The Banned said:

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Question: the article states that no religious symbols can be on the headstone. Does that mean there are now Jewish stars of David or the like on the other headstones?

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I think it's a typo as I googled "Haifa military cemetery" and images of graves with stars of David on them came up

Well, it's almost a decent attempt to attack the core concept of Zionism-a Jewish state.

So Arabs can have several ethnic homelands, Persians can have an ethnic homeland, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turks can have an ethnic homeland, Japanese can have an ethnic homeland and Koreans can have 2 ethnic homelands, but Jews cannot?

Quo Vadis? said:

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UTExan said:

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Well, it's almost a decent attempt to attack the core concept of Zionism-a Jewish state.

So Arabs can have several ethnic homelands, Persians can have an ethnic homeland, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turks can have an ethnic homeland, Japanese can have an ethnic homeland and Koreans can have 2 ethnic homelands, but Jews cannot?

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Does someone lose their ethnicity by changing their religion?

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No, but you deal with electoral realities. Until the numbers of Christians and Messianic Jews in the IDF or the electorate rises, you will have forms of tyranny of the majority. Ask Jews or Muslims in the US about that.

Quo Vadis? said:

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UTExan said:

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Quo Vadis? said:

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UTExan said:

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Well, it's almost a decent attempt to attack the core concept of Zionism-a Jewish state.

So Arabs can have several ethnic homelands, Persians can have an ethnic homeland, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turks can have an ethnic homeland, Japanese can have an ethnic homeland and Koreans can have 2 ethnic homelands, but Jews cannot?

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Does someone lose their ethnicity by changing their religion?

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No, but you deal with electoral realities. Until the numbers of Christians and Messianic Jews in the IDF or the electorate rises, you will have forms of tyranny of the majority. Ask Jews or Muslims in the US about that.

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Then none of what you're saying makes sense. Why would this have anything to do with not having a Jewish homeland?

You tried to make some sort of half assed argument about anti-Zionism and then agreed its tyranny of the majority? Why not lead with that?

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I didn't agree. I said it was the reality until numbers changed. I don't like Israelis stealing Palestinian land or using unnecessary violence against Palestinians. That doesn't mean I am anti-Israeli. It means I want them to live up to stated ideals. There is the real and the ideal. The real can become the ideal with time.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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The numbers won't change. The state of Israel has made it clear over 75 years that a wide Jewish majority is the single most important thing about that state. The situation with the Palestinians has nothing to do with the fact that they are specifically Muslims, only that they aren't Jews. They can't let the Palestinians be part of Israel, because then the Jewish numerical majority would be threatened. If the number of Christians in Israel ever came near to outnumbering Jews, we'd see a similar sort of response from the state of Israel.

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There are already "Palestinians" who are Israeli citizens. The Haredi numbers are going to rise, it is true, but the country's secular and less traditional types are getting tired of Haredi not serving in the IDF and getting tax payer funded government payouts to "study"…withdrawal from economic production and military service basically.

They tried accommodating once before and the intifadas happened. That is why there is a dividing security wall. But you knew that.

Zobel said:

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Quote:

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So Arabs can have several ethnic homelands, Persians can have an ethnic homeland, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis and Turks can have an ethnic homeland, Japanese can have an ethnic homeland and Koreans can have 2 ethnic homelands, but Jews cannot?

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Cool cool cool cool cool, so where is the ethnic homeland for white people? Like, maybe Germans?

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We generally call it Europe. Although archaeological finds have indicated "whites" (or DNA indicating white people) in kurgans and other burial sites in western China and Siberia. And ANZAC/North America by colonization, of course. Arabs colonized 1/3 of Europe themselves prior to the Crusades when there was that appeal for help from the Byzantines. The Vikings/Normans colonized the Mediterranean and North America of course. HTH.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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UTExan said:

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They tried accommodating once before and the intifadas happened. That is why there is a dividing security wall. But you knew that.

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Sure, if history started in 1987. It's not like there was about 80 years of bad blood between the two groups driven by Jewish mass migration or anything.

