The Israeli-Palestinian issue

Selene · February 16, 2010

Jeff:
Was this the "rain forest" end of the island? Or did you do the Maho or Cinnamon Bay trails?
Adam
Blessed if I remember. It's been six years or so since I was there, and I don't have a map handy. We ended up at Honeymoon Beach
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and along the way passed the old sugar mill at Caneel Bay
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and an overlook of Cruz Harbor.
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So whichever end of the island that was, that's where we "hiked" (more like a loping stroll for an hour or so )
Hmm. There was supposed to be an image where those dashed lines are, but the system isn't letting me post the images off of Photobucket....
This had been a test of the Emergency Relaxation System.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled argument....

LOL

I know which route you took. Caneel is the Rockefeller Plantation resort. The coral reef at Caneel was virtually destroyed by the water taxi's and private boats.

Maho and Cinnamon are beautiful if you ever get back there.

http://www.maho.org/

http://www.cinnamonbay.com/

They are both environmental campgrounds and incredibly wonderful.

Adam

Leonid · February 16, 2010

"Where did he say that?"
He presented this video

and said he agrees with it
Where did Ahmedinejad state that the Holocaust didn't happen or that there wasn't as many who died that are claimed in the video that I posted up?
He asked 3 questions and didn't come to any conclusions regarding the Holocaust.. If you equate a request to examine the facts themselves including scientific research at the sites of where these horrible events as denial then I'm sorry, but you have no right to do so.. It's an important event in history, people should have access to the sources including the sites just as they do with ANY other historical event, especially when it is so prominent in politics..
If no one has anything to hide then why would they equate such a request to outright denial?
PS. I will respond to your other comments a bit later today.

Leonid · February 16, 2010

Adonis:"He asked 3 questions and didn't come to any conclusions regarding the Holocaust.. "

In such a case with what do you agree?

Selene · February 16, 2010

Adonis:"He asked 3 questions and didn't come to any conclusions regarding the Holocaust.. "
In such a case with what do you agree?

Leonid:

This is an opportunity to compare how you both perceive the same communication.

What three questions did you hear?

Or, were there more than, or less than three (3) questions?

Humor me here, there is a point to what I am attempting.

If you do not wish to disclose them publicly either e-mail them to yourself, or me, or Michael, it order to mark the record.

Adam

Edited February 16, 2010 by Selene

Leonid · February 16, 2010

Adonis:"He asked 3 questions and didn't come to any conclusions regarding the Holocaust.. "
In such a case with what do you agree?
Leonid:
This is an opportunity to compare how you both perceive the same communication.
What three questions did you hear?
Or, were there more than, or less than three (3) questions?
Humor me here, there is a point to what I am attempting.
If you do not wish to disclose them publicly either e-mail them to yourself, or me, or Michael, it order to mark the record.
Adam

Leonid · February 16, 2010

Adonis "If you do not wish to disclose them publicly either e-mail them to yourself, or me, or Michael, it order to mark the record."

There is no mystery. This part of interview was about Holocaust and questions were related to this topic. Can you tell now with what do you agree?

Selene · February 16, 2010

Adonis "If you do not wish to disclose them publicly either e-mail them to yourself, or me, or Michael, it order to mark the record."
There is no mystery. This part of interview was about Holocaust and questions were related to this topic. Can you tell now with what do you agree?

Dude:

Adam is a different poster than Adonis.

I am suggesting an exercise that I thought would be helpful.

If you wish to not participate, that is your choice.

Adam

Leonid · February 16, 2010

MSK

I insult nobody. I just present facts as they are. If, according to you, that constitutes poor intellectual standard and bigotry, so let it be.

Fact: Adonis presents Iranian view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Fact: Adonis calls to dismantle Israel and by your own admission to transfer power to Palestinians.

Fact: Adonis calls to send all Zionists (read Jews who don't want to live under Hamas or PLO rule) to Germany or Italy. Adonis is highly intelligent person, but it never occurred to him to realize that large portion of Israeli population is Jews of oriental origin. Therefore they should be redirected to Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and other Arab countries where they can live happy life as dhimmies.

Fact: You ignore, evade or rationalize all these facts by telling us: yes, but Adonis says he doesn't mean it and Adonis is honorable man. He has noble intentions-which pave the road to Hell.

I think you're not quite comfortable with facts which don't fit your ideas... You dismiss facts which presented by source, you don't like regardless their true-value. It's amount to dismissing of mathematical proof because mathematician is a scoundrel. You dismiss facts even without to read them-by your own admission. You never attempted to refute any fact or statement which I've made. Your sole argument is that you don't like me and my sources. If you consider that good intellectual standard, so it be. Who I'm to argue? You claim that you defended Israel better than me. Unlike you, I never dismiss any claim before I examine it. I did read your posts in which you defend Israel on historical and legal grounds. You even invoked resolution of UN, the most corrupt and immoral international organization in human history. Israel cannot be defended on historical grounds-Palestinians live in Palestine for 15 centuries. Israel cannot be defended on the legal grounds-UN has no jurisdiction over Palestine. Israel could be defended only on the grounds of moral superiority-as the only country in the Middle East which fully recognizes and protects people's rights.

Since you accepted Adonis as equal partner in this discussion you accepted premises of moral relativism. You cannot defend Israel. You even cannot justify and defend your own position. What is left to you is to call me names and to proclaim me as your enemy (little Satan?). If that all you can do, let it be.

Leonid · February 16, 2010

"Adam is a different poster than Adonis."

True. My mistake. Nevertheless, my answer is the same: questions were about Holocaust and I'm anxious to learn with what Adonis agrees.

Michael Stuart Kelly · February 16, 2010

I thought this was going to be hard.

Opinion, error and/or oversimplification presented as fact:

Fact: Adonis presents Iranian view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Opinion, error and/or oversimplification presented as fact:

Fact: Adonis calls to dismantle Israel and by your own admission to transfer power to Palestinians.

Opinion, error and/or oversimplification presented as fact:

Fact: Adonis calls to send all Zionists (read Jews who don't want to live under Hamas or PLO rule) to Germany or Italy.

Mindreading:

Adonis is highly intelligent person, but it never occurred to him...

Insults together with mindreading presented as fact:

Fact: You ignore, evade or rationalize all these facts...

That's where I generally stop.

Is it any wonder I skim over this crap?

Michael

Selene · February 16, 2010

Leonid:

Try to hear this objectively.

Fact checking your "fact":

"The Orient is a term which means "the East". It is a traditional designation for anything belonging to the Orient or Far East. In English it is a metonym describing Eastern Asia. It was also used to indicate the eastern direction in historical astronomy as the adjective Oriental." Wiki

Jews of oriental origin. Therefore they should be redirected to Morocco, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and other Arab countries where they can live happy life as dhimmies.

I sure hope that you are not responsible, in your profession, for map making or ICBM targeting.

Adam

Leonid · February 16, 2010

MSK:"Is it any wonder I skim over this crap?"

It's clear that you simply skim and skip everything on this thread. You don't read Adonis' posts either. Real Adonis with his real ideas doesn't exist for you. Only imaginary noble savage which you made up to fit your fantasies.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Leonid

Leonid · February 16, 2010

Adam: if you interested in facts you should present them in full.

"The term "Orient" is derived from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior "rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق‎ (< Arabic yashruq Arabic: يشرق‎ "rise", shurooq Arabic: شروق‎ "rising") and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan."

As you can see "Orient" means also Levant which is Middle East. Jews from Arab countries called in Hebrew Mizrahim or Levantim. Sometimes they also called Orientalim. So you shouldn't worry. ICBM will hit the right target.

BTW, it's obvious you never read "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie, otherwise you would know that this train was running from Istanbul, not from Tokio.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Leonid

Michael Stuart Kelly · February 16, 2010

Leonid,

You insist on your errors and keep telling me what's in my head.

I can only conclude that you do that because that's what you do. You either don't want to do differently or you can't. Neither case works for me.

So, in light of that, I am not going to be addressing you further as serious debate. You do not present serious work and, frankly, I'm bored with your childishness.

I will monitor for posting guidelines, though. Please observe them.

Michael

Libertarian Muslim · February 16, 2010

I've already provided enough evidence in regard to the massacres committed against Jews and non-Jews prior, during and after creation of Israel, in Israel and abroad, from the nursery school in Maalot to the Twin Towers in New York. I'm not going to repeat it. You can look it up yourself and then ask yourself whether you can repeat your statement with the clean conscience.

