Willy, since you’ve been enlightening us with a slew of definitions from your well-thumbed copy of Merriam-Webster, let’s revisit one you posted earlier:
If you read the definition you posted, Willy, you’ll find that it’s not necessary to urge others to be hostile towards or discriminate against Jews to be an anti-Semite. Having such hostility and repeatedly and belligerently expressing it in the face of the reasoned and informed opinion you’ve been encountering here is quite enough for you to be defined as an anti-Semite. Why shy away from such an accurate characterization?**
So true.
Perhaps we will one day see Willy fervently denouncing whites, blacks, Catholics, Protestants, Hindus, Moslems, Confucianists et al with the same fervor that he displays towards Jews.
I’m not holding my breath.
**
"If everyone had a flower instead of a gun, there’d be no wars!
There’d be one big smell-in!!
Lorenzo St. Dubois, “Love Power” (The Producers).
Jackmanii, I already said you can suit yourself. I said it in the very post you quoted. I would shy from it, but if that is how you see it, then that is how you see it. I do apologize if have been rude to you. It was not my intention to bring belligerence to this debate.
Ahhhh…have you read any of the other threads I have participated in or is this just speculation? And I do not denounce Jews. I disagree with Jewish ideology.
Main Entry: an·ti-Sem·i·tism
Pronunciation: "an-ti-'se-m&-"ti-z&m, "an-"tI-
Function: noun
Date: 1882
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
an·ti-Se·mit·ic /-s&-'mi-tik/ adjective
an·ti-Sem·ite /-'se-"mIt/ noun
Any hostility on my part is intended towards the government of Israel. Israel the nation. The guys with the weapons. I don’t denounce anyone for being Jewish. I would denounce the Israeli government for allowing religion to dictate national policy.
Which you have, as yet, not identified. What is “Jewish ideology”?
So far, you seem to think that providing refugee status for a persecuted group is not defensible because that group wants to be able to provide refugee status for those who are persecuted.
OK.
Anything else? Can you actually describe “Jewish ideology”? Or do we simply have to assume that you know it when you see it and that the widely divergent opinions and attitudes toward life, politics, ethics, art, literature, religion, and a host of other areas of thought that have been expressed by diverse groups of people identified as “Jewish” are actually some monolithic system (simply because you say so)?
Well, I got to this thread late due to the Passover holiday (see what a horrible religion Judaism is? It keeps me from this message board! )
I have to admit that I haven’t read every word of the thread (I’m short on time and strength of stomach). However, I have noticed that in many places, the question of whether the “jewish religion and ideology” has turned into a discussion of Israel’s immigration policy. While, granted, Israel is the Jewish state, in many instances it’s policies run contrary to Jewish law. The Jewish people have existed for over 1900 years without the State of Israel and I’m willing to bet that if (God forbid) the State of Israel were to disappear tomorrow, the Jewish people will survive at least another 1900.
So (and I know I am very late in saying this), shouldn’t this thread be focusing on the Jewish religion and not the State of Israel?
Well, I decided to go back and try to re-read the thread and see if any points were missed.
Firstly, from Pixiegrrl
Pixiegrrl, Judaism does indeed teach that non-Jews can go to heaven. In fact, non-Jews have a much easier time getting there than Jews do. Non-Jews only have to keep seven commandments. Jews, OTOH, have to keep 613.
Secondly, from Sweet Willy
You do realize, Sweet Willy that Jewish law regarding conversion was set well in advance of the State of Israel and the Law of Return, don’t you? You base your statement that Judaism is a racist religion because people born of a Jewish mother are given special consideration when immigrating to Israel. However, as I pointed out above, the modern State of Israel is not synonymous with the Jewish religion. Please state how you believe the Jewish religion is racist – keeping in mind that the laws of Judaism were well established many, many years before 1948.
Yet another gem from Sweet Willy states:
**
Firstly, you’ve failed to show where the Jewish religion makes other people inferior to Jews. Show me something from a Jewish text that states that Jews are ubermentchen and the rest of the world are untermentschen
SW continues:
**
Can’t help other people’s perceptions. I feel poor compared to Bill Gates, but that doesn’t mean he has to give up all his money.
