History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]

This is true. The US did almost nothing to specifically help Jews in the holocaust. Obviously they fought Germany, but they could have let in refugees during the war and they didn't, they could have bombed auschwitz and they didn't. So his statement has a point. But this is the first I'm hearing that Poland paid compensation to the US, which included money due to former polish jews in the US. When did that happen?

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]


Did I mention the Rothschilds anywhere? Did the Rothschilds sacrifice 6 million jews? Satanic aims? What the hell are you talking about? You sound like a paranoid- schizophrenic.


I never heard that one before. So I just checked the text of Sanhedrin 59a (in the original Aramaic/Hebrew text) and sure enough, your quote is not there. I did see there the opinion of Rav Meir quoted where he says that a non-Jew who studies torah is as holy as the high priest in the temple.

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]


Your holy bible also includes Deuteronomy in case you've forgotten. So you'll have to deal with that too.
Mine doesn't include "revelations" so I'm not concerned with what it says.

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]


I suppose that we started WWI and WWII.
You're drivel shows what you are. People like you often accuse Jews of labeling any critic of Israel as an antisemite, as if we're trying to muzzle legitimate criticism of Israel. Well, when you say that the Jews started world wars and you bring the book of revelations to predict our punishment by God, then it's clear that you're nothing but a classic anti-semite. There, I used the word. There is no other way describe your sick and evil attitude.


Yes, I think that you personally are stupid, and I really think you don't know one damn thing about what we're doing. If you did, you'd be ashamed to say such nonsense.


It was people like you who wanted us out of Europe, so we went to Israel. Now you want us out of there too. What does that make you, a legitimate critic of Israel? No it makes you the same thing that Peter Rossa is – an antisemite. Wear the label boldly if that's what you really believe in.

My point in answering these creeps is to show all the sane people out there that a good deal of the criticism you hear about Israel is not legitimate at all but simply a new mutation of jew-hatred. Don't even assume that there's some truth to it. Instead visit Israel, look around, talk to people and form your own opinion.


In case someone wants to know more about Peter Rossa and what a wonderful human being he is, you can hear his opinions on this site: realjewnews.com/?p=702

Just scroll down to his comment quoting Revelations. Sounds pretty much the same as what he wrote here. You can judge a man by the company he keeps.

"Realjew news" indeed. That's a real class act Peter.

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]


Except that we didn't.

Let me ask you a simple question: If Israel has any policy of exterminating Arabs, how is it that i see Arabs in the street and in stores every day here in my Israeli town? How can it be that they're in the parliament, are treated (and employed) in israeli hospitals and sit in classrooms with everyone else in Israeli universities. How can it be that there are arabs living all over israel leading normal lives and enjoying more political rights than any citizen of an arab country? If we are the new nazis, how can all that be true? And yet I see it every day! You simply have no idea about what Israel really is, and instead you just repeat lies and bullshit. I have nothing against arabs. I do have something against filth like you.


For the benefit of anyone who thinks that PR actually knows something about Israel, the only ones that did ethnic cleansing in the middle east are the arabs:

Every inch of land conquered by the arab forces in 1948 was "cleansed' of Jews. On the other hand, arabs continue to live in Israel to this day. Jews were forced out of Iraq and Egypt leaving all their property behind. Arabs practice ethnic cleansing in Sudan, Iraq and Egypt, against christians and jews. Where's your concern for ethnic cleansing when the arabs are doing it?

Language / How similar are Polish and Romanian languages? [75]


The revival of Hebrew was a central part of zionist goal of reviving the independence of the jewish people. It was as hard to get jews away from yiddish as it was to get Irish away from English. In pre-state palestine, people talking yiddish in the street were sometimes reprimanded by passers by and told to speak Hebrew and not "jargon". This of course didn't stop my grandmother from speaking only Yiddish. But the fact is that today millions of people have Hebrew as their mother tongue. This was unimaginable 100 years ago.

UK, Ireland / Are Polish people importing a new wave of ancient racism into the UK? [402]


This is in the realm of sociology, which is not an exact science. It's not pseudo-science because it doesn't claim to be an exact science. Racist theories, on the other hand, do claim to be scientific. When the nazis measured skulls, they were trying to give a scientific justification to their paranoia. Hutus didn't use racial theories to kill Tutsis. But that didn't make them any better.

UK, Ireland / Are Polish people importing a new wave of ancient racism into the UK? [402]


Sure:
I think racial classification is a pseudo-science and an irrelevant way of classifying human beings. So then, you ask, what is "racism"? Racism is a type of hatred based on this pseudo-science. The people who believe in it disagree with my opinion.

UK, Ireland / Are Polish people importing a new wave of ancient racism into the UK? [402]


I don't think race can be defined. But racists think it can. And when they translate that into hatred, that's racism.

UK, Ireland / Are Polish people importing a new wave of ancient racism into the UK? [402]


To me, race is an irrelevant and outdated concept. It's done more harm than good to the world.
So I don't see a need to define it.

