No it isn’t. This is a ridiculous claim.
Commodore: There may be language issues involved, but I honestly cannot understand what you are saying.
I think you are saying that modern Israel is not the “Zion” that the Old Testament prophecies. For many of us, that’s easy: of course it isn’t. It’s a nation-state, with strong protections for the Jewish religion built into its constitution. But that’s easy, because many of us do not believe in OT (or NT) prophecy.
It’s as easy as saying that the U.S. and Russia are not Gog and Magog, and the Roman Catholic Church is not the Dragon. Well, of course they aren’t!
Alas, there are quite a few people who believe that modern Israel is somehow the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy. Everyone is entitled to his own faith, I guess. So far, no one has re-built the Temple, so the prophecy has a few holes in it.
Actually, it means Struggles with God. Genesis 32:
*22 That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female servants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. 23 After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. 24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.”
But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”
27 The man asked him, “What is your name?”
“Jacob,” he answered.
28 Then the man said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.”*
“Servant of God”(singular) I think is Abdiel. John Milton has him as a seraph whacking Satan upside his head in Paradise Lost.
Ovadia (Obadiah in English) arguably means “Servant of God”. The Hebrew rood A-B-D, “Work”, can imply both service and worship.
Incidentally, the common Arabic name “Abdullah” means basically the same thing.
What do you mean, “you guess”?
It’s a human right.
http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
Shhh it is disturbing to his Action movie understanding of history with the Great Messianic Savoir America narrative fighting all the black hats and saving the world for the natural white american supremacy, so he can also complain about the diviseness of the black president (and funnily talk about the gay rights where it is useful to use them to attack the hated other, but be anti-transgender when it is in his USA…). The Real life Israel is not his concern it is the Action Movie Israel.
sorry that there is such a thing as good and evil, as well as moral clarity. Also, what is this “white supremacy” you progressives talk about? “White supremacy” is people in hoods burning crosses.
Also, because Obama is black, is it not OK to call him divisive because he is black? Is it only OK to call white POTUSes like Clinton and Bush divisive?
In case you missed in my other posts, I genuinely AM pro-LGB. Ever think that there indeed are people who just don’t easily buy the T part of that?
Intersectionality is a communist fraud, and essentially just a Dogma of the Church of Progressive Thought . You’re clearly a believer.
It is irrelevant to your Action Movie understanding of the history.
I am not a “progressive” which I believe is your American jargon for a Leftist. Your racialising and language mark the thinking, we do not need to be KKK to have this thinking and it is clear in you.
As an example (as if I care about the skin color of these presidents… weird assumptoin.
Believer?
No, I am completely indifferent, it has no impact on me. I only observed. But it is a interesting illustration of the depth of prejudice to write “Intersectionality is a communist fraud” and says very much about the lack of coherence and the strange distortions that the animuses held drive…
I’m embarrassed for you for having written this post. It feels awful.
I totally disagree. What Israel is doing in the West Bank is incontrovertibly wrong outside of “might makes right”. The international courts have ruled that Israel is violating international law. Israel, of course, feels otherwise.
And mostly greys in between…
…as well as black-and-white thinking. (That was figurative, not literal, btw.)
Cite?
Just curious, Derek, in your opinion is it theoretically possible for Israel to ever be wrong about anything? There is more to foreign policy than automatically assuming that the nations that you put on a pedestal are infallible.
My take is that both Israelis and Palestinians have rights and to exclusively focus on one or the other is incorrect. When you take the position that Islam is fundamentally evil then you’re shutting the door on achieving any solution.
yes it is. But the obsession on the left about Israel and Palestinians, as viewable from the fact that of all blog tags, Israel is among, if not THE top one on Daily Kos (its not positive most of the time), it has its own forum on Democratic Underground, and these people’s constant whitewashing of Islamist and far-left hatred and violence against Israel makes it very hard to give a damn about the Palestinians. Ditto with the tons of SJP movements across campuses around the world, but nobody cares about other, more bloody conflicts.
Frankly, while Israel can be wrong, they always do have a point to some extent. And yes, because its the only Freedom House FITW ranked free country in the Middle East, and free market capitalist country there (without government oil mercantilism), I can assume more good will and good faith among it than its neighbors and enemies.
While I don’t think Islam is “fundamentally evil,” it is indeed fundamentally flawed, given how of all violent religious extremism, Islamic extremism is the most common that governments around the globe spend billions to fight and employ thousands to execute the fight. There needs to be an Islamic reformation. Why are Muslim hijabs so ubiquitous in Muslim countries and immigrant communities, but traditional Hindu wear, not so much in both Hindu countries and immigrant communities? Why do Haredi Jews only make up 10% of the population in Israel and 6% of American Jews? Ultrareligious, and even regular religious Muslims make the RW Christians look like child play here. Islam needs a reformation, led by Western country and other non-Muslim countries attacked by jihadism, done at the UN. Then the UN could actually be useful.
And this idea that I/P is reponsible for most of the Islamic extremism is basically saying there’s no responsibility from terrorists or supporters themselves for what they do. In reality, jihadism comes from Hassan Banna’s ideas, which were mere irrenditism for the caliphate, as well as a desire to erase Sykes Picot.
From the International Court of Justice:
The construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law
But they still keep expanding it
From Human Rights Watch: Settlements are Illegal:
Israel’s confiscation of land, water, and other natural resources for the benefit of settlements and residents of Israel also violate the Hague Regulations of 1907, which prohibit an occupying power from expropriating the resources of occupied territory for its own benefit.
Yeah, that’s the only court ruling I could find, too. Basically, it states that the portion of the border fence built on land on the Palestinian side of the Green Line is in violation of certain international statutes. It says nothing of the legality of the fence as a whole, nor does it state anything whatsoever about the settlements or the occupation in general.
Incidentally, IMHO the fence has hugely benefited the Palestinians, by allowing Israel to protect its territories from onside their town instead of from inside them, thus giving them far more freedom than they had before. But that’s just my own personal observation based on military service I’ve performed in the Territories in recent years.
The HRW is entitled to its opinion, but it’s not a court of law.
You say this as if the radicalized are typical of Muslims which is by no means true. It isn’t up to us to say that an Islamic reformation is needed. The Christian reformation corrected some of the abuses by the churches themselves, what you want to correct are the actions of a very small minority that are not in charge of Islam.
A reformation led by those outside the faith sounds more like a crusade than a reformation.
I don’t think the Israeli-Palestinian difficulties accounts for very much of the motivation for present day terrorism. Sykes-Picot is pretty old stuff, do you believe it has any present relevance?
I strongly disagree. The system of walls (and the extensions) block off some Palestinians from their land. This allows the Israeli government to claim that the land has been “abandoned”, is confiscated, and then handed to Israeli settlers, which allows the walls to be extended to “protect” the settlers. The town of Bethlehem has been completely surrounded by a wall with only two points of egress. Palestinians are sometimes prevented from leaving to go to work, at times without cause. I’d like to see one cite from a pro-Palestinian site that indicates the wall is helpful.
Why is this still in elections? Didn’t isn’t it well on its way towards the pit via great debates?