Isn't it sad how war ravages lives of the innocent? That is a very sad story indeed but I'm sure the Israeli's have similar stories. What do you think is the solution to the Mid-east turmoil? What will bring peace to the region? --TG, (M) 53
Redondo Beach CA
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RESPONSE: There is only one ultimate solution.
To begin with the United States must stop all funds, political and military support of Israel. We are their enabler to the tune of $3 trillion dollars in aid since 1973. They get 40% of our foreign aid budget officially every year and via redistribution use those funds to free up other funds for expanding their settlements, building their wall on Palestinian territory and enforcing apartheid laws in direct opposition to the terms and conditions of the funds.
For this to end, Israel must withdraw from the Occupied Territories, withdraw, not lay siege and continue to bomb daily as they did with Gaza this year and continued to do with Lebanon. Withdraw completely and unconditionally. That is the first step.
Second, Israel must leave intact the infrastructure.
Third, it must fulfill the promises it made to the International Community in 1947: 1) Create a Constitution. It never has. 2) Grant equal rights to all citizens regardless of faith. Israel never has. 3) Assist in creating a Palestinian state. Israel promised to do these actions as a condition of statehood. Israel has never kept its side of the
bargain in getting a state. Beginning with the conditions of statehood, that they agreed to, is the only place to start.
Once Israel fulfills its original promises to the world, then the Palestinians will have an equal playing field. At that time the two peoples can decide between them whether to be one state or two, how much the reparations Israel will be required to pay to the over 1 million people it ethnically cleansed in 1948 and millions of others it continues to oppress since 1967. At that time, negotiations allowing the return or compensation for
those in Diaspora are calculated and agreed to. There is nothing abnormal about this. Israel set the standard with the Jewish Holocaust victims who were compensated for their loss by the international community. If it is acceptable for the Jews to be compensated for oppression, then it must be equally acceptable for the Christians and Muslims to demand the same. The Jews were killed and displaced due to their faith for roughly ten years. The Christians and
Muslims are in their fifty-nineth year of the same. You have to remember, Israel has the 4th largest nuclear backed army in the world. The people it oppresses, the Palestinians do not have an army, navy, tanks, airplanes, helicopters...they have nothing but homemade bombs, homemade rockets, stones and the few smuggled weapons they can get. So the story you just read? No. There is no Israeli equivalent unless you return to
Nazi Germany, 1945.
Even the Hezbollah rockets, these have been aimed at and largely hitting military targets and based upon their proximity, consistently to military targets and the obvious ration of military to civilian deaths, with the facts one would be hard pressed to state either Hamas or Hezbollah purposely kills Israeli children and families. (This has been confirmed by several NGO's and eyewitnesses on the ground). The Israeli censors won't allow that to be
mentioned. However, it is obvious by the same criterion that Israel does purposely kill civilians, women and children (Settlers and soldiers regularly shoot at Arab children for sport. Police use rubber coated and live bullets to disband peaceful Arab protests, many of which are children. Jews may own guns. Most non-Jews are prohibited from owning them).
I can give you multiple of examples from just the past two years, including American citizens killed purposely at point blank by Israel, (for which they've never been held responsible) see--Where American Lives Do Not Count several where
they have seen a girl or boy, walking and shot at them or filled them full of bullets. One 12-year old girl, last year they pumped her full of 24 rounds. (THE SCHOOL GIRL WHO "NEEDED
TO BE KILLED?"). She was just walking to school. Israeli soldiers and settlers use Arab children for target practice, regularly. Human Rights watch does an excellent job of documenting this. Another thing the Israelis do is, shown and documented in the film Gaza Strip, create bombs that look like toys and leave them where children play. Hundreds of children have been maimed by these and over fifty killed just in the last
five years. The Israeli military shoots out water towers...their form of mailbox baseball with a gunship. All of these are war crime.
Israel does these things. Hamas and Hezbollah do not. (Again Human Rights Watch, The United Nations and other NGO's have confirmed this). Israel accuses its enemies of doing exactly what Israel IS doing. From using human shields, (Aside from building military stations and weapons factories adjacent to or within Arab cities and towns in Israel and the Occupied Territories, Israel will not use troop transports; they use public busses to move troops and mix them in with
civilians...you didn't think the resistance targets buses for no reason, did you? With their military personnel, they are legitimate military targets).
