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Quote:ote='lilphil1989' pid='15926' dateline='1241774576']
(May 5, 2009 at 1:23 pm)josef rosenkranz Wrote: So who is finally the racist against whom?
Jews are a religious group, not a race.
Jews are not a race nor a religious group.
Jews are a nation of the same kind as are French or Germans or Russians or a lot of other nations living on our planet.
We as atheists do not consider the Bible as an historic document ,we don't believe in the creation of the world by God as well as in all the legends which are described there about the holly origins of the Jewish people.
However the part of the Bible beginning with the description of two kingdoms existing in the land of ancient Canaan ,known later as Palestine ,one named Israel and the second named Jehudah,beginning with the 10-th century BC is an historic undeniable fact.The people of both kingdoms were of the same ethnic descent and of the same monotheistic religion.
The Bible speaks about a previous united kingdom first ruled by king Saul and afterwards by David and Salomon,but this is prehistory and historians are still uncertain about descerning legend from reality.
I will not enter in an extensive historic description but only in a very short one.
In the 6-th century BC the kingdom of Israel is conquerred by the Assyrians an it's population dispersed.
The kingdom of Jehudah will last for more appr.200 years and is also conquerred by the famous king Nebucadnezzar (known also as Nabuccodonossor) of Babylon who exiles almost the entire judeean population to Babylon.
After only 70 years the Babilonian empire is conquerred by the Persians and their king Cyrus allows the Jews which are now a mix of previous exiled israelians and judeeans to return to their homeland which will remain for more than 100 years a persian province.
In the year 332 BC Alexander the Great lands on the shores of the Middle East and conquerres an immense territory beginning with Egypt and as far as the valleys of the Ganges.
After his death the empire is divided berween his generals Ptolemaeus Antiohus and Seleucus.
Its the beginning of the Helenistic period of the Middle East.
Palestine,now a province of Syria changes several Helenistic rulers the last of them being Antiochus Epiphanes.
During his reign ,in the year of 160 BC,the Jews, who have crystalized themselves as a nation during almost three centuries since the return from the Babylonian exil,start a revolt against the king and succeed to establish an independent state which will be named later by the Romans as Judeea,with his capital Jerusalem.
The political and social situation in the Helenistic Egypt as well as in Rome attracted Jews to emmigrate from their homeland and that marks the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora.
The Judeean state will last for only 230 year and is finally destroyed by the Romans under the emperror Vespasianus in the year 70 AC. A second revolt of the Jews during the emperror Hadrianus, reppressed in blood, disperses almost the entire Jewish population from Palestine.
For almost the next 1000 years Palestine will, so to speak fall off history,will revive as a kingdom during 100 years of the Crusader conquest and will remain further for the next 900 years as a desolate obscure ,very poor populated province,
During that period Jews will remain in Palestine as a poor almost neglectable population.
In the 7-th century AC the Arabs emerge as a military and religious super power which succeeds to conquer the entire Middle East as well as north of Africa and to arrive as far as Spain.
The population of Palestine is converted to Islam and from this time on they will consider themselves as being a part of the Arabic nation.
The Arabs will give Jerusalem an important role in their religion through the legend the Muhammad made a nightly trip on a horse from Mecca to a far mosque (El-Aktza in arabic) and ascended from there to heaven.
The almost 700 years of the conquest of Spain by the Arabs brought to a most fertile peacefull and cultural evolution of Arabs, Jews and Christians till the Reconquesta of Spain in the 15-th century when Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain.
The survival of Jews in the Diaspora as a distinct ethnic entity has many explanations.
The Jews had during 2000 years of Diaspora only short periods when they were not persecuted,being mainly accused by this slander of having killed Jesus.A major factor of their survival was their religious faith which maintained the believe of returning to their homeland .The religion played the role of a spiritual Zion ( a symbolic name of Jerusalem)where they would seek refuge every Sabbath and every holliday.No matter of the cruel persecutions the Jews believed all the time in a Messaiah who will come and will render them back to Zion.
It is for that reason that Jews are some times identified not as a nation but as a religious group .
The political Zionism which appears in Russia durig the second part of the 19-th century striving for a return of the Jews to Palestine is actually of the same kind as many other national revival movements in Europe of the same period as for instance in Italy ,Poland ,Greece and others.
This is in my explantion to the inexact affirmation that Jews are a religious group, whereas they are actually a nation as many others in the world.
As for the problem of "race",Jews and Arabs are of the same semitic descend.Hebrew and Arabic are close related languages nearly as are French to Italian or German to Dutch or Russian to Polish.
I did my best to widden the knowledge ,if only a little bit, for membres of our forum wondering about the Jews.
Quote: I don't see how claims of racism are relevant.
Not that anti-semitism isn't a horrid thing, but it isn't racism.
You are definitely right racism is here total irelevant.I presented my post as an answer to the question put by Dagda asking if Israel practices racism against the Palestinians.
Th
Quote:e way I see the conflict, Israel effectively illegally invaded the lands beyond what was given to them in the armistice agreement (1949).
Again your knowledge about the conflict is not complete and therefore you consider the extension of Israel beyond the 1949 agreement a illegal.
Every judicial system in the world interdicts homicide but in the same time justifies the right of self defense.If an ennemy comes with the sure intention to kill you, you have the right to beat him and if he has still the power to harm you, you have the right to take any measures in order to defend yourself.That's exactly what happened.
When the armies of seven Arab states invaded Israel in the aftermath of it's declaration of independence
they openly declared that their purpose was "Itbah al Yahood" -massacre the Jews!.
It was clear in the mind of every Israeli that a new holocaust of the population of only 600,000 men is going to happen.
The Arabs were defeated by many reasons the most important ot them being a "secret" weapon named the "no choice" weapon.The Israelis fought with their back to the sea where they would have been pushed with no mercy.
Now after defeating the Arabs ,tu return to the indefendable territory of 10,000 sq,kilometers with a snake like border of hundreds of kilometers as decided by the UN, would have meant to put their own head on the butchers block.
Even the Arabs themselves have no pretension to Israel of returning to the 1949 borders, but apparently accept the 1967 borders