UK, Ireland / Are Polish people importing a new wave of ancient racism into the UK? [402]


I think these classifications are pseudo-science.
They were made up by people who never met an Indian, an Arab or a Native American.

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]

Oops! You're right. The Phillipines were/was definitely a colony. The Bronx was also occupied by white settlers in the 1700s at the expense of the native-american inhabitants of the Bronx. (One can only imagine what their accent must have sounded like). But seriously, when people say "The Ukraine" they refer to what was a region of Russia until very recently. Is that colonialist? Was it ever an independent country before that?

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]


Yes. Much like The Philippines, The Riviera, and The Bronx – colonies all.

History / Why are Jews pestering Poland for "proper" WW2 monetary restitution/reparations? [750]


What?! We're not even allowed to be extroverts anymore? Why the special treatment for introverts?

Off-Topic / Book: Gogol's Taras Bulba [37]


I didn't know Tony Curtis was Ukrainian!

Genealogy / How common is it for other people of Polish origin to discover they are actually Jewish? [127]


If you've ever been to Israel, you'd see more of them languishing in shopping malls than in refugee camps. All Arabs living in Israel proper are either citizens or they rejected citizenship for political/ideological reasons. Perpetuating a refugee problem is the intentional policy of Arabs who benefit politically from this situation. In the years that Jordan and Egypt controlled the West Bank and Gaza, the refugee camps were not dismantled. Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria are not allowed to live outside the refugee camps. Palestinians in Lebanon and Syria are not given the right to work in certain professions and their ownership of land is limited.

Genealogy / How common is it for other people of Polish origin to discover they are actually Jewish? [127]


The criteria for becoming an Israeli citizen are not the same as the religious definition of Jewishness according to Jewish law.
According to Jewish law, a person who is born to a Jewish mother is a Jew (whether they keep the religion or not). A non-Jew who converts to the Jewish religion officially before a Jewish religious court becomes a Jew. If she's a woman, her children born after that will automatically be Jews.

Israeli civil law has its own rules of citizenship: A person born to a Jewish mother or father, or someone whose spouse is a Jew can become an Israeli citizen. That doesn't mean this person is recognized as a Jew, just that they have Israeli citizenship (there are many non-Jews who have Israeli citizenship). If a person converted to Judaism before coming to Israel, the Interior ministry checks if the conversion was valid according to their rules and if it is, they can become a citizen just like any other Jew. I never heard of DNA tests being involved in any way.

Genealogy / How common is it for other people of Polish origin to discover they are actually Jewish? [127]


If you're so jewish then let's see you run the world's financial system. Let's see you take over Hollywood! Have you ever gotten a Nobel Prize? Are you clannish? Don't think it's easy to be a Jew. We're always busy fomenting trouble and instigating wars, when we're not talking loudly and trashing Polish hotels. This is hard work. Are you up to it?

History / Why did communism in Poland fail? [180]


If you want to define Zionism as the age-old desire of Jews to return to Zion, then Marx was even further from that than he was from the political Zionist movement later started by Herzl (years after Marx died). Marx was not interested in anything having to do with the Jewish religion, which he hated, or Jewish peoplehood, which he saw as an economic issue.

To say Marx was a zionist makes as much sense as saying that he was a Buddhist. Drop it.

History / Why did communism in Poland fail? [180]


You are being sarcastic I hope. Marx died before the Zionist movement was founded. If you're trying to say that he held beliefs similar to the Zionist approach, then I guess you've never read his "Zur Judenfrage". Marx discussed the issue of emanication of the Jews in Europe, mostly from an economic point of view, and their assimilation into European society. The idea of them reviving themselves as a nation and moving back to the ancient homeland would have seemed bizarre to him.

History / Why did communism in Poland fail? [180]


The Pole has a point.


and what wing Pole are you?

History / Why did communism in Poland fail? [180]


Communism failed in Poland just like it failed everywhere else. The whole idea was bad to begin with. In Israel we used to be proud that we had the only successful example of pure socialism, the kibbutz. But in the past 15 years the kibbutzim (that's plural for kibbutz) also started changing and privatizing and gradually became normal farming villages where familes live normal lives with private ownership and salaries.

In the old days the collective system worked well because it was on a very small scale and everyone on a kibbutz knew each other personally. That helped strengthen the feeling of common responsibility that you need to keep people working for the collective. There was no private property, people lived simply and ate together in the communal dining room. All this was accomplished without the brutality associated with state communism, because of the small scale and personal involvement. But even without the need to overthrow tyranny, the system faded away. Financial considerations overpowered ideology. It was bound to happen after a generation or two.

So if you take Poland where the whole system was imposed on a countrywide level by force, it was bound to fail.

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]


Yes, I also thought that we were getting off the topic, but Des E insists that it's all about Israel and the palestinians...

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]


We like to leave a few good ones around for old times' sake.


You're probably right about the motivation of some of the British politicians who supported Zionism. But, interestingly, some of the same people supported Arab nationalism (TE Lawrence supported both), and not necessarily for manipulative purposes. Because in those days it wasn't self-evident that the two nationalisms were in conflict.

