Thursday, August 14, 2008

Post Zionism II - Jews & Moslems

Garnel Ironheart said...

> Please elaborate on the Torah's moral justification for persecuting monotheistic inhabitants of the Land of Israel.
You mean: Persecuting monotheistic inhabitants who daily shout out loud for the destruction of Israel and use whatever means they can to bring it about. I don't think you'll find a functioning state on this planet that wouldn't "persecute" such a group.
> This included/includes expelling civilians from their homes,
Well at least you're sympathetic to the exiles from 'Aza.
> seizing their land
That they in turn originally seized from us. Yes, please continue.
> murdering 10,000 civilians
Only in your dreams. You've been reading too much Al-Jazeera.
> raping women and girls in order to incite enough terror that the majority of the native population would flee (Deir Yassin)
You probably also believe that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an authentic historical document. Well, as PT Barnum said, there's a sucker born every minute.
> This is also very well documented from IDF achives by Meron Benvenisti former mayor of Jerusalem
Who was all for Israel and Yerushalayim until he lost his chance to become mayor of the Holy City and then, in what seems to be de rigeur for failed Israeli politicians, became a bitter enemy of the state willing to spread any and all lies about it. Sour grapes indeed.
> Please explain your source for the Torah justification for taking the Land of Israel by force in light of the Three Oaths.
The Torah tells us to stay away from false matters. By rejecting all the... oh he'll just censor the word... you've spewed, I'm doing just that!

14 comments :

  1. Yes! I made a headline! Take that Rabbi Yehoshawhatever!

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  2. Rabbi Eidensohn, you consider yourself a supported of the zionist enterprise?

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  3. Never mind the last Q.

    Can you clarify your position regarding the three oaths?

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  4. Its a known fact by all about the 3 oaths, aggadita, not by force when the world gives you permission, the nations have overdone their hatred and destruction of klal yisroel so therefore they are null. It is unbelievable how often these 3 oaths are used. Check Iggros Moshe where Reb Moshe zt"l speaks about the mitzvah of yishuv eretz yisroel....

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  5. I like that Ketubot 111a has left these oaths worded loosely enough to allow more than one interpretation of them.

    To wit: The world voted twice to establish a Jewish National Home in Israel (1922 and 1947).

    We did not ascend like a wall but with those legal decisions in hand.

    The world DID overdo their hatred of us, and not just the Germans but also the Russians, French and British.

    Yes, I know there's a large Chasidic group in Williamsburg that doesn't accept that interpretation. So?

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  6. I like that Ketubot 111a has left these oaths worded loosely enough to allow more than one interpretation of them.

    To wit: The world voted twice to establish a Jewish National Home in Israel (1922 and 1947).

    We did not ascend like a wall but with those legal decisions in hand.

    The world DID overdo their hatred of us, and not just the Germans but also the Russians, French and British.

    Yes, I know there's a large Chasidic group in Williamsburg that doesn't accept that interpretation. So?

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  7. yonatoan, who paskened that 1) they become null if the gentiles have overdone their hatred and 2)that the hatred has been overdone.

    I'm not asking what your opinion is. I'm asking who made these 2 determinations (both of which are necessary for your premise.)

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  8. According to Rav Ahron Soleveitchik z'l, the goyim definately did break their oath during world war two.

    Although do do not have to even go that route justifying why we would break an oath. In reality we did not exactly take the land by force. Much of the land was legally purchased by the JNF. The British first reserved it for us during the first world war. The Hagana was formed with permission of the british authorities and the Palmach was trained by the British army. Granted that they changed their minds, however the UN upheld this promise through partition in 1947. Hence Israel declared its independence with permission from the nations. The war of independence was a defensive war. We did not take the land by the sword. We defended it that way.

    Either way that you look at it, the going breaking their oath exempting us from our oath or not. I do not see a halachic problem hear.

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  9. "You mean: Persecuting monotheistic inhabitants who daily shout out loud for the destruction of Israel and use whatever means they can to bring it about. I don't think you'll find a functioning state on this planet that wouldn't "persecute" such a group."

    In 1947-48 there was no State of Israel.

    Sephardic Rabbinical leaders (ie Jaffa, Haifa) had signed peace treaties with their Arab neighbors
    in which the Jewish community councils had pledged to protect their Arab neighbors and grant them religious freedom in return for the kindness that Muslim leaders showed to their Jewish subjects during 500 years of Jews living in Palestine under Muslim rule.

