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I just think we should start recognising that Palestine has as much right to an existence as Israel.
Are you aware that when Britain was given mandate of Palestine in the early 1920s, nearly 75% of that land was given to the Muslim state of (then) Trans-Jordan? Thus, only a fourth of the original Palestine remained.
Then, after WWII, the sliver of a 25% was going to be further divided up into two nations: Palestine and Israel. The Muslim Arabs absolutely refused, and as soon as the state of Israel was declared, she was mobbed by all the surrounding nations.
Year after year, the Palestinians have been offered peace proposals and year after year, they not only do not accept them, they refuse to negotiate. As I mentioned in another post, even Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar called Arafat's rejection, in 2001, a "crime."
Palestinians have made it clear, with all their firing weapons into Israel, injecting hatred into their textbooks for children, creating martyrs out of suicide-bombers, and rejecting all peace offers: they want the complete destruction of Israel. Only when the entire Middle East is Muslim dominated and Jews are either converted to Islam or eradicated -- will the Palestinians be happy.
Unfortunately, these pesky little facts seem to become buried in most media.
My "hostility" (I wasn't actual being hostile, fyi) wasn't directed at YOU, and I didn't think you were addressing me personally either... just venting my frustrations based on what you said, which brought up stuff I've heard for - oh - 30 years now. Sorry if you thought I was "yelling" at you, but it just gets hard to hear this your whole life. How would you feel, if there were entire debates on why people HATE you? Trust me, it gets old really fast. But I know you were just explaining things, so sorry again if you thought I was being hostile toward you.
No hard feelings gizmo. Even though such topics can be interesting to discuss from an intellectual standpoint, I recognize that they are divisive and can make people uncomfortable, so I'm sorry If I came across as insensitive. I was just trying to answer the question based on my own observations of what triggers hate and conflict among people. It can be because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, as well other personal attributes and characteristics that distinguish one group of people from another. It just depends on the group we are talking about.
The question is: why are the Jews chosen? And for what? Without any context, the concept is impossible to comprehend.
At the time of Abraham, polytheism was common. Babies and virgins were murdered in the name of sacrifice. Jews were chosen by G-d for one purpose: to spread the concept of monotheism, that is, just one G-d. Jews were never chosen to be more beautiful, rich, wise, pious, or anything else. Simply to spread the word of monotheism. Unfortunately, many people jump to conclusions and don't understand and thus employ their own ignorance as the basis of prejudice.
This conclusion seems consistent with the Christian perspective on the “chosen people” concept, but why God would need to engineer such an elaborate and convoluted scheme of choosing and pitting one group of people against another like toy soldiers to prove that he is the one true and omnipotent God is hard to comprehend intellectually or spiritually. After all, this is the God who supposedly flooded the whole earth and wiped out all of humanity and rained down fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. I think those two catastrophic events alone would have been enough to convince people of his superiority over any other gods. And then once he realizes such punishment and destruction won't change man's evil ways, he sends Jesus to die brutally on a cross to save us. But I digress because this is a whole other theological discussion.
This conclusion seems consistent with the Christian perspective on the “chosen people” concept, but why God would need to engineer such an elaborate and convoluted scheme of choosing and pitting one group of people against another like toy soldiers to prove that he is the one true and omnipotent God is hard to comprehend intellectually or spiritually.
Would you please explain in further detail? I'm not sure I see how one group of people is pitted against another. Jews had the obligation to show that worshipping an inanimate statue simply didn't make a lot of sense.
Worshipping a statue, or some thing that the statue represents makes just as much sense to me as worshipping your invisible friend in the sky.
Early tribal peoples had to brainwash their folks to think they are special and set apart from others. Their goal is to keep them from marrying people from the neighboring tribe so they could survive as a group.
Seems to me that survival of all humanity, these days, is to drop our many differences and start seeing how we are all connected.
Pitting one against the other, as ancient tribal religions do, could spell the downfall of civilization. These times call for a spirit of cooperation and not this 'god treats our people as special to him/it' mentality.
Location: Ohio, but moving to El Paso, TX August/September
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I've just skimmed a few, but a see a lot of "well they proclaim themselves the chosen people". I'm sorry, but that's overly simplistic since most Jews are Reformed and not Conservative or Orthodox. The chosen people bit is just an excuse people have used over the centuries to persecute people who are different from them.
Worshipping a statue, or some thing that the statue represents makes just as much sense to me as worshipping your invisible friend in the sky.
Well then, you can devolve back into human sacrifices if you wish! Personally, I think a few concepts such as the Ten Commandments are rather handy guides to life.
1. For the same reason many now days hate Christians. Religious Jews, and Christians alike are exclusivist. But this is unfair because everyone but agnostics (who are unsure) think they are right.
2. While as a Christian I believe that goodness is the character of God, so if God said it, it must be right, I have trouble wrapping my moral compass around some of the things in the Jewish Testament, and many other groups have people who have the same problems I have, only they don't trust God the way I do so they thrust the blame for those things on modern day Jews.
3. Many misunderstand the crucifixion of Christ. They blame the Jews for this as a people and totally forget that Jesus, and most of the original Christians were also Jewish.
4.Their rules about hygiene helped them to escape the Black Plague, when other people groups were dropping in numbers right and left. Envy caused allot of people to come up for insane reasons to explain away their survival.
5. Since their time in Egypt many do not understand the success of the Jews. In Egypt they had a better birthrate then the Egyptians, they escaped
slavery with riches to spare, they survived persecution after persecution
When Israel was re-established their brand new military beat the tar out of several invading well establish armies. They turned Israel from a place where basically no one wanted to live into a thriving country.
5. The success of the Jews makes it easy to see the power of God, and those who do not like God HATE that.
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