SW continues again:
**
See my answer to Pixiegrrl above. Judaism, as a religion, teaches that everyone, Jew and non-Jew alike, can atain glory. As for inherent rights, yes there are certain rituals that only Jews can partake of. When the Temple stood, only Jews could eat from the Passover sacrifice. Only Jews were required to keep the Sabbath. Only Jews are required to keep kosher. Hardly racist, IMHO.
In another post, SW states:
**
Considering that Judaism <> State of Israel, please indicate where Judaism promotes racism.
In trying to prove that Judaism is a race, SW pulls some material from a Seventh Day Adventist website which somehow tries to make the point that because Orthodox Jews know when the Sabbath is, that makes them a race. Did I miss something, SW or is there a huge chunk of logic missing? How does a group of people knowing what day of the week it is make them a race?
And as far as Netanyahu’s quote goes, it means nothing. Anyone can say that Jews are a race. I can say that right-handed Yankee fans are a race (I am a right-handed Yankee fan), but that doesn’t make them a race.
I guess my question to you, Sweet Willy is this… the Jewish religion has been around for a long time. The State of Israel, OTOH, since 1948. You state that Judaism is a racist religion, but you back up that statement by quoting Israeli immigration policy. Can you please state why you think the Jewish religion is racist?
Tom, If you do not even conceive of the existence of Jewish ideals, I am reluctant to waste my keystrokes. But here we go again.
BECOMING A CITIZEN OF ISRAEL
by
Adam Starchild
The number of U.S. citizens taking out Israeli citizenship is high. In fact in 1992 the number grew 35% over the year before, while the number from the former Soviet Union declined.
Under Israeli law, the acquisition of nationality is one of the few areas in which the law differentiates between Jews and non-Jews. The Law of Return grants every Jew the right to go to Israel as an oleh (Jewish immigrant), and the Israel Nationality Law automatically confers Israeli nationality on every oleh upon entering the country unless he specifies otherwise. The law even provides that a Jew who expresses his desire to settle in Israel may be granted nationality by virtue of the Law of Return even before he physically immigrates, a clause which allows the Israeli government to issue travel documents to refugees in emergencies.
Article 4A of the Law of Return extends the Jewish rights to family members: “(a) The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law, 5712-1952, as well as the rights of an oleh under any other enactment, are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew, except for a person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his religion.”
The next section makes it clear that the family member need not even be living: “(b) It shall be immaterial whether or not a Jew by whose right a right under subsection (a) is claimed is still alive and whether or not he has immigrated to Israel.”
Article 4B provides the definition of a Jew: “For the purposes of this Law, ‘Jew’ means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.”
Section 5 of the law allows the Minister of the Interior to grant visas and citizenship to minors without their parents consent, a section that has recently been used for minors from Ukraine, Moldova, and former Yugoslavia who decided to flee without their families.
It is important to note that the law discriminates in favor of Jews against all others only as to the method of acquiring nationality. In theory at least, once nationality has been acquired all Israeli nationals are treated equally.
Tom, This document contains ideals about who is a Jew. Some of those ideals are based upon ancestry. Where do you think they come from?
Welcome to the debate Zev_steinherdt, Better late than never. As to your questions, I have stated why I see racism in treatment of Jews by Israel. It is in part based upon ancestry. Reminds me a little of the “Jim Crowe” laws.
Thanks for the invite. However, you totally missed what I stated. The State of Israel <> Jews. Please keep that in mind. There are Orthodox Jews who are fervently anti-Zionist.
You stated in a previous post:
(bolding mine – Zev)
Again, I put the question to you - from what authoritative Jewish law text (remember – Isareli law is NOT Jewish law!) do you see that the Jewish religion promotes racism. Please cite specific texts or examples.
No. The document contains no “ideals” regarding who is a Jew. It contains specific information regarding the religious law that governs which people are legally identified as Jewish for the purpose of immigration and citizenship. There is still no evidence of some great monolithic “Jewish ideology.”*
The state if Israel was clearly formed with the intention of providing a haven for one group of people who have over 2,000 years of history of being persecuted. You have not indicated why providing that haven is a bad thing; you simply claim that they are evil for doing so without explaining why providing refuge is evil.
