Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Ancient Israeli Myths Deter Peace

By Robert Parry
July 9, 2009

The rationale for formally designating Israel a Jewish state – as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now demands – rests on three religious-political pillars: God’s purported covenant with Moses instructing the ancient Israelites to conquer the land, the injustice of the Roman-era Diaspora that supposedly removed them centuries later, and the brutal persecution of European Jews in the Holocaust.

Read on.
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12 comments:

Mathew said...

Yada Yada Yada

"Yet, the Holocaust is not in historical dispute".

Wrong --there are many brave researchers who do NOT agree ! ! ! !

Mainly its the numbers that are in question and a number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is put at about 3,000,000 and not the 6,000,000 number.

Facilitating closure with research would be better than putting people in Jail for openly questioning.

General Eisenhower in his writings never mentioned that the Camp inmates were Jewish.

As Australian Professor W.D. Rubinstein has candidly acknowledged: "If the Holocaust can be shown to be a 'Zionist myth,' the strongest of all weapons in Israel's propaganda armory collapses."

Would Robert Parry the writer of this piece please do some homework before saying "Yet, the Holocaust is not in historical dispute".

Thu Jul 09, 11:34:00 AM 2009
Unknown said...

The arrogant writer is overlooking compelling evidence of Hashem's partnership with Israel Continuing in 1948, Israel still is the target of continued Arab wrath and violence, yet Israel survives and prospers despite overwhelming odds against it. Why? The hand of Hashem!

Thu Jul 09, 01:32:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

"The purification of Gaza is about to begin." This is the quote of an IDF soldier that disappeared from Huffington Post not long after it first appeared in December. I suspect that this particular Israeli learned from his rabbi that the ritual killing of Palestinians is good for Judaism. Consider the racism of anti-Semitism in the US media made clear with the cartoon images of Middle Eastern mullahs with their angry scowls, rough beards, swarthy complexions, and big noses. Don't forget that these images date from World War I when those same scowling, swarthy, angry, bearded faces were of Eastern European Jews made clear by the yarmulkas and Star of David pins they wore. The disproportionate Jewish representation at the top of the decision making part of our media is not a secret. It is clear that a majority of them are not opposed to anti-Semitism provided it is directed against Middle Easterners.

Thu Jul 09, 06:44:00 PM 2009
Kate said...

Actually it was God/Abraham who designated Isaac and his descendants would have the "land of water", Israel. But God told Ishmael's mother Hagar that her descendants would have the vast lands of what we call the Middle East, and Abraham later had 12 sons with an Egyptian wife who he also sent to populate the Middle East with Ishmael.

The people who Moses led out of Egypt were Egyptian by culture and were proto-Israelites. Moses kept the people in the desert for 40 years til the last person died who remembered Egypt. Even Moses could not enter the Promised land.

Yes, we do have to shake our heads about the violence toward the believers in the Golden Calf. I guess life wasn't worth a spit back then because it was common then but also today.

The history of Israel and the Jews is no myth. Archaeology backs up the events in the Torah, including wars with other ancient people such as the Assyrians and Babylonians, who recorded these same wars in their records. A researcher recently found the name of a Babylonian in Babylon's cuneiform tablets that is also mentioned in the Torah.

What defers peace is the Arab/Muslim refusal to acknowledge that Israel is the land of the Jews. In fact, Allah tells Muslims in the Quran, Chapter 13, verses 100-104, that Israel IS the land of the Jews. It really is the Holy Land of the Jews and Christians. Muslims have a history there too but only from the 7th century CE when Muslim armies conquered it.

There's no reason why Jews, Christians and Arabs cannot live in peace together. We've done it before.

Kate

Thu Jul 09, 10:08:00 PM 2009
Rockaway Beach said...

Does anybody see the irony here? The Far Right denies the Holocaust. The Far Left concedes that the Holocaust occurred, but denies the existence of the Jewish people!

Put the Right Wing nuts in the same room with the Left Wing nuts, and you wind up with a genocide that never happened 60 years ago, perpetrated against a people who haven't really existed for 2,000 years.

If it wasn't for the fact that many people take these historical revisionists seriously, it would all be hysterically funny.

Fri Jul 10, 01:07:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

As usual, Parry would have us believe the benevolent Islamic states that surround Israel would have treated Jews humanely after destroying the State of Israel. Thank goodness Israel has prevailed against the forces of medievalism and a second holocaust has not occurred.

Fri Jul 10, 03:20:00 PM 2009
libhom said...

I have seen so much bigotry in so many directions in this set of comments it's stunning.

Fri Jul 10, 08:18:00 PM 2009
chmoore said...

Libhom said...
"I have seen so much bigotry in so many directions in this set of comments it's stunning." - Good point, Libhom.

It comes across to me as one of the great ironies of all time that fundmentalist Zionists descended from Europeans would practice ethnic cleansing against people who have at least some ancestry leading back to the Israelites.

According to the PBS Nova excellent presentation "The Bible’s Buried Secrets", based on archeological evidence, the original Israelites themselves were not from a singular source, but a motley crew of disparaged and marginalized peoples from various places, who came up with monotheism as as solution to establish a universal standard of justice and morality.