So you're saying that the Zionists didn't overrun and massacre at Deir Yassin of innocent people and attack other villages that caused an exodus of Palestinians to flee the lands as refugees? Or did they just leave their lands and possessions freely for no reason whatsoever? What about Plan Dalet?

4. Mounting operations against enemy population centers located inside or near our defensive system in order to prevent them from being used as bases by an active armed force. These operations can be divided into the following categories:
Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.
Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search7 inside it. In the event of resistance, the. armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4706543509678082810&q=Ilan+Papp%C3%A9&total=22&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

Or even where Dr. Benny Morris of Ben Gurion University states:

"The essence of the plan was the clearing of hostile and potentially hostile forces out of the interior of the territory of the prospective Jewish State, establishing territorial continuity between the major concentrations of Jewish population and securing the future State's borders before, and in anticipation of, the invasion [by Arab states]. The Haganah regarded almost all the villages as actively or potentially hostile[14]
[Plan Dalet] constituted a strategic-doctrinal and carte blanche for expulsions [from villages that resisted or might threaten the Yishuv] by front, brigade, district and battalion commanders (who in each case argued military necessity) and it gave commanders, post facto, formal, persuasive cover for their actions."

Your talks about military intervention and dismantle of Israel in order to restore people's rights is sheer madness, since Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which all people enjoy full rights regardless their religion, ethnicity and gender. Besides, even most of the Arab nations, after 60 years of failed attempts to dismantle Israel, eventually understood that military invasion is not an option.

So what rights do Palestinians in East Jerusalem have to build on their own land? What rights do people who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have?

There hasn't been 60 years of attempts to dismantle Israel, if anything the corrupt regimes in the region have been trying for 60 years to oppress their people so a real attempt is not made, even when the Israelis were attacking the Egyptians in the Sinai in 1967, a war in which the Israelis were the aggressors.. The Egyptian army was ordered to withdraw and not fight back.

There hasn't really been a proper war in that region and hopefully there never will be.. Because a real war will last considerably longer..

If Iranians still don't get that, they will learn it in the hard way. However, I don't think, as you do, that Iranians will fight in order to liberate Palestine from Jews. They rather would fight to liberate themselves from tyrannical oppressive fanatical regime of Ayatollahs as they already do today.

I never stated that the Iranians would attack Israel, I said that they would respond if attacked.. A response to an attack is different to a war to liberate those lands..

BTW, can you dream up any reason why Israel should attack Iran, the country about ten times bigger than Israel which even doesn't have common border with it? If Israel will ever do it, it will do it in self-defense, in order to eliminate Iranian nuclear threat. However, most probably Americans will do it first. I'd like to see Islamic Revolutionary Guard to fight them. Apparently it will be little bit more difficult than to shoot defenseless dissenters on the streets of Teheran.

Are you kidding? How many times has Israel recently threatened to attack Iran? They have threatened time and time again that they'll intervene militarily to 'prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons' and have been practicing for it.. Iran has only promised a response to attacks, not to attack Israel like Israel has done to Iran.

I don't know how much you know about Ethiopian or Sephardic Jews. Probably not much. For your information the previous Israeli president, Moshe Katzav was Iranian, Sephardic Jew. One cannot go higher than that. Ethiopian Jews used to have many problems to incorporate themselves in the modern Western society, but most of these problems are resolved by now. In any case Ethiopian Jews enjoy many privileges which other Israelis cannot even hope to dream about-like free housing, free education and health service, preferential treatment in many fields etc...(I don't approve on all this).

I already showed a study and an article about this that indicate otherwise..

Israel’s treatment of Ethiopians ‘racist’
Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent
Last Updated: January 05. 2010 11:43PM UAE / January 5. 2010 7:43PM GMT
Ethiopian Jews are reported to face widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and education in Israel.
NAZARETH, Israel // Health officials in Israel are subjecting many female Ethiopian immigrants to a controversial long-term birth control drug in what Israeli women’s groups allege is a racist policy to reduce the number of black babies.
The contraceptive, known as Depo Provera, which is given by injection every three months, is considered by many doctors as a birth control method of last resort because of problems treating its side effects.
However, according to a report published last week, use of the contraceptive by Israeli doctors has risen threefold over the past few years. Figures show that 57 per cent of Depo Provera users in Israel are Ethiopian, even though the community accounts for less than two per cent of the total population.
About 90,000 Ethiopians have been brought to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has subsequently been questioned by some rabbis and is doubted by many ordinary Israelis.
Ethiopians are reported to face widespread discrimination in jobs, housing and education and it recently emerged that their blood donations were routinely discarded.
“This is about reducing the number of births in a community that is black and mostly poor,” said Hedva Eyal, the author of the report by Woman to Woman, a feminist organisation based in Haifa, in northern Israel. “The unspoken policy is that only children who are white and Ashkenazi are wanted in Israel,” she said, referring to the term for European Jews who founded Israel and continue to dominate its institutions.
Women’s groups were alerted to the widespread use of Depo Provera in the Ethiopian community in 2008 when Rachel Mangoli, who runs a day care centre for 120 Ethiopian children in Bnei Braq, a suburb of Tel Aviv, observed that she had received only one new child in the previous three years.
“I started to think about how strange the situation was after I had to send back donated baby clothes because there was no one in the community to give them to,” she said.
She approached a local health clinic serving the 55 Ethiopian families in Bnei Braq and was told by the clinic manager that they had been instructed to administer Depo Provera injections to the women of child-bearing age, though he refused to say who had issued the order.
Ms Mangoli, who interviewed the women, said: “They had not been told about alternative forms of contraception or about the side effects or given medical follow-ups.” The women complained of a wide range of side effects associated with the drug, including headaches, abdominal pain, fatigue, nausea, loss of libido and general burning sensations.
Depo Provera is also known to decrease bone density, especially among dark-skinned women, which can lead to osteoporosis in later life. Doctors are concerned that it is difficult or impossible to help women who experience severe side effects because the drug is in their system for months after it is injected.
The contraceptive’s reputation has also been tarnished by its association with South Africa, where the apartheid government had used it, often coercively, to limit the fertility of black women.
Traditionally, its main uses have been for women who are regarded as incapable of controlling their own reproduction or monitor other forms of birth control, and for women who suffer severe problems during menstruation.
Ms Eyal said she had been denied co-operation from government ministries, doctors and most of the health insurance companies while conducting her research.
Clalit, the largest health company, however, did provide figures showing that 57 per cent of its Depo Provera users were Ethiopian compared with a handful of women in other ethnic groups.
The health ministry was unavailable for comment.
When first questioned about Depo Provera in June 2008, the health minister of the time, Yaacov Ben Yezri, said the high number of Ethiopians in Israel using the drug reflected a “cultural preference” for injections among Ethiopians. In fact, according to figures of the World Health Organisation, three-quarters of women in Ethiopia using birth control take the oral pill.
“The answers we received from officials demonstrated overt racism,” Ms Eyal said. “They suggested that Ethiopian women should be treated not as individuals but as a collective group whose reproduction needs controlling.”
When Woman to Woman conducted an experiment by sending five non-Ethiopian women to doctors to ask for Depo Provera, all were told that it was prescribed only in highly unusual cases.
Ms Mangoli said it was extremely difficult to get immigrant Ethiopian families to speak out because they were afraid that their Jewishness was under suspicion and that they might be deported if they caused trouble.
However, women interviewed anonymously for the report stated that officials at absorption centres in Ethiopia advised them to take Depo Provera because there would be no funds to support their children if they got pregnant in Israel.
This policy appears to conflict with the stated goals of the country’s Demography Council, a group of experts charged with devising ways to persuade Jewish women to have more babies.
The council was established in response to what is widely seen in Israel as a “demographic war” with Palestinians, or the need to maintain a Jewish majority in the region despite high Palestinian birth rates. In a speech marking the council’s reconvening in 2002, the then social welfare minister, Shlomo Benizri, referred to “the beauty of the Jewish family that is blessed with many children”.
Yali Hashash, a researcher at Haifa University, said attempts to restrict Ethiopian women’s fertility echoed practices used against Jewish women who immigrated to Israel from such Arab countries as Iraq, Yemen and Morocco in the state’s early years, in the 1950s and 1960s.
Many, she said, had been encouraged to fit IUDs when the device was still experimental because Israel’s leading gynecologists regarded Arab Jews as “primitive” and incapable of acting “responsibly”.
Allegations of official racism towards Ethiopians gained prominence in 2006 when it was admitted that for many years all their blood donations had been discarded for fear that they might be contaminated with diseases.
There have also been regular reports of Ethiopian children being denied places in schools or being forced to attend separate classes.
In November a survey of employers in the main professions showed that 53 per cent preferred not to hire an Ethiopian.
Ruth Sinai, an Israeli social affairs reporter for Haaretz newspaper, wrote recently that the discrimination faced by the country’s 120,000 Ethiopians reflected in particular “doubts on the part of the country’s religious establishment about their Jewishness”.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
Source: http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100106/FOREIGN/701059823/1002/NEWS