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There has been bad blood between Jews and Arabs for millennia. You even have those like Mark Durie who use linguistics to argue that Arabs are actually Canaanite descendants rather than descendants of Abraham.
https://www.meforum.org/ishmael-father-arabs

Regardless, the tension has been ongoing because both ethnic groups claim right to the same land, of course.
There can only be an uneasy peace because neither group is going to allow the other complete access to political power in the other's political systems. See our own Replacement Theory folks here for an example of this principle in operation.

Zobel said:

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So no objection to Europeans waging war on other ethnicities in Europe, driving them out?

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Sounds like you are putting words in my mouth. Ethnicities are always going to fight with other ethnic groups until Jesus returns, judges with righteousness and rules with a rod of iron.

ramblin_ag02 said:

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There has been bad blood between Jews and Arabs for millennia.

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This is both true and misleading. While there has never really been a truly safe place for Jews anywhere in history, Jews in Arab lands did as well as anyone else from the rise of Islam until WW1. Some places and times in the Arab world were even Golden Ages for Judaism. Andalucia comes to mind immediately. Prior to WW1 many Jews lived stable, happy lives in the Arab Muslim world. It wasn't great, but it was better than Europe and about 100x better than now. The rise of Zionism and the fall of the Ottoman Empire after WW1 lead to a quick downturn in Jewish/Arab relations and a mass exodus of Jews from Arab lands. While there were anti-semitic attacks sporadically in other areas of the Ottoman Empire before that, IIRC the first antisemitic attacks in British Palestine didn't happen until the 20th century and were a direct reaction to mass Jewish immigration

There's another reason the Zionists picked the Holy Land beside an ancestral claim. Jews were relatively well tolerated in the Ottoman Empire, especially in the area of Palestine. The idea that Jewish people would voluntarily migrate en masse to a place where they were vehemently hated and constantly persecuted is ridiculous. If that were true, each successive wave of Zionist immigrants would have been wiped out or run off before they could even settle down. It would be like Africans voluntarily migrating by the tens of thousands to the American Confederacy.

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It depends. In 641 Caliph Umar banished Jews from the interior of Arabia. In 1066 the Jewish quarter of Granada was destroyed. From 1172, Jews in Andalucia suffered and many fled to more tolerant lands, both Muslim and Christian. So my thesis would be that Jews were not really safe until they were once again permitted to bear arms in their own community defense, which is why having a Jewish state is vital to them.

Zobel said:

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You're the one shilling for invasive Zionism and it's resulting ethnic cleansing.

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Invasive Zionism… from both Orthodox and Catholic traditions which have persecuted Jews?

Zobel said:

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Protestants persecuted Jews too. What an asinine evasion.

Persecution is wrong. Just like ethnic cleansing.

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Yes Protestants did. It was evangelicals who became the greatest proponents for Jews while the old Catholic and Orthodox homelands retain their ancient antisemitism.

Quo Vadis? said:

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UTExan said:

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Zobel said:

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Protestants persecuted Jews too. What an asinine evasion.

Persecution is wrong. Just like ethnic cleansing.

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Yes Protestants did. It was evangelicals who became the greatest proponents for Jews while the old Catholic and Orthodox homelands retain their ancient antisemitism.

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Yeah, some poor eschatology and the Zionist funded Scofield Bible turned you guys into proper puppets.

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And yet evangelicals are the fastest growing segment of Christianity today, apparently meeting the spiritual needs of millions of new believers yearly around the world. While the papacy sells out to the Communist Chinese.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/10/22/china-vatican-agreement/90459bbe-9053-11ef-b5b1-75167840d9f3_story.html#

one MEEN Ag said:

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Historically, all nations were basically monocultural. Trade, travel, tribal affiliation, farming and marriage kept people groups within their people groups.

The modern world has allowed for way more easy and peaceful travel and resettling.

The post-modern world uses blank slatism to basically erase all forms of identity, declare you an individual and say that as an individual you have a right to live wherever you want, and do whatever you want. So no unifying religion, ethnicity, family, tribe, etc.

We are in a post-modern world struggling through the obvious issues of post-modernism. Israel is basically an ancient nation state with modern technology. They do not carry over our same presuppositions.

Now the big question internally for all, why does Israel get to have different presuppositions when dealing with morality than America here?

