Dear Tom,
Thanks for your informative email.
An essential advantage of primary attachment to "The Book" is that scripture -- as a central cultural artifact - is portable.
In turn, portability enabled the Jews to survive -- "intact" -- during two thousand years of exile... even longer if you count the Egyptian and Babylonian exiles.
The centrality of scripture in the Abrahamic religions also facilitated the spread of Islam and Christianity.
If you're unfamiliar with the following book, it's a valuable - and pertinent - analysis:
"The Chosen Few: A New Explanation Of Jewish Success"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-chosen-few-new-explanation-of.html
***
I didn't realize I had swapped the "l" and the "r."
This commonplace Spanish language transposition is exemplified by "encarcelar" and "incarcerate" as well as "blandir" and "brandish."
Apparently the Chinese are subject to similar reversal: "flied lice." ;>)
***
Concerning Yadin...
Recently, the excellent Frontline documentary, "From Jesus to Christ" informed me that archaeological findings contradict the standard assertion that Masada's inhabitants committed mass suicide rather than surrender to Roman overlords. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/31-brilliant-frontline-episodes.html
Just now, while probing your reference to Yadin I discovered this passage:
"Re the Roman siege of Masada, conducted winter-spring of 72/73 or 73/74 C.E."
by Kudzu Machiavelli Incarnate
(ArgueWithEveryone.com, 2/1/09)
"I am saying that Yadin forged his findings at Masada under political pressure and was exposed by his students on the dig. Big stinking scandal in Israel.
Yadin was an ex-IDF general who became an amateur archeologist. He excavated Masada and found nothing except 12 skeletons and a pile of pig bones. The Israelis gave the bones a State funeral. Months later the students on the dig brought forward their notes and photos and findings.
I don't know if Yadin was a fraud. It's claimed he was under pressure from the Israeli government to promote the heroism of the siege and the 900 suicides. They were spinning the Masada Myth to promote the heroism, sacrifice and and indestructible Jewish State.
Masada was a resort retreat built by Herod and well stocked with water and provisions. I expect that after they used up everything stored there, they gave up and were hauled off by the Romans.
There aren't any 900 skeletal remains.
There were wads of long female hair. I think they were captured and hauled off because the penalty was to cut the hair of captive women. 12 skeletons doesn't equate to 900 suicides."
***
Christianity -- at least as practiced -- is enthralled by the radical dualism that informs Manichaeism, a theological system that contradicts the essential Judeo-Christian belief that God is One, all-encompassing and good. This unacknowledged heresy is so strong and so pervasive that Christians -- even Christian clerics -- are unaware of the Persian altar before which they prostrate themselves. Infiltrated Manichaeism is "in the air" Christians breathe, the water they drink, the ground they stand on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
Pax tecum
Alan
PS There is also a growing body of evidence indicating significant discrepancy between the Exodus account of the Egyptian Captivity (and subsequent escape through the miraculously-parted waters of The Red Sea) and the reality of said captivity. Here's a glimpse: "Did The Exodus Really Happen?" Rabbi David Wolpe. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/did-exodus-really-take-place.html
On Sun, Jul 13, 2014 at 11:48 AM, Tom M wrote:
Alan,The are both "People of the Book" and, at root, their causes are tied to Abraham's wandering dick. Israel is populated with iconic landmarks special to both people and used as propaganda goads and bargaining tools by both sides.Watch your transposition of "l" for "r" in Creveld. He is not the only non-American on the minimum list. Find the time to read Yadin's _War between the forces of darkness and light..._; it is as metaphysically terrifying as van Creveld is materially terrifying.
On Sat, Jul 12, 2014 at 11:29 AM, Alan Archibald <alanarchibaldo@gmail.com> wrote:
Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu
Dear Fred,Thanks for your email.
Your observation that "Israelis should fight like hell" suggests affiliation with the dark side that I do not dispute.Israel utilizes systematic, state-sponsored terrorism to dominate Palestinians.In saying this, I neither deny nor pardon Palestinian terrorism. It is real. And it is demonic.However, it is seldom stated that "re-drawing the map" at the end of World War II in order to create a Jewish state was as stupid -- and as harmful -- as re-drawing the entire map of the Middle East at the end of World War I. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/how-post- world-war-i-map-of-middle- east.html
The roots of the current flare-up are almost universally attributed to the horrific killing of three Israeli teenagers.
By my lights, the roots of the flare-up are grounded in the "legal" dispossession of Palestinians from their own land. The justification for this dispossession is that foreigners have the right to "buy countries." It's as absurd as suggesting the Chinese could buy up enough American land to justify elimination of U.S. sovereignty. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_ Palestine
In Pacem in Terris, John XXIII cites Saint Augustine: ""Take away justice, and what are kingdoms but mighty bands of robbers." http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/ encyclicals/documents/hf_j- xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en. html In any event, Israelis rule the roost and are determined to keep it that way.
They have no intention of letting Palestinians out of their walled-in ghetto.
Nor do they intend to remove West Bank settlements, an enduring flash point that renders other window dressing moot.Israeli war historian Martin von Cleveld (a supporter of the Israeli state) says Israel plans to nuke European capitals if that's what it takes to draw them into an existential battle with Islam.