Being a Black Jew in Israel: Identity Politics in the Post-hegemonic Era
Uri Ben-Eliezer - University of Haifa
A few years ago, an Israeli film director named Daniel Waksman made a television documentary entitled "Menilek, Black Jewish King." According to an Ethiopian tradition, Menilek was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; he stole the Holy Ark from Jerusalem and brought it to Ethiopia. The film shows young Ethiopian Jews who are living in the Central Bus Station of Tel Aviv. These youngsters had left home, or had no home to begin with, and had turned the station's basements and stores into their home. As gradually becomes clear, they steal to get money. The protagonist of the film is a handsome boy named Gadi, and its recurring theme is the yearning expressed by Gadi and his friends for Ethiopia. Gadi's mother is still there and his one desire is to eat the injara she makes. Injara is a traditional Ethiopian food, consisting of a pita with vegetables and meat, eaten with the fingers. In Israel, too, Ethiopian Jews eat injara, but Gadi misses Ethiopia and his mother's injara - a subject he talks about constantly throughout the film. The motif of the return home to Africa, which is widespread among black communities around the world - in the Caribbean, the United States, or Britain - is actualized in the film when the director stuns Gadi by giving him a ticket to Ethiopia. I will not go into the details of their trip and their protracted search for Gadi's mother, the film plays on the emotions, still, I must cite one of the high points of the film, which occurs when, after a lengthy journey by the group from Israel, they find Gadi's mother in a remote village. Gadi falls into her arms and they enter the house, though local villagers prevent the cinematographer and the director from following. In the next scene, they are back in the Tel-Aviv Central Bus Station. "Why didn't you stay in Ethiopia?" the director asks, and Gadi replies, "Forget it, there's nothing for me there." Silence ensues. "Did you at least get to eat your mother's injara?" Waksman asks. The youngster hesitates for a moment and then says, "Are you out of your mind? We can't eat their food - you can get a disease."
In this article I will try to explain the position and destiny of the Ethiopians who arrived in Israel on the basis of the Israeli Law of Return. The majority of the Ethiopians arrived in two large-scale operations. The first, "Operation Moses," which took place in 1984-1985, and the second "Operation Solomon" in 1991. Today, there are about 60,000 Ethiopian Jews living in Israel. They are part of a community of black Africans known as the "Beta Israel," which according to testimonies has followed Jewish customs since the twelfth century. The members of the community explain their singular religious practices, which differ in many respects from those of European Jewry, by saying that they date from biblical times.
Fully 95 percent of the Ethiopian Jews lived in an isolated, insular rural society far from Addis Ababa, the capital. In Ethiopia, which is considered one of the most backward countries in the world, the annual per capita GNP is $120, as compared to $13,000 in Israel. In the wake of the two operations I cited, a unique community, which had for centuries retained its distinctive character in its homeland - where they were known as "Falashas," meaning foreigners - was almost entirely wiped out, and with it the phenomenon of black Jews in Africa completely disappeared from the map of history and culture.
Actually, it did not so much disappear as assume a new form, in a new land, as the article will explain. However, my subject is not the original immigrants to Israel but their sons and daughters, who were born in Israel or were brought there at a very young age. I will consider their identity and try to explain what it means to be a young black Jew in Israel. My thesis is that in recent years the offspring of the immigrants have been developing a new identity. This new identity is rooted in two historical trends, which are critical for understanding its significance. One is the power of the hegemony in Israel and the cracks that have appeared in it lately; the second is the discrimination against the Ethiopian Jews that was developed in Israel since their arrival. The fusion of these two trends has generated a new identity, the meaning of which I will consider in this article.
The term "identity" has become quite fashionable since the last quarter of the twentieth century, though it also has its critics. Its importance lies in dealing with an immigrant society such as Israel, and in fact with any society that is structurally fragmented and culturally pluralistic. The term directs our attention to the fact that many of the struggles that are today being fomented by various groups are not class-based, and that many of the themes they invoke deal with style of life, way of life, status and honor, and rights and discriminations, which are directly or indirectly related to identity.
Identity is relevant to the so-called "new times","postmodern turn", or the "global era", not in any biological or structuralist version but in its constructivist form. It is neither fixed nor stable, always amenable to social negotiation and constructioon. It is in fact the constant creation of a shared, mutual feeling between people, of "we-ness," and its development is essentially symbolic. This symbolic activity usually takes place in social networks or social movements, which strive not only to obtain material goods and rights, but mainly to construct meaning. In Alberto Melucci's terminology, they seek not only the freedom to have, a phenomenon that was characteristic of the modern era, but also the freedom to be. In any event, in the new era we are witnessing collective action and organization, by individuals who are trying to struggle against social definitions that have located them on the margins because of some trait or occupation or behavior. Often an attempt is made to turn this marginality and sometimes loneliness into a springboard for solidarity and pride.
Thus identity as conceived by the constructivist, anti-essentialist approach can appear to be a positive, groundbreaking phenomenon involving an effort to escape the hegemonic condition and create something new in its place. Some will say, though, that identity politics poses a threat to social solidarity, as it is a politics of fragmentation and of labels. According to the proponents of this view, far from being an effort at inclusion or persuasion, it is based on a desire for separation and exclusion and can lead to insularity, hatred, even civil war, as shown convincingly, for example, by Mary Kaldor in her work on identity politics in Yugoslavia . In this paper, the development of a different identity by the second generation of Ethiopian immigrants in the face of the hegemonic conception, which has been unchallenged in Israel for a generation, is seen as an attempt to escape a situation of otherness and marginalization. This attempt may help transform Israel into a multicultural society where heterogeneity is permissible and legitimate. As part of such possible transformation, I will try to explain what does it mean to be a black Jew in Israel.
The work is based on in-depth interviews that were conducted with students of Ethiopian extraction at the University of Haifa which is located in the north of Israel. In addition, interviews were conducted in a youth club where most of the activists are of Ethiopian origin. The club is located in a southern town in Israel, in a largely Ethiopian neighborhood. The paper is divided into three chapters: the first one describes the attempts to impose on the Beta Israel already in Ethiopia, a new identity conforming to Western normative Judaism. That effort was pursued in Israel, where the attempt was made to transform the newcomers into Israelis in the hegemonic format. The second section describes the feelings of frustration and affront felt by the immigrants, which were only intensified by their realization that the attempt to foist a uniform identity on them was based on power relations that relegated them to an inferior, marginal status. The third and final section considers the new identity that the youngsters are gradually developing.
I: The "problem" begins with Faitlovitch
Or perhaps even with his teacher, Joseph Halevy, who was the first Western Jew to make contact with the Falashas, visiting their villages between 1867 and 1868. Both Halevy and Faitlovitch, who dedicated his life to the issue, brought back to France some Falasha youths with the idea that they would undergo European acculturation and be sent back to their native land. Here was the classic "domesticating the savage" motif. More than anybody else, Faitlovitch was responsible for the process in which the Beta Israel became Ethiopian Jews. Since then they have gradually adopted European normative Judaism - of which they had known nothing - including the Talmudic-rabbinic traditions and the oral law.
Certainly from his period we can talk about cultural colonialism in relation to the Beta Israel, which continued in the early 1950s when Jewish institutions, notably the Jewish Agency and the State of Israel itself, illuminated them dichotomous narratives on the difference between the highly developed West and backward Africa, and between Judaism and Christianity, the relations between which were perceived by the Beta Israel as existing along a continuum, with many influences and groups, such as the Falas Mura, existing between them. The people of Beta Israel were taught about the Jewish festivals, the state of Israel, candle lighting, the Hebrew language, and so forth.
The project of cultural colonialism was brought to light with the arrival of the Ethiopian Jews in Israel in the mid-1980s. The Israelis showered the new arrivals with outburst of affection and gifts ranging from clothing to candies. They were intrigued by their different color and their facial features, and were amazed at their leanness, their special beauty, their inner quiet; and as in any fairy tale, they were delighted at the "happy end": their arrival in Israel.
