The Book of Joshua: an Operations Manual for parts of the Israeli Right
I tend to stay away from I-P (Israeli-Palestinian) issues for a lot of reasons. First and foremost because it doesn’t pay, for example I got temporally banned (Bo-Jo’d) from Daily Kos for just stepping on that turf. And mostly life is too short and there are plenty of other targets.
And if that is true for you then I suggest not going under the fold at all. Because my conclusion is that there is no possible conclusion, there is no possible reason based solution to the I-P problem or parallel problems such as Daesh. Because reasons. But don’t go there.
If in spite of my warnings you were either intrigued or perhaps outraged by the implied premise of the post title or just scratching your head as to what it would mean, well here we go.
My starting point is that you can’t really understand the operations of certain parts of the coalition that back Netanyahu and Likud (or perhaps Bibi himself, his father was part of this movement) until or unless you have read and understood the Book of Joshua, the sixth book of the Old Testament and the first after the Pentateuch. For most Christians the Book of Joshua is mostly a source of miracle stories proving the power of God. He stops the Sun in the Sky, He enables the Israelites to destroy the Walls of Jericho with a single shout. Along with this Joshua is the leader who delivers the Chosen People to the Promised Land and so sets the stage for all subsequent Biblical history, after all without Israel you don’t have David King of Israel (and so lose your David and Goliath story). And without David you don’t have the House of David and in Christian doctrine its ultimate inheritor (or Inheritor).
Unfortunately what gets swept under the Sweep of History here is any serious reading of the Book of Joshua in the light of its expressed ideology AND in light of how that ideology is maintained and sustained in parts of Israeli politics today. That is for these people there is no reason to treat Joshua as being much, if at all, less binding than the Pentateuch, and indeed you can read Joshua as the outcome of the Israelites ultimately obeying the Law and turning away from the temptations during the Exodus. If the Chosen People maintain the Law Y-h W-h will deliver them to the Promised Land. Which in effect gets us to Joshua 1:1-5.
Now the Promised Land narrative is not some strained reading, a little Google search delivers you to http://biblescripture.net/Joshua.html and its summary/introduction to Joshua:
The Book of Joshua marks the fulfillment of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, for God fulfills his promises to Joshua, the successor to Moses, by leading them to the Promised Land. With God’s help, the tribes of Israel united as a single people conquer the land of Canaan, and God through Moses and Joshua assigned each tribe their separate territories.
And the text:
1 Now after the death of Moses the servant of the LORD it came to pass,
that the LORD spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying,
2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan,
thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them,
even to the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life:
as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee:
I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.
Which raises some questions. One, what is the status of the Canaanites who previously occupied parts of this divine Land Grant? And two, what is the extent of the Promised Land? And the answers are pretty clear, especially if you read them from the perspective of Jews in Europe in say 1905 or Middle America anytime up to just about now. The Canaanites are accursed the Israelites are the Chosen People and the Promised Land is roughly equivalent to Biblical Israel. And the process by which Joshua leads his people to the conquest of Canaan is glossed over much as if it was a successful campaign in Clash of Clans or Boom Beach: Sun gets stopped to give Joshua some extra time, Walls Come Tumbling Down, just like it reads in your typical Child’s Illustrated Bible Stories.
On the other hand if you turn to the actual text and read it through seriously, and as representing the Word of God, the story takes a darker turn. In this Book of Joshua the Canaanites are accursed and the Israelites are given both free rein and free reign over them. As each City of Canaan falls to the victorious people of Joshua the consequences get more dire. The People of Ai are killed to the last man and women (Joshua 8:24-29) whereas the People of Gideon get off a little easier, they are simply enslaved (Joshua 9:27)
27 And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation, and for the altar of the LORD, even unto this day, in the place which he should choose.
Now from the perspective of the modern day historian none of this is either surprising or in context shocking, the movements of people from Pre-History to the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492 to the Conquest of the Americas in the three centuries after that were all marked by similar instances of mass murder and enslavement. And certainly no American, given our own history of chattel slavery and policies of active extermination of indigenous peoples in the name of Manifest Destiny and the White Man’s Burden, has much room to castigate Joshua and the actions of the Israelites. Such was the reality of war and conquest from the Stone Age through the Iron Age and into the Industrial Age. Still relatively few people would defend this ON PRINCIPLE. Maybe it was natural and perhaps inevitable but it is stretch to see it as admirable.