(Please do not go back to the silly “racism” thing unless you are prepared to explain what rules they should use, instead. When pogroms have been called against Jews, they have been based on both ancestry and on current belief. When the Shoah was carried out through Europe in the 1940s, it was based on both ancestry and current belief. Anyone who wanted to provide a haven for people in danger of persecution is going to need to base it both on ancestry and current belief–otherwise they will be excluding people in danger of persecution. Which people do you feel should be denied protection?)
Now, you seem to be saying that people should have no right to provide refuge to other people. If that is not what you are saying, then explain the rules by which a group that was persecuted on the basis on ancestry or current belief should be identified without falling afoul of your personal hang-ups with purported racism.
(Unless, of course, you simply deny 2,000+ years of history and believe that there has been no persecution of Jews?)
.
*You are aware, I hope, that ideal (a “standard”–usually imaginary or archetypal–against which one measures an object or concept) is not directly related to an ideology (a coherent set of beliefs or understandings promulgated by a group). They have an ancient Greek root in common, but they have quite distinct meanings.
My hat’s off to you, zev, for wading through all of that after a late start. But, with respect, sir I can’t let the question of Sweet Willy’s anti-semitism (or non anti-semitism, if he successfully defends himself against the charge) go, just yet.
I think Sweet Willy is engaging in a bit of misdirection with his quote above.
You see, I am a former reader of the Costa Mesa Daily Pilot. It’s basically a free newspaper, bundled in with copies of the Los Angeles Times that are distributed in Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. It didn’t strike me as plausible that there was a front-page story in that newspaper that would carry such a paragraph within its text. Well, it’s been a few years since I’ve gotten my newspapers in Costa Mesa, maybe things have changed. A search of the Daily Pilot archives for “Benjamin Netanyahu” yielded nothing earlier than January, 2001. “Well, well,” I thought to myself. “Either Sweet Willy’s* a peripatetic packrat, carrying twenty-five-month-old newspapers along with him as he moves from Southern California to North Carolina, or he found that paragraph online.” So I did a Yahoo!search on the first sentence, and this is what I found. Both search results yield the same article, but while this one is simply a list of articles from some website that acts as a clearinghouse for whacko diatribes, the original source website is The Institute for Historical Review.
Sweet Willy may have noble and irreproachable reasons for searching this site for support for his contention that Judaism is a race, but the fact that he presents his quote in such a way that it invites the reader to assume that the quote came from a mainstream newspaper tends not to inspire confidence in such a supposition. The preceding may be regarded by some as argumentum ad hominem, but I would submit that to the extent that the question of whether Sweet Willy is an anti-semite is a valid part of this debate, it is a valid piece of evidence to peruse.
The question of whether Benjamin Netanyahu actually does regard Jews as members of a racial group, his remarks in a speech notwithstanding, is still open.
And, without directly questioning Mr. Netanyahu, we will probably never know.
It is very likely, for example, that Mr. Netanyahu was using the word in its original sense of a closely-knit group of people, often a group joined by a mythological* connection to a famed ancestor. This sense of the word was commonly used in the expressions “the Irish race” or “the Welsh race” or (looking back to Abraham) “the Jewish race.” It was this meaning of the word which was later borrowed by the ethnologists of the late 18th and 19th centuries to be transformed into the meaning which it now carries.
Sweet Willy may find each use of the term abhorent, but they carry very different meanings. Certainly, the phrase “the Jewish race” would not normally have been equivalent to “the Negro race” in most literature (outside 20th century U.S. tracts) for most of its history.
.
*Mythological in the anthropological sense of common acceptance of belief, not in the sense of fictitious.
Sweet Willy, since you have agreed with the way I plotted out your argument, and several of those points were just plain wrong and did not conenct, I have to say I think your argument is immensely flawed. Try finding some cites.