The tremendous enthusiasm and outpouring of love should have been warning signs. After all, a discriminatory and racist attitude toward newcomers often perceives them as "a problem" or as victims: as objects rather than subjects, lacking in abilities and limited. The result is almost always the creation of dependence, but this was a case that went beyond dependence. It had the effect of plucking the arrivals from Ethiopia out of their history and their culture and hurtling them into a sphere of absolute truths. This, as Paul Gilroy notes, is one of the major characteristics of racism in England. Although the blacks come from many different countries and cultures, they are generalized into one category and thus are deprived of a specific identity. The same fate befell the Jews from Ethiopia, even though there are substantive differences between, for example, those from Gondar and those from Tigrai. This attitude was compounded, in Israel and elsewhere, by the establishment's adoption of the binary approach. To adopt a binary conception is to define and catalogue the other, render him marginality against hegemony. Moreover, that way, reality is distorted by being squeezed into only two possibilities, thus concealing, restricting, or repressing the freedoms of those whose outlook or status is incongruent with the binary definition.
Indeed, public interest in the exotic newcomers soon diminished; only the state institutions continued to deal with them. The transition to a modern society espousing an ethos of rationalism and calling itself Western, was undoubtedly traumatic for people who had never seen a car, could neither read nor write, and did not know how to use a knife and fork or what a flush toilet is. Some of the young people I interviewed noted that the first white people they had ever seen were the Jewish Agency officials in the camps in Sudan. Some said that they had never heard of white Jews. Whatever the case may be, in the land of their fathers they did not meet King Solomon… but they did encounter his namesake from the Jewish Agency, who gave them new Israeli names. Those who during the twentieth century adopted many of the customs of Western Jewry were now about to become "Israelis."
The Ethiopian immigrants arrived in Israel at a time of great transformation in the country. For decades, Israel followed an ideology consisting of practices and a structure of domination known as mamlakhtiyut (statism). It was based on the nation-state model, in which everything is managed, concentrated, and supervised from above. The attitude toward the many immigrants who arrived in the fledgling state was that they had to adapt themselves to the integrating society. If not, the state mechanisms would do it for them. It was a classic melting pot ideology, following the way, Gunnar Myrdal and his associates, for example, already in the 1940s reduced the problem of the blacks in the United States to one of assimilation and amalgamation into white America.
However, an assimilation process is never a simple matter for either side. Gilroy notes that every assimilation into a national structure places the immigrant in a problematic situation in relation to concepts such as nation, patriotism, or historical memory. After all, these ideas effectively leave the newcomer outside the normative boundaries. The Ethiopians immigrants to Israel did not experience the Holocaust, nor did their forefathers suffer pogroms in Russia or their sons fight in Israel's independent wars. They soon reached the conclusion that "those who were there" were establishing their national identity by means of customs and practices that are pure and homogeneous. Not only Arabs and Mizrahim are excluded, so are Ethiopians.
Almost inevitably, attempts to assimilate generate dependence. The anthropologist Esther Herzog described how the absorption centers to which the Ethiopian immigrants were sent created and then heightened their dependence on the existing population. An absorption center creates a bifurcated world, in which the officials who mediate between the world inside and the world outside possess great power.
It did not take long before the new immigrants' problems with the Chief Rabbinate began. The religious establishment questioned the Jewishness of the Ethiopians. The Rabbinate demanded ritual immersion and totally rejected the authority of the kes, the respected religious leaders of the Ethiopian community. The insistence on immersion generated fears among the Ethiopians that the establishment wanted to turn them into second-class citizens by forcing them, and them alone, to undergo a humiliating ceremony.
True, in 1980s Israel the melting pot discourse had been supplanted by a new discourse espousing cultural pluralism, the mixing and fusion of cultures; in practice, however, the newcomers were pressured to adapt to the dominant culture. In the service of this noble ideal, the youngsters were separated from their parents. The authorities effectively cast aside the so-called "generation of the desert" and sought to instill in the children the values of the integrating society, cutting them off from their past and their community's traditions. No fewer than 90 percent of the Ethiopian children and adolescents were raised in closed boarding schools, most of them in religious institutions. In Ethiopia the family, both nuclear and extended, was at the center of life. In Israel the state exposed the children m to the disciplinary aspects of the educational system. In some institutions, 70 percent of the students were of Ethiopian origin. Warnings about ethnic segregation, however, went unheeded.
Although the absorption agents insisted that they would "not repeat the mistakes of the past" - referring mainly to the failures with the Mizrahim (Jews who immigrated to Israeli from North Africa and the Middle East in the 1950s) - they did just that. As in the past, the officials declared that the young people should be helped to adapt to a modern way of life and become Israelis in every respect. The binary approach made it possible to constitute the attitude toward the Ethiopians in terms simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary. On the one hand, they were to be transformed into Western-style Jews and then into Israelis fitting into the hegemonic structure, while on the other hand, that very effort of transmutation relegated them to a status of inferiority, as it is incompatible with their culture and outlook.
The immigrants were also frustrated and embittered because of the day-to-day discrimination they endured. Veteran Israelis did not want to sit next to them on the bus and they did not receive an equal opportunity in the job market. Classrooms and schools emptied out when young Ethiopians entered them, and private kindergartens refused to accept Ethiopian toddlers because they were "different." Indeed, everyday life, exposed the color barrier and brought to the surface racist tendencies in Israel between Jew and Jew. There was no residential integration, no intermarriage, and no integration in education.
In the meantime, however, various indicators showed that cracks were appearing in the hegemonic structure: In 1991, the Madrid peace conference was held, and within a few years, spurred in part by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Israel signed new political agreements with some of its neighbors. These developments were accompanied by economic growth and far-reaching reforms. State involvement in the economy declined markedly and a neo-liberal market began to emerge. Israel became part of the globalization process not only economically but also in immigration, as almost a million residents of the former Soviet Union streamed into the country. These immigrants were considered to represent valuable human capital economically and also perhaps culturally, militarily, and politically.
The professional literature elaborates the impact that globalization had on the status and functioning of the nation-state. Its power gradually declined as world markets grew stronger, and its sovereignty was enfeebled too, since globalization reduces the importance of territorial borders and the centrality of the national factor. In Israel, the weakness of the state was compounded by the crisis in its domestic party politics, especially since the beginning of the 1990s, which indirectly brought about the emergence of new groups and not-for-profit associations. These associations, similar to the new social movements in Europe, focused on the individual, on his/her rights and identities, and on his/her local and ecological environment. Israelis, it seemed, were adopting the kind of new lifestyle based on post-material values that Ingelhart identified in the West. Correspondingly, many Israelis began to become involved in causes that interested them, reflected their identity, and set them apart from others. In this form of politics, the meaning of identity is a matter of permanent negotiation, and very often of rivalties and conflicts on the basis of existing or constructing differences.
II. All that missing was a cause
Which appeared on January 24, 1996, when a newspaper report stated that for the past 12 years the Blood Bank had not been using the blood of Ethiopian Israelis for medical purposes because of its possible contamination by the HIV virus. The report generated protests of a sort rarely seen in the country. Some 10,000 Ethiopian immigrants from all over Israel, held a protest demonstration outside the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem. It was a moment of truth with a significant Durkheimean element, of conferring name and meaning on the feelings of frustration and discrimination. The violent clash went on for hours, and dozens of policemen and demonstrators were injured. The crowd carried placards reading "We are black but our blood is red," and "We are Jews like you: stop the racist apartheid." A 17-year-old girl who came to Jerusalem for the demonstration from the Haifa area, where she attended a boarding school, said, "I came to protest against what is being done to the blacks because of the color of their skin. I am ashamed of my nation, of the white Jewish nation." The Chief of the Jerusalem District Police, Aryeh Amit, labeled the demonstrators "young savages." Indeed, to everyone's surprise, the "boy savage" turned out not to be harmless, pleasant, and passive. "They think they know better than we do what's good for us," one of the participants summed up.