Unless you do. And certain parts of the hard right in both America and Israel do explicitly defend the actions of their ancestors quite explicitly on grounds of American Exceptionalism on the one hand and that the Jews are the modern descendents and INHERITORS of the promises made to the Chosen People. Which is to say the Promised Land and all of the Promised Land. And if this means that Native Americans are largely relegated to their Reservations and Palestinians to their exact equivalents within Greater Israel then so be it. Because didn’t Y-h W-h promise to Joshua the following:
2 Moses my servant is dead; now therefore arise, go over this Jordan,
thou, and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them,
even to the children of Israel. 3 Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you, as I said unto Moses. 4 From the wilderness and this Lebanon even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast. 5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life:
Well yes He did. And it is worth noting that plotting this area out on a map would include much more than Israel, if taken seriously it would include not just the West Bank but all of Lebanon and Syria and parts of eastern Iraq and even Turkey. And right along with that extensive land grant comes explicit permission to expel its previous inhabitants, starting with the Canaanites.
Which leaves me with the following question. Are there modern inheritors of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam who accept the Books of the Old Testament as the literal Word of God? Supplemented to be sure by the Talmud, the New Testament and the Koran but still binding on the Faithful? Well yes there are. We see that with Christian Dominionsts and Islamic Salafites. As well as the leaders of certain religious parties included in the coalition backing Likud. And not particularly absent among the current and past leaders of Likud itself, both Sharon and now Netanyahu being proponents of one version or another of Greater Israel.
Which in turn leaves us in a quandary and really the same quandary that has been faced by anyone on my side of the post-Englightenment divide: is it possible to confront and in part defeat Faith by Secular Humanism? (Or as secular humanists humor ourselves “by reason”). On what grounds do we push back on Daesh because of its particular reading of the Koran and the early history of Islam? How exactly do we push back on those parts of the Israeli Right who do indeed treat the Book of Joshua as an Operations Manual? And for that matter for Christians who seem to believe that the most important book of the New Testament is not the Book of Matthew with its namby-pamby Sermon on the Mount but instead the Book of Revelations?
I can tell you this much. Simply laying out your argument via impeccable logical syllogisms backed by appeals to reasonably established “facts” of hstory doesn’t cut it. Your small ‘t’ truths don’t stand a chance against Revealed Truth. And as a small ‘t’ truth guy I am at a loss to suggest an out here.
Just to get the ball rolling.
Is there a possible way to justify what from the outside seem the excesses of the Israeli Settler Movement, starting with such things as cutting down olive trees of local Palestinians then moving through the unpermitted esttablishment of hilltop settlements and right through the actions of Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994?
Well yes you can. Easily. Just read Joshua as the Revealed Word of Y-h W-h. Take it seriously and all those actions simply justify themselves.
Me I think they were and are barbaric. But as an Unbeliever of course I would. Why should the Faithful listen to the likes of me?
First, when we showed up in Midwest there were only one million Indians — in a million square miles — and they were semi-nomadic hunter gatherers. So I don’t accept that we did anything comparable to Israelis displacing Palestinians.
FWIW; the only difference for our purposes is that Israelis cannot try to excuse their actions with ours — not that ours would. PS. There were twenty million Indians in the Midwest a century earlier — before the Spanish diseases worked their way up from the Gulf. If not for that we would have had to make a deal: lacking tanks and F-16s. The Indians could have been considered citizens once we established territories.
Most Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank would be there anyway — no religious motive required. Those who supposedly (how they see themselves) are motivated by scripture could not be there physically without the IDF, the subsidies and the bypass roads.
“God said to Abraham, kill me a son;
Abe said to God, you must be putting me on.”
Assuming God wants Palestinians cleared out of the West Bank for the sake of the settlers, why are the settlers so happy about it? Not because they were desperately looking for something extraordinary to do for God — but because they are getting the free land. I’d like to ask the so-called religious (they think) settlers what they would do if for some crazy reason they didn’t happen to believe in God. Would they be the only current setters who would not have showed up in the West Bank?