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]


You clearly have no clue about Israeli society. No law in Israel requires you to believe in the religion and keep it's laws. That's a private matter. Most people are not orthodox here, although i am. In the public sphere there are laws that are based on the religion, like those governing marriages and the establishment of Saturday as the official day of rest, and the religious holidays are the national holidays. Just like Christmas and Easter are national holidays in most European countries. But if someone wants to drive his car on sabbath and eat meat with milk and go to the beach on Yom Kippur, no one will stop him and there's no law against it. Again I want to repeat. Israel is a Jewish State in that it's the state of the nation known as "Jews" aka Israelites, Hebrews or whatever you like to call them. It's not a theocracy and it's not governed by rabbis. We have elections and political parties like other normal countries.


Talking off the top of your head and making up "facts". Here are some statistics to think about:
“some 11,000,000 Muslims have been violently killed since 1948, of which 35,000, or 0.3 percent, died during the sixty years of fighting Israel, or just 1 out of every 315 Muslim fatalities. In contrast, over 90 percent of the 11 million who perished were killed by fellow Muslims.”

By Gunnar Heinsohn and Daniel Pipes, FrontPageMagazine, October 8, 2007

...and that's not counting the massacres going on now in Syria and Libya.

You might also enjoy writing about this: Poland and Orientalism

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]

True that most of the "Islamic Republics" that are scattered all across the middle east are somewhat primitive and have a soft spot for terrorism. But to say that a nation can't have it's own religion is an arbitrary statement that makes no sense.

Anyway, when we call Israel the "Jewish State" we refer to the ethnic group know as the Jews who have a nation state. Just like the Poles have one.

If you're looking for parallels between the Arab Israel conflict and attitudes toward Poland, there are better ones that what you came up with. For example: Since the partitions, no one but the Poles saw the need for a Polish state. Everyone else in Europe was happy with Russia and Germany sharing a border with no pesky Polish nationalists between them. But Poles believed that Poland was not lost. And they established their independence and had to defend it against brutal enemies from east and west. Similarly, no one saw the need for a Jewish state except the Jews who believed that Judea was not lost. We built a country, won our independence and then defended ourselves from brutal enemies on all sides.

We have a lot in common.

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]


Your comparison doesn't work unless you want to be superficial. Most Jews in Israel are from Middle eastern background in recent history (parents or grandparents born in Middle eastern countries) and all Jews are of middle eastern background from Roman times. Jews and Arabs have prejudices against each other but it's not an issue of "orientalism". It's more an issue of old religious differences (similar to Jewish-Christian tensions) and more recently the result of Arab violence against the Jewish return. Sure, if you read 19th century European Jewish writers you'll find "orientalist" attitudes, since these people were influenced by European attitudes in general. But the driving force of the Zionist movement was to return the Jews to their land, not to screw the Arabs. They are perfectly capable of screwing themselves.

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]

I've spoken on the Israel-Palestine issue many times as you know, in threads that have to do with that, so if someone wants to review my opinions he can do a search. This thread has to do with so-called orientalist attitudes toward Poland, so I won't repeat them here. Des Essientes could have either commented on my post or ignored it. But instead he takes the opportunity to bash me for being Israeli. He gets off on hatred.

If you think arabs and jews can't get a long you should see the different christian sects in Jerusalem. There's a ladder in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre that can't be moved because one of the sects put it there more than 100 years ago and if one of the other christian sects moves it, it will cause a riot among the christians.

You can read about it here...

atlasobscura.com/place/immovable-ladder-church-holy-sepulchre

Travel / Przemysl and/or Rzeszow and/or Sandomierz [14]


On my one visit to Poland, I saw a nice place outside of Przemysl. There's a village right on the border called Siedliska. You get there by turning off the road to Medyka before you reach the border. If you follow the road through the village into the forest and keep going after the sign that says not to, you'll find a large old Austrian fortress that's gradually being overgrown by the forest. It's a little dangerous to walk around there because there are tunnels and shafts and nothing is marked. But it's fascinating in a spooky way.

History / Poland and Orientalism [115]


I'll go further than that: At the next secret meeting of the Jewish Zionist Elders of Hollywood, I'll suggest a biopic on Bismark. If I can get a script from Pinching Pete, we can talk business.

But seriously...
Since when did Jews have a problem with Bismark? He was never considered an enemy of the Jews. In fact Jews in germany were all for unification – it gave them a flag they could identify with, which they lacked when germany was made of small kingdoms. Local Jews didn't identify themselves nationally with the various german-speaking kingdoms of central Europe, but when they unified it created a new identity which they identified with totally. Unfortunately for them, the germans didn't quite agree, and we know how that ended.


Is it so unfashionable to be a white from the West that Poles are now calling themselves "oriental"?
I was in Poland once and it looked totally european to me. There's something comical about ethnic groups all around the world trying to get "street cred" by claiming that they're not white. Don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything so great about being white, but there's nothing so bad about it either. Poles, just be yourselves.