Why have they picked this moment to anger millions of Muslims in the name of "freedom of speech"?
As ever with the media, it's timing and volume that have to be considered.…
"A sinister cabal of superior writers."
The Muslim Cartoon "Controversy" - Comments Page 5
Article comments
176 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Richard,
You're sure right about the fuzzy thinking part. The professional Jewish world is as packed with fuzzy thinkers as matzo ball soup is with kneidlech.
You just cited three off the bat - JTA (the Jewish Telegraphic Agency), Deborah Lipstadt and Antony Lerman.
None of them has figured out the essential lesson of the murder of six million Jews during WWII. It is this: The world does not view us Jews as part of Western Civilization. These Jews view themselves as part of it and they are dead wrong.
They still do not know "who they are". Even a baboon with a blue butt (Rafiki from The Lion King) is smarter than they are. But they have for company all the assimilated Jews of North America and Europe and the secular Jews of Israel who run away from their identity. No surprises here.
177 - Charles
Hey, BLIMEY #114, you make some valid points, However, I WAS NOT trying to single out religion as the main cause of all wars. While I am agnostic and not into religion I do believe that everyone has the right to believe in whatever or whoever they choose to believe in. I further stated that it is the religious zealots and radicals who are the true troublemakers in todays world. These are the "bad eggs" who hide behind the mask of a particular religion in order to stir up trouble. That in itself is a form of GREED in that these so-called holy people want everyhing their way and will resort to violence in order to get it. Their form of oppression is every bit as stifling as was Communism in its heyday.
Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, Pol-Pot, Mao Tse-Tung and Kin Jong-il may not be religious leaders, but they all believed or believe in something and those beliefs resulted in wars, pestilence and human suffering.
Call it what you want, but whether it be religious beliefs, political beliefs or terrorism it all boils down to plain, old self-centered greed, fanaticism and forced will.
AND ... I am NOT singling out any one group. Everyone is to blame... those who cause it, those who accept it and those who do nothing about it.
178 - Bini
Well.. i Think most you have no vision at all, u r only seeing things from a closed box and have a very limited knowledge... Mark I must say that you are the one who is living in a closed box..please open up your mind and vision and come out of the box...We should all admit with an open mind that the cartoon were MORALLY wrong... i m not imposing my religion or thoughts on any one but lets just think with an open mind...why touch an issue which is sensitive to many people..why ridicule any religion for that matter..When the Danish Editors knew that Muslims have a lot respect for Prophet Muhammad so why did they provoke the muslims at the first place... There was political motive behind all this..why dont u guys see the political motive behind all this..The media is a big LiAR..
I Admit that the violent protests are not the answer to this..The key question is whether the demonstrators have love for the Holy Prophet, who was a symbol of peace, love and patience. The same question should be put for the Europeans- whether they do really love freedom of expression or are merely practicing their double standards...So i request all the people to think clearly and logically about this whole issue and you would come to know that it was wrong to print those cartoons..and not all muslims are Extremists...I think you guys would agree with me, if u are literate enough .. which i doubt
179 - Chromatius
#175 That's not how I read her, or Lerman's, comments.
From your quotes: ""I'm in principle against ..." (x3), "but as a general rule"; "I don't think that this is the way this should be dealt with"; "It is better"; "Freedom of expression is important"; "Once you start legislating about history, it could lead to a rocky road".
These are all very weak assertions. Behind both I hear an implicit 'but'.
My reading: they're happy with the verdict; all the equivocation is just covering their asses 'cos they know they're meant to support free speech and all that worthy stuff.
Finally - "history on our side"; well yeah, he's in jail.
180 - Chromatius
Ruvy, of course Jews are part of western/European civilisation, in a multitude of ways - intellectual, artisitic, scientific, financial and even mating and family (pace the issue I raise below).
As are the Arabs and Muslims, although not for quite as long. But both have intersected western civilisation in profound ways. And both share the characteristic of wanting a deep involvement of religion in daily social and political life. In general more so than many/most westerners have for some centuries now - certainly as reflected in political settlements.
But what I understand as mainstream Judaism also insists on the link between faith and race/ethnicity. (And it follows a matrilineal tradition, which makes for some additional issues.)
This is a bit different, and constantly presents difficult questions for reigning empires/civilisations. It was what constantly bugged the Romans.
I believe the Jews are visible or 'difficult' for this reason, not because they offend our sensibilities or our tribalism in some racist way.
181 - Chromatius
# 114 "Hitler was not religious, nor Stalin, nor Lenin, nor Pol Pot, not Mao Ts Tung, nor leaders of North Korea? They were/are patently not religious. These wars were caused for political agendas and greed, by hypocrites for power and control."
True. But the techniques they used to sway people, to capture their loyalty, were in every case 'religious' - in that they were derived from the religious history and practice of their lands.