There is hope for Israel whenever they grow up enough to realize that they really blew it. They took 78% of Palestine in 1949. They have spent two generations now despoiling their name and their children’s’ names around the world, ducking terrorists, living in perpetual fear of the nations around them, etc., for a few more percent. They could have had it so good; had it all!
This will sink in eventually; it may be finally occuring now.
Denis fair enough I guess, not least because on my mother’s side I am a direct descendent of Indiana pioneers who were really such, that is settling the land in the 1810’s prior to ‘us’ actually winning the Indian Wars of the day (Battle of Tippecanoe anyone?). So it is true enough that when we got to the midwest it was mostly a matter of mopping up the survivors of earlier waves of plague. But just on two hundred years earlier ‘we’ (and some of those ‘we’s’ are in my family tree) did very similar things in Massachusetts (Pequot Wars) and not long after General Harrison put paid to those folks at Tippecanoe a certain former General now President Jackson did to the Five Civilized Tribes (Google ‘Trail of Tears’) and then some decades later we had similar ‘actions’ against the tribes of the Upper Plains (the Indian Wars proper) followed and accompanied by wars of near extermination against the Comanche and the Apache.
Anyway once you put together the history of American displacement of its indigenous peoples from early 17th century Massachusetts to late 19th century Wyoming and New Mexico it is a little hard to dismiss it as just “one million Indians-in a million square miles”. It was multiples of both.
Plus I have a different take on the motives of the Settlers and the political parties that back them. The following link is I believe dismissed as some sort of hoax by may Western defenders of the Settlers. Which is as may be, me I am not convinced that it is. But people can read into it what they want.
Nation building is a blood sport without rules concerning previous groups of the area. With laws only apply to the weak.
The USA would have prospered more once the Nation was established if it had followed the advice of one of our founding fathers who suggested we stay out of foreign entanglements.
The only sane thing is to “stay away” from the topic as in using Bill Maher’s Columbus Strategy to the Middle East.
When Queen Isabella asked Columbus why he wanted to sail into the unknown to reach the Spice Islands instead of going through the Middle East, Columbus responded:
“Cause I’d rather sail off the end of the f’en Earth than talk to those people one more time.”
Modern Israel came into existence in 1948 and fought wars of survival in 1956, 1967, and 1973. Leading up to those wars, their neighbors the Syrians, the Jordanians, and the Egyptians armed themselves with the equipment of modern armies and prepared to put an end to the Jewish state. But their equipment, their soldiers, and their military leaders were not up to the task.
Nonetheless Israel was forced to face the fact that it would only take a loss of one war to end the Jewish state. They kept the territory which they had occupied until peace could be established.
Jordan and Egypt finally agreed to peace and Syria could not fight a war by itself so full blown wars ended. President Sadat was assassinated for his part in the Egyptian-Israeli peace. But real peace never came.
The leadership in the former Jordanian west bank area and Gaza have never been able to come to an agreement with Israel.
The politics of those Palestinian areas are so vitriolic that any attempt to compromise would bring on an assassination.
I remind you that the answer to the election of a less vitriolic Palestinian leader was the rise of Hamas in Gaza. The Palestinian people voted Hamas into office and none of them can claim that they misunderstood the goals which Hamas espoused.
The Palestinians of the west bank and Gaza should unify under some leader who would agree to a return to the 1967 borders, ‘no right of return’, and a commitment to stop its population from making war on Israel. That would present a real test of the Israeli people’s desire for peace.
How does one bargain with an adversary who promises to kill you as soon as he gets a chance?
JimH,
One weak point: “How does one bargain with an adversary who promises to kill you as soon as he gets a chance?”
Military lineup:
It would take 9,000 NATO quality tanks and elite crews to invade against 3,000 (what Israel has). Mmm; central NATO on full mobilization in Central Europe with the Russkies coming: Germany 3,600 tanks, USA 3,000, France 1,000, Brits 1,000, Canada/Benelux 500.
Israel 425 F-15s and F-16s. Iran 25 modern Migs (31s?), 25 F-14 hanger queens, 175 Russkie junk of the kind Israel went 90-0 against in Lebanon in 1982.
