).

[jerrysimons]

Any pro Palestine supporters in this group?

Yes, actually, thanks for asking. I support the prosperous well-being of the Palestinians.
As such I recognize their dire need to dispense with Hamas and forsake futile, irrational, death-loving hatred for Israel which only serves their terrorist leaders with expediency in heaping more suffering upon their heads as political leverage against Israel on the world stage. There is no uncertainty that if the Palestinians ceased fighting there would be peace yet if Israel laid down arms there would be a Jewish genocide.

[jerrysimons]

"In the case of ISIS and Iran: the enemy of your enemy is your ENEMY." -Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.