I am mostly preoccupied with human relations in general. Hunams have a habit of dividing themselves into groups based on many, many criteria, some for better, some for worse. Some are harmless and fun, some are religious, some are racial, some are right handed Yankees fans. This discussion is about the group of Jews and their criteria for distinguishing themselves as a group and if that ideology is a threat to us all.
The criteria for being part of the Jewish group is somewhat in debate, even within the group as a whole, some views more liberal about who is included, some more conservative. In its most broad terms it includes those of ancient descent, those practising, and those fully converted. Also included are the current and future children of those in this group. The policy, as accepted here, ( fat chance ), is not exclusive to descent. It does include descent. It does confer this criteria for descent upon converts, their children being Jewish. This is a willful impostion of some kind of group status (race? religion?) that is accepted unless entirely refuted by the individual born into it.
Is this a threat in and of itself? Well yes and no, depending on your point of view. In any case, this criteria is not the “threat” in itself that I refer to. The threat which I refer to is the Nation of Israel, heavily armed and proven proficient, including very, very similar criteria in a national policy that is a big fundamental disagreement in the possibilty of peace a’top the worlds largest powder keg. Right or wrong, it is threatening.
Main Entry: an·ti-Sem·i·tism
Pronunciation: "an-ti-'se-m&-"ti-z&m, "an-"tI-
Function: noun
Date: 1882
: hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group
an·ti-Se·mit·ic /-s&-'mi-tik/ adjective
an·ti-Sem·ite /-'se-"mIt/ noun
Any hostility is directed at the Israeli government. If you did in error detect some hostility towards Jews as a racial group, I would remind you that you maintain that no such thing exist. How could I be guilty of that?
Very well written, tmndebb, and very likely, too, because from my own experience, that is how most Israeli Jews think of themselves. In fact, the correct term here is “am”, a Hebrew word usually translated to “nation” or “people”, but also occasionally to “ethnic group” or “race”. It’s a loose term which applies to any group of people with common ancestry, history, language, customs or destiny - or any combination of the above. Religion can be one componant, but not necesserally the only one. After all, the State of Israel was founded by a group of hardcore atheists and agnostics, and many Israelis define themselves quite proudly as atheist Jews.
It’s funny, but I’ve found, after moving to the States from Israel, that that’s probably the biggest difference between the world’s two largest Jewsih communities - American Jews think of Judaism as a religion first and a people second, while with most Israelis, it’s precisely the other way around.
Ok, I’m late to comment but I have enjoyed the read. Couple of questions…Why did the Vulcanus guy get banned for citing a reference? I think someone said he had been previously banned; but how do you know it’s the same person? (These may be incredibly foolish questions but I’m new here so bear with me). Also, I came across this in the Palestinian Nonviolence thread and thought maybe this was what the somewhat controversial Sweet Willy may be saying…
I think that if SW is replying to the OP than he is correct in saying that any policy that prefers one race or religion (Right of Return) can do nothing but damage relations. Perhaps not ‘a threat to us all’ but at the very least not contributing to a peace process. C’mon, someone has to see some logic to this argument. I certainly don’t think that Judaism is a threat …however, I do think Israeli policy promotes preferrential treatment.
I’m late to comment but I have enjoyed the read. Couple of questions…Why did the Vulcanus guy get banned for citing a reference? I think someone said he had been previously banned; but how do you know it’s the same person? (These may be incredibly foolish questions but I’m new here so bear with me). Also, I came across this in the Palestinian Nonviolence thread in GD and thought maybe this was what the somewhat controversial Sweet Willy may be saying…
I’m just trying to see both sides here. I think the idealogy SW is examining is The Right of Return. While this is not all of Judaism, of course, it is a facet. Not a threat to us all, but an ideaology and a national policy that openly prefers its’ own people is not exactly productive towards a peace process.
ooops! I suck at this computer world! Sorry about the double posts (first one…didn’t think posted…got knocked off line…ammended thoughts and posted again…my apologies)
The Palestinians refused their own statehood, and they are living in territories that aren’t a part of Israel, but are occupied by Israel…are they citizens? do they have any rights under Israeli law at all?
tomndebb’s earlier post noted that to apply for citizenship in Israel, one had to be living there. Just wondered.
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