Israel now acquiring its 7th and 8th second-strike nuke subs — each capable of carrying at least 8, 1,000 mile range cruise missiles. Conventional subs are actually quieter in operation than nuclear powered subs. The cooling systems of nuclear reactors can never be shut down — which were the noisiest thing on Russian subs, which helped us to follow them all over the Atlantic and Pacific (see early eighties Scientific American cover story). Israel’s latest boomers recharge with fuel cells so they are completely quiet.
Don’t forget gravity bombs, ICBMs (yes — see R. Rhodes (em)Twilight of the Bombs(/em) and nuclear artillery shells.
Syria or any combination driving Israel into the sea? Palestinians?! Laugh, laugh.
Bruce
glad to see you know what it is like to be censored for having ideas not convenient to the owners of the site.
and, how can you win? if you say anything that remotely implies the jews have anything to be ashamed of you will earn their eternal hatred. and if you say anything that implies that the palestinians have any responsibility for their own plight (not the Rodney King thing of causing their own beating) they will hate you forever.
for what it’s worth i read a book once that “proved” that the only descendants of the ancient jews are the people we call today “palestinians.”
there is no reasoning with people, otherwise i’d suggest we stop worrying about ‘oo killed ‘oo and get on with working out a modus viviendi.
but as long as we have a mentality that “we only killed a million indians” … or “scrapping the cap will only affect 15% of the population” i am inclined to think humanity is still unclear on the concept.
Coberly,
“we only killed a million indians”
I hope you didn’t think you were quoting me. My point was the opposite: with one semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer per square mile there was nothing in our way. I said if there were (still twenty million) we would have had to make a deal.
Wars with Indians? Watch Dances With Wolves: two groups of people screwing each other over ruthlessly — and in each case needlessly. The story of mankind.
Might be a good idea to simply acknowledge that the concept of “fair” has no place in the middle east. Fair stopped when the land was taken in 1948. The only possible solution will be determining what the parties will accept to stop fighting and if the Israelis won’t allow the Palestinians to breathe, to stop supporting them financially and militarily.
Dennis Drew,
You are correct that up to this time the Palestinians and their middle eastern friends have not been able to push Israel into the sea.
But how many car bombings, bus bombings, suicide bombings and primitive missile attacks have the Israelis been forced to accept since 1973?
There are consequences when you attack your neighbor. The Palestinians have brought misery on themselves, as has Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
In March 1916 the forces of Pancho Villa conducted a raid into the town of Columbus, New Mexico. Eight US soldiers and 10 civilians were killed and there were 8 more wounded. The US government put an army into Mexico and kept it there for about a year. They only took that army out of Mexico because it needed to be trained up for service in Europe in World War I.
When less than 3,000 out of 300,0000,000 Americans were killed in a 2001 terrorist attack, the US invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. Those terrorists were no serious threat to the government of the US.
Some in the US Congress would be willing to invade Syria when very very few Americans have been killed there. The terrorists currently in Syria and Iraq pose no serious threat to our government.
If Israel turned over total control of the west bank and Gaza tomorrow, nothing would change. The Palestinian people have to want peace more than they want revenge against the Israelis. They have been electing leadership whose actions led to more war. That leadership demanded more concrete to build housing but instead used it to line underground tunnels into Israel.
The people of Lebanon finally decided for peace, after 15 years of civil war accomplished nothing. The same will be true of Iraq, the Shiites will eventually accept that peace is more important than revenge against the Sunnis.
The larger philosophical question is, should powerful governments be forced to accept violent acts made against their people, if made by less powerful neighbors. I doubt that will ever be the case.
Denis
thanks for straightening me out. it is, alas, however, a point i have heard made by others, even if in this case not by you.
i saw enough of “Dances” to know I didn’t want to see the rest of it. What I know of the Indian wars convinces me that … as i said… humanity is unclear on the concept.
JimH,
Imagine any other (non-anti-semitic) people oppressively occupied — deliberately humiliating check points, midnight knocks, endlessly more ethnically cleansing housing, occupier only road system they may not travel on or even over (find a way around) — by a stronger (as in military super power) people. How else would you expect any people to respond in such circumstance.
