Israel redux

[ionelv]

Would it be fair to say that for all the gifts to humanity (Spinoza, Einstein, Marx, Freud, Ramanujan, Oppenheimer, Salk, etc) and as prophylaxis against future pogroms, the Jews deserve some leeway on Palestine? For any non-Palestinian that should be an easy yes, but unfortunately millions of people are now suffering at the hands of the other tail end of the Jewish Bell curve.

Sadly millions of jews (and their safety or tacit and continuing approval for the shitty state policies of Israel) will continue to be used as an excuse for unspeakable things done to humanity for many generations still.

Now that the Frankenstein/Golem is fully developed and blinded by its existential rage, it will take almost a miracle to rein him in and undo the collateral damage. I predict that this will take a minimum a few hundred years, or sooner due to a force majeure type event (e.g, AI singularity or Vogon intergalactic project).

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> the Jews deserve some leeway on Palestine? <<

Leeway, sure, but not a "get out of jail free" card on genocide. Because genocide is bad no matter who is doing it. The Jews of all people should know better than to build a wall with which to oppress people, or pen them in ghettos to starve and murder them. "That which is hateful to you, do not do to another: That is the whole of the Torah, the rest is commentary."

One of the things I resent most is the damage done to the Jewish people. Used to be, all the arguments against them were bigoted hogwash. But once Israel started committing open, rather than covert, genocide it lent a lot more credence to "Jews are evil" arguments. I don't like that. And apparently there's also a Jewish real estate company deliberately buying American residences to abuse the renters. That pisses me off too. I don't expect people to be perfect, but "Don't commit a shonda for the Goyim" seems like a reasonable minimum behavior threshold.

>>Now that the Frankenstein/Golem is fully developed and blinded by its existential rage, it will take almost a miracle to rein him in and undo the collateral damage.<<

*sigh* It's a mess.

Re: Thoughts

[ionelv]

Sadly, everything that’s going on in Palestine is highly predictable, and some with certain eschatological views might even utter the word predestination. Even sadder is that the Palestinians have been and will continue to be cynically used as pawns by muslim nations and ironically and virtually as the prohibited קָרְבָּן by the jews. That the Ashkenazi have been and are still using and abusing their non-Ashkenazi brothers within Israel is as sad as any caste system that survived into the 21st century.

[jsburbidge]

Ramanujan? Surely he was a Brahmin?

More to the point I consider it fair to say that the modern State of Israel is to Judaism as { choose one of a set of states from Europe, or Byzantium } is to Christianity: let us say, the Kingdom of France from the days of Charlemagne to the present. There are lots of appalling things done with at least a tinge of religious rationale (Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius) which I would not attribute generally to "Christianity" but to human nature (of which I have a low view). Similarly for the actions of the State of Israel.

[ionelv]

You are right about Ramanujan. It appears that I fell victim to a Google AI hallucination when it mentioned Ramanujan's mother as Jewish and I just took it at face value without fact checking it.

As to human nature and the state of Israel, you are right up to a point: post-1960s decolonization, the West has had less opportunities to "civilize the heathen" (with a few notable mostly USian exceptions), whilst Israel's very existence is an ongoing colonization experiment with all its trappings and predictable atrocities (apparently gaining speed and currency since October 7).

As a side note, "Christianity" (its Abrahamic siblings) has [been] used and continues to [be] used as a cudgel against the "heathen" (not least because of very divisive rhetoric in the Bible and all its historical interpretations). Yes, that is largely human nature, but, interestingly and sadly enough, adherence to the good book (or any holy book) appears to be no better than homeopathy at best and a stimulant at worst when it comes to genocide and objectifying/extinguishing the other.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>>Sadly, everything that’s going on in Palestine is highly predictable, <<

I agree.

>> and some with certain eschatological views might even utter the word predestination. <<

I don't think it was predestined. It came from choices that humans made.

I have come to suspect, very strongly, that it was a setup. That someone just after WWII came up with an idea to get a lot of Jews out Europe, that would look good to the general public, but would secretly be understood as a way to keep the Middle Eastern countries mostly picking on each other instead of bothering outsiders.

"Bob, why in the hell would you want to go and give a piece of land to the Jews?"

"You see, Tom, then they won't went to settle in OUR neighborhood, and they'll be too busy dealing with their own neighbors to worry much about what we're doing. Are you with me now?"

"Ohhhh ... yeah, that's a great idea!"

>> Even sadder is that the Palestinians have been and will continue to be cynically used as pawns by muslim nations and ironically and virtually as the prohibited קָרְבָּן by the jews.<<

Yyyyeah.

>> That the Ashkenazi have been and are still using and abusing their non-Ashkenazi brothers within Israel is as sad as any caste system that survived into the 21st century.<<

Agreed. Castes may work well for insects but they're a disaster for humans.