The huge demonstration, however, did not help much. The Ministry of Health announced that it would continue with its policy of not making use of blood taken from Ethiopians, as they constituted a "risk group." By invoking this term, the state officials intended to shift the discourse in a direction that would serve their ends. Their bureaucratic medical discourse is based on a division of reality into generalized categories and endeavors, and to justify discriminatory policy by evoking fears, in this case fears of AIDS, following the line that was presented by Ulrich Beck in his "risk society. Thus the Health Ministry frightened the public by revealing that an Ethiopian blood donor was 34 times more likely to be a carrier than anyone else.
Spokesmen for the Health Ministry also noted that there were other risk groups as well - homosexuals, drug addicts, people with illnesses, people with tattoos - but the comparisons only underscored the bureaucrats' insensitivity. Indeed, the rationalist approach and the dry statistics were not perceived as a relevant argument in the discourse that the Ethiopians sought to foment. "Why weren't the Russian immigrants singled out as a risk group?" they wanted to know. "Why wasn't the Russians' blood thrown out?" However, the medical establishment made no attempt to put to the test prejudices in this connection.
More than once, racism appears through the definition of an immigrant group by certain disease and the fear of contamination. As though to illustrate the point, Dr. Ram Yishai, the chairman of the Society of Medical Ethics, explained that the Ethiopians constituted a risk group because single Ethiopian women did not abstain from random sexual contact. Elaborating, the learned physician stated that the Ethiopian women were not afraid of AIDS and that, if infected, they displayed no anger at the man responsible. Again the litany of familiar terms was invoked: ignorance, a different conception of sex and death, sexual permissiveness that differs from the Israeli norm, the good of the public, and so forth. Probably, too, the Ethiopians were angry at not having been given the information or being allowed to share in deciding policy. The integrating society perceived the stranger, the other, the black as a child or a native who lacks sufficient maturity to be told the truth or cope with it.
The Blood Affair became something of a moment of truth for the Ethiopian Jews. The affront sustained by them showed that they could not, and perhaps did not want to discard entirely their traditions and their past. "Blood is the soul," I was told by interviewees who explained the cause of the violent outburst in the Blood Affair. In Ethiopia, blood served as a symbolic means to distinguish Jews from Christians in three areas: ritual slaughter of animals, the dietary laws, and the categorization of women in their menstrual period as unclean. To the Ethiopians in Israel, discarding blood taken from them was an act of exclusion.
Interestingly, another violent episode hovered in the background of the Ethiopians' outburst. A religiously observant Jew of Yemenite extraction, Uzi Meshulam established a cult of followers from the Yemenite community whose main goal was to protest the still obscure affair in which Yemenite children were placed in foster homes of Ashkenazi families during Israel's early years. The struggle fomented by Meshulam and his followers was an ethnic and religious protest against the Ashkenazi establishment. The peak of the affair came in May 1994, when Meshulam and forty of his followers, all armed, barricaded themselves in a house. The resulting standoff went on for a month and a half. Finally, the police broke into the compound - one of the group's members was killed in the incident - where they found large quantities of weapons, ammunition, and explosives. The affair signaled the nascent development of identity politics in Israel. True, it was a small group, but its messages and symbols were aimed at undermining Israeli sovereignty by utilizing anti-establishment and anti-statist techniques.
In the Blood Affair many of the Ethiopians grasped the clear distinction between race and ethnicity, the fact that the color barrier could decide their fate. However, it was the young generation that drew the sharpest conclusions. In a certain sense, the young Ethiopians constituted a sociological generation. According to the well-known term of Karl Mannheim, it means that their distinctive social location allowed them to interpret reality differently from the others and to act differently on the basis of that interpretation. In the young generation's view, a struggle for recognition had begun, with the Blood Affair being the "critical event" in their history in Israel.
III. How a Jew becomes black in the Promised Land
One example is Mula Blai who was the third Ethiopian since 1997 that committed suicide while doing military service in the IDF. While serving as a cook on an army base, he was ordered by the base doctor to throw out the food in the kitchen. Mula was deeply offended. He "kept it in his gut," as the Ethiopians say, until finally he took a rifle and shot himself. "I am not angry at him," his 17-year-old sister said, "because they were the ones who killed him, the army." Some of those who came to pay their condolences to the family claimed that the doctor was a Russian. They also related that he had apologized and asked the family to forgive him. "But what good will that do now?" they added. Mula had been a good student in high school and wanted to study journalism after his army service. He was constantly called kushi ("nigger") in the army, but laughed and shrugged it off. However, the doctor was an officer, and Mula, was deeply offended by lack of trust expressed by a person of rank. The story of Mula's suicide is a typical case, attesting not only to to racist discrimination and tensions between different migrant groups, but also to signs of objection to reality - channeled even into a subversive act of suicide - among the second generation of immigrants.
Rumors about suicides of Ethiopians in the army were already circulating by the time of the Blood Affair. The chairman of the committee of Ethiopian immigrants claimed that twenty Ethiopians had committed suicide in the past few years. The army claimed that the figure was far lower. The main point, however, is that the rumors showed a change in the immigrants' attitude toward the army. At first, the young people wanted nothing more than to excel in the IDF, to do combat duty, preferably in one of the elite units. Excellence in the army was perceived as a rite of passage leading to acceptance in the Israeli society. Gradually, however, they realized that army service, far from resolving their problems, might aggravate them instead. In the second half of the 1990s we find, along with the suicide phenomenon, a decline in the Ethiopian Jews' motivation to serve and excel in the army. In part, the disappointment was due to the fact that the combat soldiers discovered that they could not translate their service into social mobility. Many of them found it difficult to earn a living.
This behavior in part was a clear manifestation of what James C. Scott calls "everyday forms of resistance," a desire to overcome a discriminatory, alienating reality, in our case, at the price of escaping military service or even by means of suicide. Similarly, the rising crime rate among young Ethiopians in the late 1990s should be seen as a form of subversion and of criticism of the society. The social welfare agencies, appalled by this trend, viewed it as proof that an identity crisis existed and that the young Ethiopians were drifting toward the margins of the society. In fact, it is the other way around, those involved are looking for meaning and a sense of community. In their way, they are also protesting actively against a reality that had made them and the rest of the community passive and dependent. At the same time, there was an element of the new in this development, a show of differentiation and distinctiveness that shattered the stereotypical view of the community as modest and quiet. As though to prove that the youngsters were rebelling against the image that was foisted on them, 16-18 year-olds, asked how they react to being called kushi, a term that connotes a slave in their culture, replied unequivocally that whereas in the past they had been offended and backed off, now they would lash out at anyone who used the term and "let him have it," in the word of one of them.
The Ethiopian immigrants displayed further manifestations of subversion in relation to marriage. Not all of them were willing to undergo the Rabbinate's humiliating rituals and tests - which were earmarked for Ethiopians alone - in order to take out a marriage license. The interviews showed that members of the community had found various ways to solve the problem. Some couples live together without marrying; others are married in the traditional Ethiopian ceremony by a kes, even though this is not recognized by the Rabbinate or the state.
Paradoxically, then, suicide, crime, declining motivation to do military service, and partnership without marriage demonstrated that the second generation of Ethiopian Jews were becoming Israelis. True, everyday resistance is the weapon of the weak, Scott notes, but he points out that precisely because of their hidden, indirect character, these practices become influential. In every disadvantaged group, he writes, there are "hidden transcripts" that represent "criticism which is typically expressed openly - albeit in disguised forms."