Who I call the “Hezbollahians” in Lebanon may in fact have become as crazily hateful as you describe. They killed a few and kidnapped a couple of Israeli soldiers, in uniform, on duty in 2006. Israel responded with 26 days of carpet bombing their ethnic area, perhaps leveling every structure, killing as many as 1,000 adults and 400 children. I think one of Anthony Bourdain’s local hires lost family to it (went to film but was cut short — had to be rescued by Marines. We are not talking collateral damage — we are talking what the Germans called “reprisals.” (Don’t forget Israel’s immediate response to one soldier kidnapped to Gaze — later returned: blowing up the biggest power station).
The Palestinians for all their sufferings have said they want peace. The Hezbollahians vow they will find a way …
BTW, on 9/11 we traded skyscrapers for settlements. Time to try land for peace.
An oxymoronic phrase; humane human behavior. What part of human history would lead one to think that there is anything humane about human behavior? Nada!!
Joshua is written with the same pen as Urban II’s speeches. Which taken in today’s Faux News environment needed to justify exterminating Muslims. The crusades were righteous by infallible edict therefore any terror is righteous terror.
WRT US Plains Indians. Sherman, Grant’s Chm of the JCS sent Sheridan out to deal with the Indian problem.
A couple of scalped prospectors and genocide justified. Sherman didn’t have the cavalry corps in the Shenandoah because they had no enemies. Custer spent a lot of time hunting down N B Forrest so Forrest could have a reputation and start the KKK as light cavalry to blunt reconstruction.
While Custer lost a couple of companies of cavalry, a small loss in Civil War terms added to the extermination fervor.
The Romans ran out of lions too soon!
JimH,
Afghanistan later Iraq was not about 9/11. It was an excuse to raise the falling take of GDP for the pentagon. Nothing more!
Same for the PNAC.
The little pea brain got to cogitating and up popped the idea of writing those passages in modern Murikan and taking the references to imaginary beings out and have some bearded hippie spout them in a public place. Any guesses how long before he would be put in a mandatory 72 hour hold?
Dilbert
depends on whether or not he was a Congressman.
Denis
and yet (despite my misunderstanding about the million indians) you seem to be employing the same moral calculus with “the israelis kill more palestinians than the palestinians kill israelies therefore the israelis are evil and the palestinians are the poor downtrodden…
but moral calculus doesn’t work that way. if you kill one person, that person, or at least his relatives and countrymen, feel injured and they seek both retaliation (massive retaliation if they have the power) and as much insurance as they can buy that it won’t happen again.
that way doesn’t work in the long run. the problem is to convince both “the israelis” and “the palestinians” (for example) to find a better way.
it is either not easy or not possible. never was.
Hey Dilbert, nice to see you at AB.
And let me stoke the fire here. By posting a version of what got me temporarily kicked off dKos.
We have a Chosen People delivered to a Promised Land unfortunately burdened by Accursed Canaanites. Whereupon the Chosen exterminate most of the Canaanites while turning certain “lucky” ones into “hewers of wood and drawers of water”
Okay lets do some substitution: for Chose People we can put ‘Herrenvolk” for Promised Land “Greater Germany” (defined as anywhere that either had ethnic German populations OR had been ruled by previous German rulers) and for Canaanites “ethnic Slavs”
We have to remember that for the Germans of the Third Reich the “Final Solution” was not the End All and Be All nor was it entirely or even mostly directed at the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe. Instead it was part and parcel of the REAL final project of establishing Lebensraum or literally “living room” for the Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reich
Eretz Yisrael Hashlemah vs Großgermanisches Reich Deutscher Nation.
Where exactly is the operational difference between the tactics and strategy employed by Joshua and that of the Waffen SS? The Chosen vs the Herrenvolk? Hewers of Wood vs Arbeit macht Frei?
And no the expressed ideology of many of the splinter parties that largely support Likud in its coalition DOESN’T “Sound Better in the Original German”.
Coberley,
I know we can’t “all, just get along”.
I also practice non judgement, so neither the Israeli nor Hamas are subject to my judgment. Neither are good nor bad in my view.
I do have say in what US does, and I say no more US munitions to blow up Hamas nor the little children in the way of the US bombs and F-16 delivered missiles.
The lesser of two evils is Hamas! In terms of the body count, anyway.
And Bibi talking tea baggers in congress, who want the Israelis to start the run to the “second coming”, is not good or bad. It is the usual monkey cage stuff make it look right to take money from the poor for the war profiteers.