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Be a bit more precise in your question: are you saying Israel is held to a different standard than the rest of the world?
It certainly is: the UN and other international organizations ignore the depredations of China in subduing the Tibetans and Uighurs and other outrages while focusing attention on Israel. The US has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in waging what some historians call "total war", in which infrastructure was targeted. We would do so again. Israel is likewise going after Hamas, which embeds itself in Gazan hospitals, mosques, private homes and schools. It is unfortunately the nature of warfare today, where belligerents use civilian populations as shields to deter attacks of more powerful opponents.
Will your assertion of the post modern trump ethnic loyalty? I doubt it, personally.

hint: all of those are wrong.

UTExan said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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Historically, all nations were basically monocultural. Trade, travel, tribal affiliation, farming and marriage kept people groups within their people groups.

The modern world has allowed for way more easy and peaceful travel and resettling.

The post-modern world uses blank slatism to basically erase all forms of identity, declare you an individual and say that as an individual you have a right to live wherever you want, and do whatever you want. So no unifying religion, ethnicity, family, tribe, etc.

We are in a post-modern world struggling through the obvious issues of post-modernism. Israel is basically an ancient nation state with modern technology. They do not carry over our same presuppositions.

Now the big question internally for all, why does Israel get to have different presuppositions when dealing with morality than America here?

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Be a bit more precise in your question: are you saying Israel is held to a different standard than the rest of the world?
It certainly is: the UN and other international organizations ignore the depredations of China in subduing the Tibetans and Uighurs and other outrages while focusing attention on Israel. The US has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in waging what some historians call "total war", in which infrastructure was targeted. We would do so again. Israel is likewise going after Hamas, which embeds itself in Gazan hospitals, mosques, private homes and schools. It is unfortunately the nature of warfare today, where belligerents use civilian populations as shields to deter attacks of more powerful opponents.
Will your assertion of the post modern trump ethnic loyalty? I doubt it, personally.

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No. My thesis is that Israel rejects the post-modern framing of the world that pervades most of western cultural thought nowadays. Israel (TM) is not a post-modern open borders nation where its leaders tell the masses that everyone is welcome, everyone is equal, and everyone is free to pursue whatever their heart desires. Everyone is not welcome in Israel, you are not equal to them, and you are not free to do whatever. Enjoy your fallafel, quickly walk past the Christian relics, do not evangelize, and then go home.

My point is that if you're trying to sit here in America and see why doesn't Israel do exactly what america does regarding X? Its because they are not secular, western, historically christian-protestant/universalist underpinned (and fading) society. All of your presuppositions about what is fair or isn't for a country to do get thrown out the window. Israel is for the preservation of modern jews. Period. End of story. Everything else they do flows from that point. They are not a 'modern' nation full of nationalism. Where pride in ones ethnicity is replaced for pride in ones governance structure and cultural essence. Israel is an ethnostate. Its identity is its distinct concentration of judiasm. It cannot embrace equality and still be Israel (TM).

America does not have the same unified mission. America is for whom nowadays anyway? And for what purpose? You can make the case that America's government is set up to ensure america's government into the future - but Israel would reject that framing. Because Israel's people are its identity, not its governing structure. What is americas?

Now, I say all of this but I endorse none of Israel's actions, and certainly not post modernism. I'm just point out that post modernist have people clutching their pearls when talking about things like, 'A country has the right to enforce borders.' And, 'A country has a right to not let anyone in if they don't want to.'

Me personally. I have very little ethnic loyalty. All I want is equal access to college and employment opportunities for me and my family, and for my neighbors to mow their grass and not play music too loud after 10PM. Anyone who does that is considered my 'in group'. Because 'ethnic loyalty' is really 'virtue loyalty' due to Christianity. But there are groups out there who have very high ethnic loyalty in this country. Chock full of familial amoralism as well. And my ethnic tolerance will be eventually be overrun by my some group that does not share my tolerance. (Hint: this is the story of Christ, we are to expect this to happen).

What I do want, in exchange for my lack of ethnic loyalty, is a country that is united under Christ - thats the bargain. I won't get it, but thats what I want. Because thats the uniting factor of why ethnic loyalty doesn't have to play an antagonistic role in society anymore. But denying this pretense of why we're all equal and who were all equal under - we're just back into tribalism. Which is what the world has been like for eons. And what the modern nation of Israel is.