RE: Fundamentalism: I can think of no better description than from New Testament scholar John Dominic Crossan; who hits the nail on the head in describing how religious fundamentalism - the practice of defining those with other opinions as not only wrong, but deserving wrath - is the most dangerous practice in the world.

Sat Jul 11, 11:40:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

I sometime also wonder why someone of ‘unregistered brand’ and stripe is deliberately trying to inject his demagogic untruths on the Middle East arena by injecting quasi “subtle” unrelated questions to the present situation. One has to remember that a little less than 50% of the present population of Israel is made out of remnants of Jews from Arab Countries that were thrown out from their place of birth with their shirts on their back.

The Arab conquest of the Land of Israel/Palestine came four years after the death of Muhammad 632 CE and lasted more than four centuries, with caliph after caliph ruling first from Damascus, then from Baghdad and Egypt.

At the outset of Islamic rule, Jewish settlement in Jerusalem was resumed, and the Jewish community was granted permission to live under "protection," the customary status of non-Muslims under Islamic rule, which safeguarded their lives, property and freedom of worship in return for payment of special poll and land taxes called Jizyah.

However, the subsequent introduction of restrictions against non-Muslims affected the Jews' public conduct as well as their religious observances and legal status. The imposition of heavy taxes on Agricultural Land compelled many to move from rural areas to towns, where their circumstances hardly improved, while increasing social and economic discrimination forced many Jews to leave the country. By the end of the 11th century, the Jewish community in the Land had diminished considerably and had lost some of its organizational and religious cohesiveness.

Today Jews are returning home to “Reconstitute” it, for this is the Land of Israel from Time Immemorial recognized as such also by Arab Educated past leaders i.e. Sheriff Hussein of the Hedjaz as “Ard Ibna’a Ihal Aslyin” the Land of the original owners (reference the Jews). It is no longer a demagogic question if Israel is a religious State or a Democratic state but rather the ganging of all Arab and Muslim States on the ONLY Israel to deny its “Self-Determination”!

Then comes the stupid novel nomenclature of “PALESTINIANS” as if such a people EVER existed when in reality, it is a hybrid mixture of Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and Egyptian people with strong mixes of Kurds, Circassian, Algerian, Bosnians, and Arabian, as well as a bit of remnant old blood from the mixed Arab, Greek, and Samaritan? A mish mash of people with no language, identity, or culture of their own that has no historical ties apart from migrations, to this particular land, and certainly no religious ties? A people who can claim no Archeological vestiges there?

OTOH the Jews have had a connection with the land, a yearning for the land and a love for the land for over 2,000 years? A Land peppered with hundreds of Archeological sites that substantiate and illustrate their ownership of that Land? A people in whose very veins the blood of the land's aboriginal and other similar populations runs? And not just ANY people but the VERY people who gave the world democracy, justice, and monotheism and who liberated the human mind from the narrow confines of idolatry…

Palestine/Israel is the Land of the Jews and not the Arabs! The Arabs have now 22 such Arab States that were created for their needs and purposes in this century… Israel has ONE and intends to keep it notwithstanding the world wish to sacrifice it on the altar of their oil needs for energy…

Tue Jul 14, 08:56:00 AM 2009
Torch said...

Wow! Anonymous would have us believe that the Jewish people invented not only democracy, justice, etc., but also mom's apple pie, baseball and Chevrolet. Quite a series of accomplishments. Unfortunately, it escapes him that Parry clearly notes the Asian origin of more than 90% of the Jews, people who have no historical claim to the land Irael occupies. Re the "Holocaust," it's time to study the causes of that event, not the mechanical details. In that vein, it would be instructive to read Israeli writer Sever Plocker's story, "Stalin's Jews". The short version: the same people who brought the world democracy, justice, etc., also bestowed upon humanity the Jewish Bolsheviks who murdered more than 20 million people in Russia and emphatically warned the German people that they were bringing their revolution to them.

Tue Jul 14, 05:09:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

There must be some truth behind the writings of the Old Testament. DNA tests have confirmed an exceptionally high percentage of Cohens the descendants of Aaron and hereditary priests of the Law, with the same genetic identity throughout the diaspora, including a negro tribe in Africa who claim direct lineage from priests at the time of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem during the first century C.E.
If Islam claims the land by right of conquest or by driving out Jewish populations living peacefully in the Middle East since the days of Persian Empire, it is a modern political fraud compounded by the obviously anti-Semitic slant of this article.

Thu Jul 16, 12:19:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

Refer to Wikipedia article about the Khazars, which cites evidence that DNA disproves the theory that the Israelis descended from the Khazars, and that this theory was invented by anti-semites in order to disprive the Israeli's entitlement to Israeal. "Modern DNA studies on the Y chromosome of Jews worldwide have largely disproven the Khazar origin theory for the majority of Ashkenazi." See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars
It is disappointing to see Robert Parry being taken in by right wing propaganda this way.

Tue Jul 21, 03:17:00 AM 2009

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