Ilsm
i am disposed to agree. but i think we have a certain reponsibility to try to get along, and encourage others to. providing weapons does not encourage them to get along.
But Bruce
much as i agree that ANY “race” can act just like the master race of story and song, there ARE differences between the Third Reich and Israel. It does not speak well of us if we cannot see them and encourage them.
nor (ilsm again) is it quite reasonable to turn “lesser evil” into “innocent victim.” i still don’t want get into ‘oo killed ‘oo first, but i like to think that if Israel had not been invaded on the first day, they would have been constrained to behave themselves better since.
Coberly your reply is exactly why I stay away from I-P – overreading.
I criticize “parts of the Israeli right” for using the Book of Joshua implicitly as justifying a policy of Eretz Yisrael that in turn is somewhere between exclusionary of Palestinians and outright eliminationist. An expressed policiy that is remarkably parallel to arguments made by certain Aryan Supremists in the early 20th century and YOU make this all about comparing that to “Israel” tout court.
What part of “part” don’t you understand here? It is exactly this confusion of part for the whole that disallows criticism of Likud as being anti-Semitic by implicitly allowing the equation Likud = Israel = World Jewry.
Which is to say that you have inadvertently (I hope) made my entire meta-argument about why it is profitless (and I guess prophet-less) to even try to engage on a historical discussion to start with. Too many people simply jump from “You said X, you obviously meant Y and are motivated by Z”. Well no, I said X. Maybe you could address the argument on those grounds.
To turn the question around: What ARE the differences between the Third Reich and the Army of Joshua? WITHOUT invoking modern I-P facts on the ground?
Dear Bruce
not being a gifted mind reader i failed to note the distinction you are making in many words. rather, i think you should have accused me of UNDERreading. I failed to note where you were making a distinction between the Israeli state and the small number of people whose rationale is somewhat like that of some number of people among those who called themselves nazi’s (if they did, my knowledge of history and german being insufficient to be sure).
but that leaves me wondering why you brought it up. the reading of Joshua by “parts of” the Israeli right is well known and not controversial as a matter of fact, though other “defenders of Israel” would be as clumsy as I was in failing to realize you were not talking about “Israel” in general, in spite of its obvious policies and practices which besides being as expansionist as they think they can get away with (“they” being “the deciders”) often approach that of gestapo, or the ferguson police department, in respect to their disrespect for the rights (or feelings) of others.
hmm. seems to me i remember trying to make this point before and getting kicked off someone’s site for my troubles.
darn. why CAN’T we all get along?
I am reading about the rise of the Nazis.
The antisemitism (word first used by German speakers) in the late 19th century changed as the societies rapidly went modern/secular. Antisemitism evolved through the ‘eugenic’ movement toward a racial/genetic superiority thing. The Jew became the racial adversary of the aryan.
Are some in Likud going for the secular or racial inferiority reason for genocide?
Does not being of the ‘chosen’ reflect a racist interpretation of the Old Testament, in the context of Israel becoming the evil that slaughtered its forebears?
Is throwing rocks reason to slaughter them?
ilsm
i would not be able to answer you without getting accused of anti-semitism or anti palestinianism, but my understanding is that the palestinians threw more than rocks. and as far as i can tell from a superficial reading of history the jews and the palestinians are no different from any other people who wanted what some other people had. those other people having, mostly, taken it away from someone else.
so i will insist the answer is still not “oo killed oo’ but “how do we find a way to stop this.
Oh bullshit Dale. Who else has explicitly pointed out the behavior of the Settler Movement be their political patrons EXPLICITLY in terms of Joshua? So much so that it is so obvious as to excuse your misreading?
For a non-gifted mind reader I must say you have spent much of our acquaintance practicing on me.
And Ilsm that may be. But in my argument the target of the Nazis was not entirely the Jews but OPERATIONALLY was more directed at the Slavs, those who were occupying most of the Lebensraum. And the belief that the Slavs were inherently inferior to the German is pretty much demonstrated by the fact that ‘slave’ is just derivative of ‘Slav’. A derivation that was not subsequent to the rise of the eugenics movement of the 19th century.