Again, what Israel says and what it does strangely turn out to be exact opposites. Since 1948, Israel consistently out gunned, out manned and out maneuvered all the Arab nations combined. They would not be 'victims of terror' if they were not terrorizing, imprisoning, destroying and humiliating 4.5 million people. Put what they're doing on the other foot...what if the Palestinians and Lebanese were doing to Israel what Israel is doing to them? Can you see how absurd this whole
thing is? For a greater Understanding of the Halaka and Jewish Law being used to justify killing and targeting babies, women, children and civilians by Israel, the following goes further in explaining the quote we used in the above article. Lest you be confused that this is actually the way Judaism is supposed to act and present itself, the following interview with Rabbi Weiss with Neil Cavuto on
FOX this week should set those fears aside: Rabbi Yisroel Weiss & Neil Cavuto Interview Talmudic Council:
In war time, Even enemy children may be exterminated
By Khalid Amayreh
Occupied Jerusalem, 2 August, 2006: The Talmudic council of Rabbis and Torah sages known as "Yesha", which represents Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem, has ruled that it is permissible, even desirable, to target and exterminate non-Jewish civilians during war time.
The council's latest edict, published on the Israeli newspaper Yedeot Ahronot's website "Ynetnews" Tuesday, stated that "according to Jewish law, during a time of war, there is no such term as 'innocent civilians' of the enemy."
"All of the discussions on Christian morality are weakening the spirit of the army and the nation and are costing us in the blood of our soldiers and civilians," the statement said.
The same council issued a similar ruling two weeks ago, urging the Israeli army to "exterminate the enemy" and "not to flinch from killing enemy civilians."
The council described as "Christian morality" international conventions and laws prohibiting the deliberate targeting of civilians during war time.
It called the targeting and killing of enemy civilians "a mitzvah" or a good deed.
According to Israeli sources, much of the non-secular camp in Israel, which includes powerful religious and national-religious movements, expressed deep satisfaction at the Qana-II massacre, which took place on 31 July and resulted in the death of as many as 60 Lebanese civilians, 37 of them children and babies.
The Israeli army claimed initially that Hizbullah fighters had been staying inside the 3-story building targeted by the Israeli air force.
However, Israeli military commanders changed their account of the atrocity Tuesday, acknowledging that they had no evidence that any resistance fighters were among the civilians massacred in the bombing.
Some Israeli officials apologized for the carnage, upsetting rabbis and Talmudic sages who argued that Israel shouldn't apologize for killing enemy civilian since according to Halacha or Jewish religious law there is no such thing as civilians and innocents in war time.
This is not the first time such rulings are issued. Nearly two years ago, a group of prominent rabbis urged the Israeli army "not to flinch from killing Palestinian civilians including children."
In a letter to Shaul Mofaz, then Defense Minister, the rabbis, who represent mainstream Orthodox Judaism, wrote that "killing civilians was a normal thing in war time" and that the Israeli army "should not hesitate to kill non-Jewish civilians to save Jewish lives."
"The Christian preaching of 'turning the other cheek' doesn't concern us, and we will not be impressed by those who prefer the lives of our enemies to our lives," said the letter, signed by dozens of rabbis, including Haim Druckman, a former Knesset member who heads a large religious youth movement known as the Bnei Akiva Society.
Other signatories include Elizer Melamed, head of the West Bank religious college, Youval Sharlo, the head of the Talmudic college in Petah Tikva which combines Talmudic studies with active military service, and Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Arba near Hebron.
Lior, who had called Jewish mass murderer Baruch Goldstein a "great saint," argued that "it is very clear in light of the Torah that Jewish lives are more important than non-Jewish lives."
"A thousand non-Jewish lives are not worth a Jew's fingernail."
Goldstein on 25 February, 1994, murdered 29 innocent Palestinians who were praying at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron.