    Several Arab communities including Deir Yassin had signed peace treaties with the Zionists as well.
    The Zionist forces who attacked Arab villages that were under peace agreements with Jewish settlers were the aggressors against innocent civilians. The documents which detail the massacres of innocent civilians by the Zionists are available to the public and also published in several historical volumes including several written by Jewish historians.

    Journalist Dan Kurzman learned from Deir Yassin veterans that some participants had "cold-bloodedly shot every Arab they found, man, woman, or child."(57) Villagers trying to run away also were gunned down.(58) Pa'il implied that he confronted the guerrilla commanders, but he has since admitted that the attackers' murderous ferocity, the situation, and his predicament as an infiltrator froze him in "a psychological trap" during the massacre: "I didn't know what to do."(McGowan, "A Jewish Eyewitness: An Interview with Meir Pa'il," 40; Pa'il and Isseroff, "Meir Pa'il's Eyewitness Account.")

    Fahimi Zeidan, then a 12-year-old girl, remembered hiding with her own and another family when the house door was blasted open. The guerrillas took them outside. An already wounded man was shot, she said, and

    when one of his daughters screamed, they shot her too. They then called my
    brother Mahmoud and shot him in our presence, and when my mother screamed
    and bent over my brother (she was carrying my little sister Khadra who was
    still being breast fed) they shot my mother too.(32)

    The children and others were put against the wall and fired upon. She and some other children were wounded, but survived.

    Villagers recall townspeople being shot as they fled or helped the injured. One guerrilla was seen at a house window with a machine gun, firing upon anyone going past. As attacker rage increased, guerrilla members produced knives they brought or found in the houses. Haleem Eid, a woman, reported seeing "a man shoot a bullet into the neck of my sister Salhiyeh who was nine months pregnant" and then brutally stab the body.(33) A then eight-year-old girl named Thoraya later recalled cowering behind her aunts as they were stabbed to death. Villager accounts indicate that as many as 33 civilians were executed firing squad-style in the morning.Pat McDonnell Twair, "The Surviving Children of Deir Yassin," in Remembering Deir Yassin, 51; Milstein, Out of Crisis Comes Decision, 275-76; Collins and Lapierre, "Deir Yassin"; Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! 274.

    As a journalist for a Jewish weekly, I personally interviewed several Jewish eyewitnesses to these massacres.

    "In reality we did not exactly take the land by force. "

    In reality we did to the Arabs of Palestine what the Nazis at Baba Yar did to us.

    THAT is NOT Judaism!

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  10. More Jewish eyewitness accounts from Deir Yassin, this is from
    "Letter of de Reynier, International Committee of the Red Cross, Jerusalem, to International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva, 13 April 1948; Diary of Jacques de Reynier, 11 April 1948".


    "The dead had been "deliberately massacred," de Reynier discerned readily.

    Alfred Engel, an accompanying Jewish doctor, saw that "it was clear that [the attackers] had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range."

    "I had been a doctor in the German Army for five years in World War One," Engel later reflected, "but I never saw such a horrifying spectacle."

    It is not only as you say, Satmar "that doesn't accept that interpretation".

    Hundreds of thousands of Torah Jews all over the world have spoken out in protest of the Zionism that has threatened the destruction of Judaism.

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  11. Anonymous said...

    "In reality we did to the Arabs of Palestine what the Nazis at Baba Yar did to us.

    THAT is NOT Judaism!"

    I think that there ought to be a law against sloppy research and stupid analogies. I hear by find anonymous or whatever his/her real name is guilty of first degree narishkeit.

    Anonymous would lead us to believe that the invading force sustained forty for casualties (four dead and forty wounded) by unarmed peaceful villagers. He also would like to make some sort of equivalence between the massacre of 90,000 completely unarmed and men, woman and children in a non combat situation by a paramilitary force called the Einsatzkommando, whos creation by the German high command was to carry out executions on the orders of their superiors with the deaths of 250 civilians at Deir Yassin in the midst of heavy fighting.

    Actually according to Arab historian Al-Arif Approximately 117 civilians were killed there. 110 in the houses and 7 outside. This number includes both military and civilian casualties. These figures have also been accepted by Proffessor Sharif Kananah of Beir Zeit University (in the West Bank).