In fact a certain faction of Western Jewry in Germany, Austria and France fooled themselves in thinking that Hitler’s real targets even among the Jews were Eastern Jews who comprimed a sizable percentage of the urban proletariat and lumpen proletariat of the West along with the peasantry of the East and surely didn’t REALLY include those in the mid to high levels of the bourgeoisie of the West. That is it we only fter the Anschluss that Viennese Jews figured out they were ALSO on the chopping block. It not being a secret what washappening to Jews of lower economic strata by the mid 30s. At least as to work camps.
Dear Bruce
for my part I was only trying to point out how easy it is to teach ourselves to hate.
as far as I know the “settler Right” in Israel has been explicit about it’s “belief” in the Joshua promise. and as far as I know the “nazi”-like behavior of the State of Israel has been pointed out before and rather loudly shouted down. It is not politically correct to compare jews to nazis, even when some of the behavior of some of them reminds you of some of the behavior of some of the nazis (those with power, in both cases, which as it turns out is largely the way those with power have acted since, well, since Cain took a shovel to Abel.)
I don’t think I have been trying to mind-read you… or anyone else. I do disagree with you… and everyone else… about some things, or the appearance of some things, from time to time. And unless we are doing deep science… i am not particularly interested in making sure i have understood you “correctly.” This… Angry Bear… has the flavor of what we called Bull Sessions in college. No reason to get your back up when someone disagrees with you, or misses your point, If it matters to you , you can always try to explain your point so the think headed among us (i am talking about me) can, perhaps, understand it.
Some things do matter, of course. But it would smack too much of “mind reading” if I tried to offer my theory of why some of them matter more to you than to me. And of course why some of them matter more to me than to you. Meanwhile, don’t you think you are doing a bit of “mind reading” yourself when you ascribe motives to me that have never crossed my mind. (Proving no doubt the deep psychosis that prevents me from knowing my own motives.)
Meanwhile, well, yes, the Nazis had reasons, and gave reasons, for their military expansions. And they exploited the anti semitism of perhaps all Europeans… as well as suffered from it themselves. The Joshuites in Israel are very similar… human beings just like the best of us, showing human ugliness in the latest flavor that fits their particular situation. I don’t see much point in pointing it out… or much crime in doing so. I just see more point in trying to point out to people that we all think and act pretty much the same way as the opportunity presents itself.
So gosh, yes, the Settler Right looks a little Nazi-ish. Now what?
I think I
correction:
i meant “thick headed” not “think headed”… talking about myself.
and i went back and re-read Bruce’s post and comments. I think I can excuse myself for under reading “part of” which occurred, i think, once in a thousand words. the other thousand seemed to be the standard “enlightenment” screed against “faith.”
as for me, i don’t think much of “reason” as expressed by those who think of themselves as “reasonable.” it is nothing more than “faith” dressed in the latest fashion.
There are only 2 religions in the world. 1) God DID it, or 2) Do it yourself.
Both sides don’t know God and therefore, they will fight like 2 partners getting a divorce until everything is used up in the fight. Pointless. Meaningly and Stupid.
Best thing is don’t give it any of your energy. Go lead a pleasant life and “if” you know God then let Him handle it.
This is nothing but a distraction meant to suck the life out of you.
In the end, it will be like Jacob(Isreal) meeting his brother Esau. Israel will bow down to Esau. Yep. I’ve already been shown the end and God told me this is how it will be. And then, they will shake hands as they did at the time of Abraham’s death.
Mystery Babylon is “PRIDE” and none of this will take place until all pride is done away with. There will not be an easy, convenient solution.
The mark of the beast “666” is man(6) in the place of God (333). It has absolutely nothing to do with a microchip. It is about buying and selling “each other” (the souls of men).
East coast of USA is going to experience a big catastropy. It will be felt for several states inland. I have already been shown this. He said to me the reason was “Because they are all looking for their security outside of me (Him)”
This is a warning that you do not have much time. Really!
I correct, Isaac’s death.
The Abomination of Desolation seen in Spiritual Jerusalem Temple, Jan 2013. Count your 1290 and 1335 days from then.
Amanda said
“Best thing is don’t give it any of your energy. Go lead a pleasant life and “if” you know God then let Him handle it.
This is nothing but a distraction meant to suck the life out of you.”
I tend to agree with that. As for the rest of it… if it makes sense to you, enjoy it.