I find Israel's pre-planned belligerence manifestly lunatic and will oppose Israel's oppression of the Palestinians they displaced until such time as they embark meaningful reconciliation, starting with the elimination of the God-damned settlements in the West Bank."One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing. . . The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous. It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared. What makes us so sure, after all, that the danger comes from a psychotic getting into a position to fire the first shot in a nuclear war? Psychotics will be suspect. The sane ones will keep them far from the button. No one suspects the sane, and the sane ones will have perfectly good reasons, logical, well-adjusted reasons, for firing the shot. They will be obeying sane orders that have come sanely down the chain of command. And because of their sanity they will have no qualms at all. When the missiles take off, then, it will be no mistake.""A Devout Meditation in Memory of Adolf Eichmann" in Raids on the Unspeakable." Thomas Merton - New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1964 http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/thomas- merton-quotations.html Consider this genocidal extortion by the Israeli terror state:
In a September 2003 interview in Elsevier, a Dutch weekly, on Israel and the dangers it faces from Iran, the Palestinians and world opinion van Creveld stated: "We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force…. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.".[9]Van Cleveld is the only non-American whose writings are required reading by the Officer Corps of the United States' military.
Martin van Cleveld, Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_van_ Creveld
***Concerning your statement that Israel - and Israelis - have "nowhere else to go."Here's what I see...The United States would happily supply Israel with "a special territory" - perhaps in the western desert.
Southeast Nevada would be perfect. (This special territory might even be "incorporated." Shares could be sold. I would buy as many as I could afford.)A century ago, we carved out dozens of independent "Indian Nations."
Surely we can make room for another 12 tribes.
If Americans are too cantankerous to get "on board," I imagine Canada -- a civilized nation -- would fill the gap.
I can even imagine Mexico welcoming Israeli transplants just as Porfirio Diaz -- less than a 100 years ago -- welcomed Mennonite communities from Europe and Canada, giving them free land to start "model" agricultural communities that would (according to the plan) kick-start Mexico's peasantry into "progress." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ immigration_to_Mexico)
Look.
We are talking about the re-settlement of 6,400,000 Israeli Jews - the population of Dallas. http://www.citypopulation.de/world/ Agglomerations.html
Ironically there are 6,500,000 Palestinian refugees in the world. They managed to relocate. http://www.auphr.org/index.php/resources/factsheets/ refugees/15-how-many- palestinian-refugees-are- there-today
In comparison to The Final World War, re-locating 6 and half million Israelis is small change. (One of my mini-missions in life is to remind people that "there is never enough time or money to do things right, but always enough time and money to do them over." Think Iraq.)
New Jersey is the 5th-smallest US state, covering about 7800 square miles or 20,000 square kilometers.As the comparison map above shows, the land currently controlled by the State of Israel (including disputed territories) is not much larger. Israel in its pre-1967 borders was 8,019 square miles or 20,770 square kilometers, just barely bigger than New Jersey. The upside of re-location?***Israeli Jews would be protected forever.
Israeli Jews would enjoy a fresh start surrounded by friends rather than enemies.
And the United States (or Canada/Mexico) would reap incalculable benefits from intimate relationship with All That Genius.
Oh...
And we would avert World War III.
"Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"Kibbutz Tirat ZviConsider.The Jews have departed Israel several times before - most recently opting to abandon their homeland during the 70 A.D. diaspora. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_ diaspora If necessary, Israeli Jews can do it again.
Assuming, of course, that Israeli Jews actually believe Creation worth saving.But I get ahead of myself...
I am convinced real negotiation with Palestine would resolve the bone-headed stand-off currently in place but instead I see only madness -- diabolical madness -- in Israel's preference for flirting with World War III in lieu of a second diaspora.
Of course there is also the demographic time bomb which Ariel Sharon saw so clearly in his later years. No matter what Israel does - or doesn't do - Palestinian citizens of Israel are destined to become the majority... unless, of course, Israel enacts a "Final Solution."
Do you put it past them?
I don't.***
Elsewhere...
I predict ISIS will prove to be a tempest in a tea pot. Already, Saudi Arabia is stating its preference that fellow Sunnis in Iraq exterminate ISIS and -- in league with Iran which also opposes ISIS -- I think it's "just a matter of time." http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/ saudi-arabia-iraq-long- history-suspicion.html# ***If you did not see my first post today, I recommend it.This post also links to an extraordinary - and freely streamable - Frontline documentary."Frontline: Conservative Political Philosophy Executed An Innocent Man"Pax tecumAlanPS Speaking of Frontline, here are my four favorite episodes: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/ 2014/07/31-brilliant- frontline-episodes.html Kibbutz Lavi
(This correspondence is posted as "Should Israel Start World War III Or Embark A Second Diaspora?"
at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/07/should- israel-start-world-war-iii-or. html)
On Thu, Jul 10, 2014 at 2:02 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
As I said in Frog Hospital -- it's Israel or ISIS, and I'll take Israel.And do you think they depend on American aid? They would take aid from the Devil himself..... but go ahead and post your numbers -- fairly accurate I do not doubt.I think the Israelis should fight like hell. There is no exist strategy for them. They should pack up and leave -- to where? Nobody wants them.They also have impressive military capabilities -- don't you think?--
My writing blog is Frog Hospital
send mail to:
Fred Owens
35 West Main St Suite B #391
Ventura CA 93001
No comments:
Post a Comment