Jewish lives worth more
Talmudic edicts encouraging the targeting by the Israeli army of "enemy civilians" are based on several Talmudic injunctions as well as passages from the Old Testament where the Israelites are instructed by Yahweh to massacre every man, woman and child in the Land of Canaan and not to leave a living thing.
In fact, many Jewish rabbis supporting targeting enemy civilians in war time rely on Biblical passages such as Joshua 6-20:
"Then the people cried out, and still the trumpets blew, till every ear was deafened by the shouting and the clangor and all at once the walls fell down flat.and they took the city and all that was in it they slew, sparing neither man nor woman, neither youth nor age, even cattle and sheep and asses were put to the sword."
There are also numerous and unmistakable passages in the Babylonian Talmud that view non-Jews as animals whose lives have little or no significance.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert publicly declared in June that "Jewish lives are worth more than non-Jewish lives."
Talmudic edicts of this nature shouldn't be dismissed as insignificant.
Indeed, with nearly 50% of high-ranking officers serving in the Israeli army indoctrinated in the Talmudic ideology and affiliated with the so-called national-religious camp, e.g. Talmudic rulings are unlikely to fall on deaf ears in the Israeli army. Rabbi Weiss on Fax...oops FOX - Wonderful!
Friday August 4, 2006__________________________________
Rabbi Yisroel Weiss: This is the view that was shared throughout the past hundred years, when the whole movement of Zionism was created, the concept the ideology of transforming Judaism from spirituality, a religion, into materialism a nationalistic goal to have a piece of land, all the rabbinical authorities said this is antithetical with what Judaism is all about expressly forbidden by the Torah
because we are in exile by God. Cavuto: So, you shouldnıt have a state? You shouldnıt have a country? You shouldnıt have a government? Weiss: We shouldnıt have a state. We should be living amongst all the nations as the Jews were doing for two thousand years as loyal citizens, people who are serving God, emulating God with compassion . . .Contrary to what people believe, that itıs a religious conflict, we have been living for hundreds of years among Muslims and Arab
communities without any UN human rights groups to watch. Cavuto: Let me ask you this, Rabbi, was life better for the Jews prior to the creation of the Jewish state of Israel? Weiss: 100%. In Palestine, we have the testimony of the Jewish community living there and other lands that they were living in harmony and they pleaded with the United Nations, in the documents we have, the chief Rabbi of Jerusalem said we do not want a Jewish state. The Muslim, Christian and Jewish
inhabitants were ignored with the creation of the State . . . Cavuto: Nevertheless, you might not have had a country per se, but you were not a stranger to being abused or slaughtered over the millennia, particularly as recently as fifty sixty years ago? Weiss: There is an issue of being killed because of anti-semitism, and then thereıs another issue where you antagonize and you create your anti semitism through Zionism . . . in other words, itıs not a free for all you knock out
your neighbors windows and yell anti-semitism. Cavuto: I know you are an orthodox Jew, what do traditional Jews think of that position? Weiss: [The mainstream Jewish view] is that, true, we shouldnıt be having a state, but once itıs created the Zionist propaganda that the Arabs want to throw every Jew into the ocean and thereıs a ingrained hate against the Jews, which theyıve convinced many Jews to believe, this is why theyıre fearful of returning the land . . . Cavuto: Well you
canıt blame them, right, I mean you have the president of Iran who says the Holocaust never existed and if he had his druthers heıd destroy Israel and all the Jews. Weiss: Thatıs also patently false. He has a Jewish community in Iran and they havenıt murdered them when they had the opportunity to... Cavuto: So, you donıt take him at his word that he would try to kill Jews? Weiss: He would [want] the dismantling of the political state of Israel. In fact, we went, a whole group of
Rabbis this last year to visit Iran, and we were taken up by the leaders, we met with the vice president, he [Ahmedinejad] was in Venezuela at the time, we met with religious leaders, all of them stated unequivocally that (they-Iran)donıt have a conflict with [Jews]. Cavuto: So as long as Israel exists, Rabbi, you think just itching for trouble. Weiss: Jews are suffering, Palestinians and Lea are suffering . . . we pray for the speedy and peaceful dismantlment of the Jewish
state. Cavuto: Itıs interesting Rabbi, you donıt hear that view often. BACK TO SOMILAA |