    The breakdown of these figures seem to confirm testimony from Irgun witnesses. They claimed that after coming under heavy sniper and machine gun fire they went back to their base in the nearby Givat Shaul neighborhood and came back with more explosive ordinance. What then ensued was heavy house to house fighting where the Irgunists used grenades to clean out the houses of enemy fire. Unfortunately there were a lot of civilians in those houses.

    I should mention that those so called "civilians" that you mentioned that we were fighting were elements of the ALA (Arab Liberation Army) as well as the regular iraqi Army troops.

    Various reasons are given for the attack. It was authorised by general David Shaltiel and the Palmach were participants. He claims that reluctantly authorised it and was helpless to stop it once it was underway. Keep in mind he was distancing himself from recriminations. This business of claiming that he was surprised by the suggestion to attack the village because they had always been peaceful was also spin that the general was spewing. Number one during a war (as the general very well knew) when the enemy takes up positions in a village that has strategic importance (which Deir Yassin did), that place becomes a legitimate military target for attack no matter who the civilians are who live there. Deir Yassin being adjacent to Western Jerusalem and overlooking the main road to the city was extremely strategic. Especially since that road was already being blockaded in other areas by the same forces that were encamped at Deir Yassin. Do not think for a second that the "remorseful and helpless" general did not understand the dangerous implications of such enemy deployment. Number two the Hagana had been eyeballing that location from sometime. Because of its adjacent proximity to Jerusalem and its flat terrain, it could have potentially been used as an airstrip in order to alleviate the effects of the blockade.

    Now regarding Meir Pavli's horrifying testimony. He contradicts both Jewish and Arab eyewitnesses. In fact nobody can recall seeing him there. He has been discredited by later researchers.

    As to the charge the whole charge of rape, besides the fact that witnesses on both sides categorically denied the claim, Haza Nusseibi (who in 1948 worked for the Palestinian Broadcast Authority) later admitted to the BBC that he fabricated the whole story for propaganda purposes.

    Last of all it should be noted that the village was forewarned by the Irgun to evacuate the village before the attack, thus risking themselves by taking away their element of surprise. A couple of hundred villagers actually did heed the warnings and waited at a safe distance from the village. This fact has been confirmed by Arab witnesses both civilians and soldiers a like. This was hardly the behavior of a fighting force hell bent on murder.

    In the future please check your facts and stop reading swallowing every bit of Palestinian propaganda that you come across. Good Shobbos.

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  12. Dear Ibn Anonymous,

    or is it Abu Anonymous,

    Anyway, relying on Deir Yassin "veterans" for a true accounting of what happened is like relying on survivors of the "Jenin massacre" for a truthful accounting of what happened there.

    If anything, "Comical Ali"'s performance during Gulf War II proved what intelligent people have known for years:

    1) the Arabs have no hesitation to lie, and lie vigorously if it helps their cause.

    2) Only self-hating (if Jewish) or Jew-hating (if not) apparatchniks still believe anything the Arab side or their sympathizers come up with.

    As for the rest of your points, they're so wrong and revisionist that I can't be bothered to respond to them.

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  13. To Anonymous, I just want to make one more point. Even if you want to say that Deir Yassin was some sort of Mai Lai massacre. This still would not invalidate our war effort or our right to be in Eretz Yisrael. You are implying that actions by a few reckless individuals rendered our effort at defending ourselves from five invading armies (actually six including the ALA) as immoral thus we should have just marched into the sea. What sort of cyanide laced Kool Aid have you been drinking that you are trying to share with us?

    Let us just ignore the fact that our civilians had suffered massacres for decades leading up to the war of independance. Let us also ignore the fact that a lot more Jewish civilians were killed outright or disappeared without a trace than remotely anything that happened at Deir Yassin.

    While we are ignoring that, bear in mind that crimes are committed one way or another by most armies at all times by individuals who have used poor judgment. The thing that separates rational people from self hating idiots who do not know the difference between good and evil, is the ability to differentiate between atrocities that are carried out by vigilantes with no authority to act in the manner that they are and crimes that are committed by policy. Also it takes wisdom to differentiate between actions by whom it occurs as the rule and actions by whom it is the exception of the rule.

    An individual consumed with self hatred will have his/her judgment to clouded to make such distinctions.

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  14. Bartley Kulp said...
    "The thing that separates rational people from self hating idiots..."

    Although I am emphatically not a Zionist, Bartley is making an important point here.

    The issue of Deir Yassin was a major controversy within Israeli society. It was a major political issue.

    We have yet to see any similar response in the Arab world to atrocities committed against Jews.

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