You could even argue that their being 'politics' was less significant than being 'religion' - as experienced by their audiences.
Greed, power - they're constants. (Hypocrisy metric might be a bit higher these days though.)
182 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Chromatius,
But what I understand as mainstream Judaism also insists on the link between faith and race/ethnicity. (And it follows a matrilineal tradition, which makes for some additional issues.)
This is a bit different, and constantly presents difficult questions for reigning empires/civilisations. It was what constantly bugged the Romans.
I believe the Jews are visible or 'difficult' for this reason, not because they offend our sensibilities or our tribalism in some racist way.
The issue is not how you folks view us or don't view us - it is how we view us. When Jews view themselves as part of "western civilization," they always view the non-Jew as higher quality than the Jew. That is bad enough.
But the real issue is that the Jew - according to Tana"kh - is not to be reckoned among the nations, but is to dwell as a people alone.
This has several implications. The most basic one is that we need to view ourselves as a people alone and not assimilate into western society.
183 - Chromatius
Like riffing on Blogcritics?
184 - Chromatius
Uh, forget the ad hominem moment.
So it's evident that having a people living amongst you who ascribe to the faith/race link AND ideas of aloneness in history might generate some friction on occasion?
185 - Chromatius
Not just faith/race - but 'people' as well (latin natio/nationis).
Sovereigns and sovereign governments demand loyalty, a single allegiance - in matters of tax as well as national politics. More friction.
186 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
So it's evident that having a people living amongst you who ascribe to the faith/race link AND ideas of aloneness in history might generate some friction on occasion?
Not just faith/race - but 'people' as well (latin natio/nationis).
Sovereigns and sovereign governments demand loyalty, a single allegiance - in matters of tax as well as national politics. More friction.
All of the above are 100% correct, Chromatius.
That is the point of having all these people come home, where the sovereign is the sovereign ruler of this people, and not another. That is why our books of prophecy call for this and predict it, and this is why you have seen this in your lifetime (though you may not have been looking for it).
A Jew in Germany is not a German of the Mosaic persuasion. He is a Jew. That wasn't the driving reason I came here, but it is something I figured out after getting here.
That is why you will see the regime here collapse and eventually be replaced with one that takes the view I've explained - not because they will agree with me (like anything I say matters), but because it is in the Torah.
187 - Richard Brodie
Ruvy,
I admire the Jews for how they have maintained their identity by their aversion to assimilating themselves into other cultures, and by spearating themselves into a geographic area where they can exclude other races from trying to intrude and assimilate.
This is the only answer to peaceful coexistence on this planet, where each race respects every other race. True preservation of that diversity, to which the left gives lip-service when it conveniently serves some agenda of theirs, requires not simply segregation into separate communities within the same nation, but a geographical separation into different nations.
Abraham Lincoln knew the truth which Israel repesents. Four years before the Civil War he said, on June 26, 1857:
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people, to the idea of an indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races.
Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.
Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: agreed for once"a thousand times agreed. There are white men enough to marry all the white women, and black men enough to marry all the black women; and so let them be married.
A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation but as all immediate separation is impossible the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas. That is at least one self-evident truth. A few free colored persons may get into the free States, in any event; but their number is too insignificant to amount to much in the way of mixing blood.
I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation ... Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization ... The enterprise is a difficult one; but "when there is a will there is a way;" and what colonization needs most is a hearty will. Will springs from the two elements of moral sense and self-interest. Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be. The children of Israel, to such numbers as to include four hundred thousand fighting men, went out of Egyptian bondage in a body.
How differently the respective courses of the Democratic and Republican parties incidentally bear on the question of forming a will " a public sentiment " for colonization, is easy to see. The Republicans Lincoln's Party inculcate, with whatever of ability they can, that the negro is a man; that his bondage is cruelly wrong, and that the field of his oppression ought not to be enlarged. The Democrats deny his manhood; deny, or dwarf to insignificance, the wrong of his bondage; so far as possible, crush all sympathy for him, and cultivate and excite hatred and disgust against him; compliment themselves as Union-savers for doing so; and call the indefinite outspreading of his bondage "a sacred right of self-government."
The plainest print cannot be read through a gold eagle; and it will be ever hard to find many men who will send a slave to Liberia, and pay his passage while they can send him to a new country, Kansas for instance, and sell him for fifteen hundred dollars.
It's too bad Lincoln's colonization plan was not carried out. 100,000 young Americans, including many blacks, paid with their lives for that failure, in the ensuing civil war. Just as the Jews are happier in their natural homeland, so the Negroes should have been relieved to return to their own homelands. They would have had a dignified existence amongst their own people, rather than continuing to be enslaved, as they still are, though now in welfare-dependency ghettos instead of on cotton plantations.