However, this was not enough for the young Ethiopians. Their subversive practices were accompanied by an attempt to construct a new identity by challenging the hegemonic structure while exploiting its widening cracks. The identity politics they practiced involved deconstructing the "one" Israeli identity, exposing its problematic nature, and reconstructing it in terms of their conceptual approach. In Gilroy's terms, this is a process of deconstruction and contextualization. Identity is reconstructed such that it is context dependent. Fundamentally, since the Blood Affair, Israeliness for young Ethiopians has gradually become an identity one element of which is blackness. The passage of time will make no difference," I was told by one interviewee, who had a clear grasp of the reality in which she lives. "In Ethiopia we were Jews, here we are blacks," another said.
Africa, observes Stuart Hall, is often depicted as being a mother for all Africans. The effect is to bestow an imagined cohesiveness and shared identity on Africans' experience of dispersion and fragmentation, a feeling that there exists a permanent "essence" of the African, of the quintessential black experience. However, as Hall, too, points out, identity development is a far more active process, in which those involved attempt to locate themselves in the space of the presence and adapt to changing reality. Indeed, blackness is not the only distinguishing characteristic of this group. In discotheques, for example, these youngsters do not mix with foreign workers from Africa, who are not Jewish. In fact, quarrels and fights between the two groups have been known to erupt. The process of constructing a new identity intertwines similarity and differentiation. The young Ethiopians differ from other Israelis and resemble blacks in other countries; yet, as Israelis and Jews the resemblance is not complete. As young student told me: I am first of all a Jew, then an Ethiopian, and finally an Israeli… In fact, I am also an Israeli but different from these franjim.
In fact, the complex, multifaceted identity of the young people of Ethiopian exposes both the reality in which they find themselves, but also the efforts they make to free themselves of it, and to reshape it. Terms such as franji are invoked to differentiate "us" from "them." "Them" in this context are often the non-black Israelis, especially the Ashkenazim (Jews who immigrated to Israel from Europe), or the Russians. Identity politics is largely a politics of labels, of insularity, of creating enemies. This is the route the young Ethiopians have embarked on: not because they want to convince others that their approach is the right one, but in order to enclose themselves within their world, which they are constructing out of what Rutherford calls the politics of difference.
Thus the Israeli experience - "white," discriminatory, exclusionary - is sending the young generation back to their roots in Africa. Many have begun to study spoken and written Amharic, a language that they have almost forgotten. The members of the young generation are also taking African names. As one student explained, "A few of us friends got together and decided to go back to our original names. Why weren't the Russians made to change their names when they came to Israel?" They want to visit Ethiopia and they like Amharic music, both traditional and modern, with its romantic themes. The Africa they envisage is of course not the Africa they knew as children; it is an imagined Africa. It is an Africa of rhythm, of special foods and customs, of suffering and hope. An Africa that is both present and vanished, in any event an Africa of blacks only.
By the end of the 1990s, black Jewish Israel defined itself as part of the African diaspora. That is a definition with a cultural and a political meaning that cannot simply be ignored. The cultural practices of the Ethiopian Israelis draw their inspiration largely from the politics and culture of black America, Jamaica, and black Britain. Technological advances in communications bridge geographic distance: consider MTV and the Internet. Cultural commodities, such as CDs, books, and magazines facilitate identification. The young people invent a history of their own. People who in Ethiopia lived on a motif of exile and longing for Zion, meaning Jerusalem, now live in Israel with a sense of exile and a longing for Zion, which is of course Ethiopia, as in the song by Bob Marley. True, they came to Israel of their own volition, and for religious reasons, and from this point of view their history is different from that of the descendants of the slaves who were exiled forcibly from Africa and transported to America. Nevertheless, the youngsters identify with the history of their "brothers": their suffering, their severance from their past, the discrimination and the poverty they endure, and their yearning for the Black Continent. Africa becomes the lost paradise. The longing to return to lost origins, to beginnings, is of course impractical, though the symbolic, too, is fraught with meaning. This is their narrative and with it they constitute their contemporary identity.
In the color hierarchy that existed in Ethiopia, the Beta Israel saw themselves as red-skinned. However, as the offspring of migrants in search of their identity they now consider themselves black-skinned. Henceforth they will carry with them the physical and the cultural distinction of blackness and will turn it from shame to pride. Music is a central element in this development, as it makes possible to create an imagined reality.
The venue where the "black" music is played, particularly the clubs, are places that are spawn an alternative, even rebellious, culture. One important location, which operated for years, was the Soweto Club, where one saw boys in body-hugging white shirts and oversized trousers; and girls in revealing white pants and midriffs, bedecked with jewelry, smoking, hanging around with the boys. Whatever is prohibited at home or in the boarding school goes here. Some of the boys wear their hair in the intricately curled African style, and some of the girls "attach" artificial hair to their head. Sexuality is externalized in body movements. Speak to them and they will tell you that there is nothing for them in a country of whites, that they want to be back to Ethiopia, that they will not enlist in the army because they don't feel like Israelis, and because all Israelis are racists. On the following day, in a different location, they may well talk differently.
The anthropologist Malka Shabtai has analyzed the content of the music that the young Ethiopians are fond of: above all, black music of political protest with social messages of equality, brotherhood, and peace. Usually, they dance to reggae or rap. The fact that Rastafarianism originated in Jamaica in 1930, after the coronation of Haile Selassie as Emperor of Ethiopia, with the belief in him as the "Lion of Judah," helps explain why young Ethiopian Israelis are attracted also to this music. Shabtai interviewed an Israeli reggae singer named Emanuel, the soloist of the "Roots of Africa" group. "The story of the Jews of Ethiopia is in some ways similar to the story of the blacks in Africa," he said. "There are a lot of things that are, you know, parallel."
We can say, then, that the second generation of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel is engaged in a new construction of Israeliness, of a type previously unknown. The aspiration to be Israeli is fused with an emphasis on being black. Identity politics signifies an attempt to create a moral space and live accordingly. In extreme cases blacks have tried to return to Africa, but rarely has the attempt succeeded Stuart Hall argues that even if there is a specific, concrete political purpose for returning, it is marginalized and downplayed as compared with the desire for identity development. He may be right, but certainly cultural politics can act as a lever for social change, precisely because it projects an appearance of no direct intervention, while minimizing its threat by presenting a stylistic and aesthetic protest.
Conclusion
This article considered the identity of offspring of immigrants in a case where both the parents and the majority of the young generation are undergoing an experience of migration and encounter with a new society. The central thesis of the article is that the young Ethiopian Jews living in Israel developed an identity of blacks, precisely in the course of and as a result of the encounter with the Israeli society and its mechanisms of control. The state declared a policy of assimilation but in practice relegated the new arrivals to a status of inferiority and marginality. The Blood Affair, which erupted at a time when cracks had already appeared in the hegemonic structure, acted as a political opportunity structure that created an opening for the development of a black identity centering around symbolic practices. Thus an imagined community was conceived that offers its members a sense of identity and freedom that makes it possible for them to portray their singularity as a virtue.
The young members of the Ethiopian community are deconstructing the concept of Israeliness, exposing the essence of its underlying power relations, and reconstructing their identity according to their understanding. They are Israelis, but from a different kind. Will the the new sociological generation succeed in foisting its conception on reality? At this time, this is an unanswerable question, as is the question of how far identity politics will succeed in reducing the stratified hierarchy and discrimination that exist in Israel. In any event, this paper reveals the potential of a young generation that belongs to an ethnic group to construct a complex, circumstances-dependent identity for itself. Gadi, whom we met at the beginning of the article, lives in the Central Bus Station. It is a dynamic location where everything is in flux, a place of multiple identities, of ephemerality, of options to sail into other worlds. Gadi's life may symbolize the identity of many of the community's young members. Their parents took them from remote mountain villages in a vast land and thrust them headlong into a saliently postmodern era. Struggling for their future, the youngsters reveal their potential. In face of a system of binary domination, It is a potential, not only to forge solidarity and achieve personal autonomy but also to view themselves not as a problem but on the contrary: as those who have found a solution to it.
Source: http://www1.american.edu/israelstudies/whatsnew/Papers/Uri.htm

