|
Obama Prepares Iran Attack
There are lots of reasons to be concerned over Obama's appointments. Here comes the worst one.
According to the well informed Nelson Report (via Jim Lobe), Dennis Ross will be Special Envoy under Hillary Clinton in charge of negotiations with Iran.
Dennis Ross worked under Paul Wolfowitz during the Reagan administration and later in George H.W. Bush's administration before becoming "Israel's lawyer" in the Clinton administration.
Ross recently signed on to an AEI written report on Iran which recommends (pdf) tougher sanctions and very restricted, time-limited negotiations with Iran. If these fail, and be sure that Ross will take care to let any negotiations fail, it recommends an all-out blockade of Iran and military strikes.
Additionally Richard Haass will become Special Envoy for Israel-Arab affairs. He recently published a report with AIPAC and WINEP tool Martin Indyk which also recommends a blockade of Iran and, after that act of war fails, a military attack.
For a short while there was some hope that the neocon trend was out of business. With these appointments the same ideology, only under a different banner, is back right where it can make the most damage.
Change I can't believe in.
jlcg:
With all due respect, I believe that your Church is treading the fine line between ignorance and anti-semitism. Let me explain.
First off, there is a huge difference between Judaism and Zionism.
Judaism is a religious faith. There are many sects, a number of which have beliefs which contradict with other sects. It is virtually impossible to make blanket statements about what Jews believe, as for any specific belief one could probably find a sect which doesn’t believe in it. (To a lesser extent, the same could be said about Catholicism, which runs the gamut of beliefs from Papal Infallibility to Liberation Theology and the Catholic Worker.)
Zionism is a political movement to control the land of Israel. Up until the Holocaust, most Jews and Rabbis were not pro-Zionist; the great trauma changed that. There are still significant, and growing, percentages of Jews who are either not Zionists, or are completely apathetic to the issue.
Here is a website which explains this: Jews Not Zionists
This page explains Jewish resistance to Zionism.
It is important that people distinguish between Judaism and Zionism, as they are not the same.
To make matters even more complicated, there are sects such as Reconstructionist Judaism (which I am most closely aligned with) which see Judaism in almost anthropological terms as no more, no less, than an progressively evolving civilization. (I, like Gandhi’s famous quote, am having a problem with the civilization part these days.) These Jews understand that the Old Testament was written by man — principally two writers, but with significant additions by five or so more others. There are also Jewish atheists, and Jews who do not follow the Old Testament but include it as part of their tradition.
Now to your quotes:
“Jews believe in the depth or their being that they are a chosen people and that God has promised them the land of Canaan where they are now already but also the dominion from the River to the ends of the earth.”
The belief in being God’s chosen people can be interpreted in many ways. Many Jews believe that they are chosen as part of a two-way covenant to follow the laws of Old Testament. No more, no less. Not that they are in any way better than other people. Likewise, many Jews belive that, if they are meant to get that land, it will come from God when the time is right, not from Israeli military incursions. And many Jews believe nothing of the sort of either of these two statements.
On Sunday it was a reading announcing for Jews that the wealth of nations would flow to Zion, in other readings the justice of God spreads out of Zion and so on. For this to be true it is not necessary that anyone other than Jews believe it. It is enough that Jews act as if it were true. This would explain the relentless desire to exist by expanding.
The continued expansion of Israel is a political program undertaken by a largely secular ruling class descended from the secular Zionists who founded the State. The religious who do believe this are largely cannon fodder, or sanctimonious window dressing.
I have never heard any emphasis on these lines in religious services. It sounds pretty new-agey, like something out of the mouth of a cult-Kabbalist like Madonna.
Historically, there really was, and still is, a very small wealthy financier class created by European injunctions in the middle ages. Contraposed to this, the vast majority of Jews, mainly gathered in Eastern Europe, were very poor and highly discriminated against. Books like “The Death of an American Jewish Community” tell modern versions of the tale of the betrayal of the working class by the financiers of their own faith: all very similar to the financial changes occurring today.
As we know on this blog, wealth can only concentrate by the organized application of structural violence to others. Clearly, most Jews are instinctively opposed to this, even if they do not understand the processes by which this transpires as wel as we do.
Besides there is the ending of Psalm 149 where the People of God see as their highest duty to use double edge swords to punish peoples and put their nobles in chains.
Sounds like Imperialism. Easy to see in modern days. No, all Jews are not Imperialists.
The punishment theme runs through all religions. As an adherent of Alice Miller, I am greatly opposed to such punishment.
Posted by: Malooga | Jan 6 2009 16:59 utc | 13
|