I also don't like them and in Israel it constitutes crime punished by law. However the only "proof" that settlers steal land in your short video is that the journalist said so and refused to listen to any explanation-pretty much as you do.

This has been widely reported on, the Settlers are on what even the international community considers Palestinian land which is against international law, the land confiscations are also widely reported on and when Settlers do this they are in most cases not prevented from doing so by the Police or Army.. Are you now denying that this happens?

Selene · February 16, 2010

Adam: if you interested in facts you should present them in full.
"The term "Orient" is derived from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior "rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق‎ (< Arabic yashruq Arabic: يشرق‎ "rise", shurooq Arabic: شروق‎ "rising") and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan."
As you can see "Orient" means also Levant which is Middle East. Jews from Arab countries called in Hebrew Mizrahim or Levantim. Sometimes they also called Orientalim. So you shouldn't worry. ICBM will hit the right target.
BTW, it's obvious you never read "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie, otherwise you would know that this train was running from Istanbul, not from Tokio.

Leonid:

Obviously.

Thanks for taking the bait. So essentially you are more right in your more obscure use of the word orient to orient it to what most folks would understand the word as representing.

What is obvious is that you should have a real conversation with yourself someday. If you did, you would obviously be extremely shocked as to how you project yourself.

Thanks for being so predictable.

Adam

Libertarian Muslim · February 16, 2010

Adonis,
I just now watched that video and Leonid is flat-out wrong. Ahmadinejad did not deny the Holocaust in that interview and you did not agree that the Holocaust did not exist.
BUT...
God damn it!
Do you have to quote a nutcase like Ahmedinejad, who is a Holocaust denier, a fundamentalist Islamist Twelver, and an outright proven liar? And quote him in a video where he is asked flat-out by a newscaster several times in several different manners if he believes the Holocaust existed or not, and he goes blah blah blah all over the place and doesn't answer what he was asked?
Even if he makes a point or other, come on. Let's have some standards in our sources.
Just as I believe Israel is ill-served by being defended by bigots, I also believe the Palestinians are ill-served by the same. I want to call Ahmedinejad a bigot, and he certainly preaches bigotry, especially between the lines, but I don't believe bigotry is at his foundation. I believe it is far, far, far worse. I believe the destruction of the world is at his foundation.
Is that a man you want to quote in defense of the Palestinians?
Gimme a break!
Setting aside the intense offensiveness his irrational and calculated demeanor causes to Jews (which you have to be aware of if you live on planet earth), think about this.
If Ahmedinejad tries to destroy Israel with nukes to open the path to the return of the Twelfth Imam, which I believe is his long-range goal (so I don't think he will attack until he has built up a large enough arsenal several years down the road to really screw things up), which part of the Palestinian land do you think his nukes will not affect?
Do you think he will give a damn about the Palestinians then? You know he will be saying that the Palestinains should be happy to die in his crusade because Allah will reward them for their martyrdom. That the situation was unfortunate, and he really cares about them, but since they did live next door to The Little Satan, it was necessary to sacrifice them, yada yada yada...
How would you react to a "reasonable" quote from something like Samson Blinded, which preaches the annexation of entire countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, etc. to Israel? Those folks can have "reasonable" moments when they discuss Palestinian history. Would you like to listen to their analysis of the Palestinians? Are you interested in any insight they may offer about the Palestinian people?
Why descend to that level and quote Ahmedinejad, of all people? Do you really want the independent readers and more intelligent people to stop listening to your arguments? That's exactly what they do when you do that.
I intensely dislike Leonid's manner of discourse (instead of presenting facts backed up by independent sources, he makes incorrect generalizations, he quotes--when he does quote--biased blogs like Jihad Watch, and he insults you if you disagree with him), but I can understand him getting upset by having a loon like Ahmedinejad quoted.
Hell, I'm getting upset, myself.
I thought this was a serious discussion. I certainly want it to be. I'm even ragging people like Leonid because of his poor intellectual standards.
Let's chalk that quote up to a misfire and leave it at that. I suspect you knew it would be inflammatory, but I prefer to keep to the high road. Let's try to stay on the high road. Shall we?
Michael

Well Michael, I brought up Ahmadenijad for a specific reason, and that was because people here were saying his goal is to wipe Israel off the map and that he denies the Holocaust. Neither of which are true and I wanted to make that clear.

Also I don't think anyone here has enough of an understanding of Twelver theology to understand the ideas of who the Mahdi is and what times will be like at his return, in fact in all schools of thought believe that the Mahdi is coming roughly around the time of the Massiah, Jesus son of Mary, peace be upon them.

I don't believe for a minute that Ahmedinejad is trying to create global conflict to hasten the Mahdi's return and the prayer that he makes calling for the hastening of the Mahdi has been echoed for more than 1000 years. It's not some kind of suicidal death cult that will launch Kamikaze attacks on Israel to bring about everyone's destruction and bring the return of the Mahdi.. The Wahhabis might do something like that but it's just not the way the Iranians work. I do however believe that he is no longer fit to lead Iran because I believe that he was voted out of government by the opposition last year. However that doesn't mean that I disagree with Iran's right to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes just as I have no problem with any country doing that.

I might also clarify that the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei has made a fatwa stating that the use of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons are forbidden in Islam due to the amount of civilian deaths they cause and are therefore forbidden. I might also remind you that whilst Iranian cities were being bombed by rockets filled with US supplied chemical weapons supplied to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War of the 80's, Iran NEVER responded by using Chemical weapons.

In fact Ahmadinejad has spoken on this topic quite clearly in interviews:

KING: OK. One of the big fears the United States has -- the world has about Iran -- is nuclear weapons.
Can you tell us what you're doing with regard to them?
Are you building them?
What's the status of your country and nuclear weapons?
AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): You've raised, in fact, three issues.
The first is that you say that the world is afraid of Iran and concerned about it.
I ask you, which part of the world are we speaking of?
Is it the case that the U.S. government is the equivalent of the entire world and makes the case for that world?
Is it the case that the U.S. government and a few of its allies can be considered as the whole world?
No.
KING: All right. The Western...
AHMADINEJAD (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Not really.
Let me tell you -- well, you see, if you're talking about the Western states, I have to say, their concerns about us are not new. They've always been concerned. They were the ones who inspired Saddam to attack Iran and to get us involved in an eight-year war. The terrorist groups that killed our president, prime minister, our officials, are now freely active in the Western countries.
But let me tell you, 118 member states of the NAM, the Non- Aligned Movement, have actually supported our peaceful nuclear pursuits. Fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic States have also given their support to us in this regard. And there are many other organizations -- multilateral organizations that have supported our endeavor and efforts.
So it's not the world exactly that's concerned about us. So -- and that's really the first point I have to clarify.
The second point is regarding the question of the bomb. We believe, as a matter of religious teaching, that we must be against any form of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons. The production and the usage of nuclear weapons is one of the most abhorrent acts to our eyes.
In addition, we also believe that the atomic bomb has lost its use in political affairs, in fact. The time for a nuclear bomb has ended. Whoever who invests in it is going the wrong way.
Was a nuclear bomb able to help keep the Soviet Union intact and prevent its downfall?
Was it able to bring victory for the United States either in Afghanistan or Iraq?
Can it be used to that end?
Can the nuclear bomb save the Zionist regime?
The time for bombs of that nature has ended. It is a time of thought, a time for culture and reason to prevail.
There's also a third debate in the nuclear issue. We are all aware that, in fact, the nuclear issue regarding Iran is a highly politicized one. It is, in fact, purely politicized. It's not a legal battle at all.
The IAEA has visited -- has mentioned, in fact, more than 12 times in its documents and verified that Iran's nuclear activities are of a peaceful nature. The agency has said that they have, in fact, not detected any noncompliance or deviation on the part of Iran.
So I'd like to add that all our activities in that realm are completely legal and peaceful.
Source: http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0906/14/lkl.01.html

The US however has used Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons in the past and is still developing the use of such weapons.

I will also state that whilst I am totally against Nuclear weapons being used.. We KNOW Israel has more than 200 nuclear weapons yet they are allowed to have them without having any weapons inspections at all and therefore are threats to all of the countries in the region. So considering Israel's history of pre-emptive strikes against other nations like that in 1956 and 1967, what guarantees the Iranians that Israel won't pre-emptively use nuclear weapons in an attack to shut down Iran's nuclear program? What's to guarantee anyone that Israel wouldn't use it against them?

Edited February 16, 2010 by Adonis Vlahos

Libertarian Muslim · February 16, 2010

Adonis:"He asked 3 questions and didn't come to any conclusions regarding the Holocaust.. "
In such a case with what do you agree?

I agree with the questions that he asked.. I thought that would have been obvious. What else in there could I have agreed with?

BaalChatzaf · February 16, 2010

The US however has used Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons in the past and is still developing the use of such weapons.

Yes to nuclear weapons, no to chemical weapons and biological weapons against people. The U.S. did drop weed and tree killing bombs in Viet Nam to reduce the cover to enemy troops. Agent Orange, I believe.

Our use of Nuclear Weapons against Japan was totally justified. They attacked us in a sneak attack. We used fire and nukes against them eventually. Those who sow the wind, will in due course, reap the whirlwind.

It is called winning the war.

Bob Kolker

Edited February 16, 2010 by BaalChatzaf

Libertarian Muslim · February 17, 2010

The US however has used Nuclear, Biological and Chemical weapons in the past and is still developing the use of such weapons.
Yes to nuclear weapons, no to chemical weapons and biological weapons against people. The U.S. did drop weed and tree killing bombs in Viet Nam to reduce the cover to enemy troops. Agent Orange, I believe.
Our use of Nuclear Weapons against Japan was totally justified. They attacked us in a sneak attack. We used fire and nukes against them eventually. Those who sow the wind, will in due course, reap the whirlwind.
It is called winning the war.
Bob Kolker

Are you telling me that the US doesn't have stock piles of Anthrax and Sarin ready for use?

Also, let's apply the same standard that you're proposing on the Iran example and see how much you like it, and that is if Israel or the US does a sneak attack on Iran and it results in war then Iran would have the right to use nuclear weapons against their population centers like the US did to Japan in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.. Is that what you want?

I think the use of any weapons of mass destruction should be banned and even their ownership should be forbidden, however I am also for equality and if something is good for the US, then it's good for Iran too..

Or is it that you believe that the Iranians are not equal to Americans in rights and therefore the same standards don't apply?

Libertarian Muslim · February 17, 2010

By the way Michael,

I thought I'd clarify my opinion..

If Zionism is just the belief that Jews should be able to rule themselves and have their own state then that's fine I support that because of all of the crimes committed against them especially in WW2..

But if it then gets specific and makes a plan that claims that it's their right to take land from others who were not guilty of crimes against them and create a state in those lands where there was already a mandate to create a state that has the agreement of the people then I have an issue with it and don't believe it's fair.

Ultimately however, whether Zionism is racist or not has no bearing on the future, a peace agreement needs to be reached because it's not as if Israel is going away any time soon and therefore a reasonable peace agreement needs to be made.. I believe the Arab Peace Initiative is fair.

Michael Stuart Kelly · February 17, 2010

Well Michael, I brought up Ahmadenijad for a specific reason, and that was because people here were saying his goal is to wipe Israel off the map and that he denies the Holocaust. Neither of which are true and I wanted to make that clear.

Adonis,

Sadly, the video you posted did not make any of that clear.

The only thing it made clear was that Ahmadenijad is a typical politician who will not answer a simple question.

Maybe answering a question with another question and talking about other stuff works for some people, but it doesn't for me. I think it is, frankly, sleazy. American politicians are famous for doing this and I think it is sleazy when they do it, too.

But since Holocaust denial is a really loaded issue, when you do that smarmy stuff instead of answering clear questions with clear answers, this gives rise to all kinds of speculations. You may or may not believe that Ahmadenijad is aware of this effect, but I think he is. I think he does this on purpose to cause the impact it causes.

I, personally, think Ahmadenijad is nuts and a common thug, but I don't think he is stupid.

I have also seen mentioned that the Ayatollah Komeini banned--or tried to ban--the particular Twelver sect that Ahmadenijad belongs to (not the mainstream Twelver stuff, since I believe he was a Twelver himself). I need to look that up, though, before I make any kind of statements about it other than I have seen it mentioned.

Michael

Michael Stuart Kelly · February 17, 2010

By the way Michael,
I thought I'd clarify my opinion..
If Zionism is just the belief that Jews should be able to rule themselves and have their own state then that's fine I support that because of all of the crimes committed against them especially in WW2..
But if it then gets specific and makes a plan that claims that it's their right to take land from others who were not guilty of crimes against them and create a state in those lands where there was already a mandate to create a state that has the agreement of the people then I have an issue with it and don't believe it's fair.
Ultimately however, whether Zionism is racist or not has no bearing on the future, a peace agreement needs to be reached because it's not as if Israel is going away any time soon and therefore a reasonable peace agreement needs to be made.. I believe the Arab Peace Initiative is fair.

Adonis,

I find this position reasonable. I can't make any opinion on the Arab Peace Initiative, though, because I am not familiar with what is in it.

I'm all for the different parties sitting down and negotiating a two-state solution, though. The more reasonable, the better.

Michael

jeffrey smith · February 17, 2010

Adam: if you interested in facts you should present them in full.
"The term "Orient" is derived from the Latin word oriens meaning "east" (lit. "rising" < orior "rise"). The use of the word for "rising" to refer to the east (where the sun rises) has analogs from many languages: compare the terms "Levant" (< French levant "rising"), "Anatolia" (< Greek anatole), "mizrahi" in Hebrew ("zriha" meaning sunrise), "sharq" Arabic: شرق‎ (< Arabic yashruq Arabic: يشرق‎ "rise", shurooq Arabic: شروق‎ "rising") and "The Land of the Rising Sun" to refer to Japan."
As you can see "Orient" means also Levant which is Middle East. Jews from Arab countries called in Hebrew Mizrahim or Levantim. Sometimes they also called Orientalim. So you shouldn't worry. ICBM will hit the right target.
BTW, it's obvious you never read "Murder on the Orient Express" by Agatha Christie, otherwise you would know that this train was running from Istanbul, not from Tokio.
Leonid:
Obviously.
Thanks for taking the bait. So essentially you are more right in your more obscure use of the word orient to orient it to what most folks would understand the word as representing.
What is obvious is that you should have a real conversation with yourself someday. If you did, you would obviously be extremely shocked as to how you project yourself.
Thanks for being so predictable.
Adam

Adam--

FYI, Leonid's use of the term "oriental" in this case is totally normative. Jews who trace their origin to Arab lands are usually called "Oriental Jews", although nowadays the Hebrew equivalent, Mizrachi, is more commonly used, even in English. This applies to any Jew who traces his or her descent from Morocco as much as any of the lands eastward. The only exceptions are:

1) those Jews who trace their origin from the Jews of Spain (Sefardim or Sephardic in English, even if their families settled in Moslem countries. This is complicated by the fact that some communities who would otherwise be called Mizrachi, because they have no direct connection to Spain, adopted Sephardic traditions and liturgy and therefore effectively merged themselves with the Sefardim.

2) those Jews who trace their origin from the Jews of the Byzantine Empire (Romiot, deriving from the days when the Byzantines were still the Roman Empire and called themselves Romans)

3) Jews of Iranian origin, who may be called Mizrachi, Oriental or Iranian/Persian

4) Jews of Central Asian (in this case, mostly the countries which were once the smaller Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union--Kazakhstan, etc.) origin, who may be called Mizrachi but are often referred to by terms derived from their actual place of origin (most notably, Bukharan Jews)

5) Jews whose families were long settled in Western India, called Cochin or Malabar Jews; this term, however, does not usually refer to Sefardic or Mizrachi families who settled in the same area in the 19th or 20th centuries CE

6) Jews from the Far East, for the simple reason that no Jewish community in East Asia survived independently into the 20th century; those Jews who live there now are generally members of the major Jewish communities and consider themselves such. Ironically, there are no "Oriental" Jews who trace their origin to what you're considering to be the "Orient".

In fact, up to the early 20th century, academic writing on the Middle East was categorizes as dealing with "oriental studies", so much of the early archeological work in the Middle East was published in volumes dealing with "Oriental antiquities", and much of the early work with Sumerian or other dead languages of that area was thought of as dealing with "Oriental languages". Confining the term Orient to the eastern parts of Eurasia is a relatively modern trend.

And, after all, the whole area is traditionally called (in English, at least) the Middle East or the Near East; it's only East Asia that is called the Far East.

Jeffrey S.

Edited February 17, 2010 by jeffrey smith

Selene · February 17, 2010

Jeff:

Thanks. I was aware of it.

I am trying my damnedest to get him off the drumbeat in his heart and try to reduce this issue to some facts.

For example, and I have to check this, but Adonis represented that Akmadenijad did not deny the holocaust, that the prayer that was referred to has been voiced for a thousand years, that the Twelvers' are not attempting to bring about chaos and that there is a fatwa regarding nuclear and biological weapons.

I have some trusted Iranian sources and I will make inquiries.

I believe Adonis is being honest as to the representations, but as Ronny Reagan said, trust, but verify. Just like Harry Truman, I am from Missouri when it come to these kinds of issues.

To folks who may not know, Missouri is called the show me state. It was also one of the only state in the union to have a state law permitting the killing of Mormons. No wonder the Mormons left town and headed West!

Adam

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