Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [636]


They don't impact at all on religious freedoms. People here can follow whatever religion they like. Likud is politically center-right, but it includes both religious and secular people.

Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [636]

It's not clear what the conditions are. It would include repentance for having done idol-worship. Since we haven't touched the stuff since ancient times, I think that's been fulfilled. I think the main condition is that as soon as the geo-political situation made it possible for us to return en masse, we did.

I am also Orthodox. Most of the Orthodox groups that opposed zionism before the war changed their minds since then. Now it's a very small minority that opposes it actively. Their reasons are totally religious and have nothing to do with anyone's human rights. They see the zionist movement as a rebellion against the exile decreed by G-d. They have no doubt about our eventual right to the land, but they want to keep it in the realm of a supernatural messianic age. In my eyes, they are like a hostage who has been imprisoned so long that he is afraid to leave captivity and believes he is meant to stay like that.

Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [636]


I'll oblige.


I don't think you're anti-semitic. I think you have very superficial knowledge about Jews, our history and you get most of your information about Israel from biased sources. You have a lot of assumptions about jews that are based on stereotypes. To be fair, I know very little about Scotland and its history, but then I don't give my opinions on Scottish affairs.


Why would G-d be against Zionism? His prophets predicted our return to Israel more than 2000 years ago.

History / Question about Warsaw Ghetto (shared building?) and Monument [29]

The Law Courts building had an entrance from the Aryan side on Ogrodowa Street, and for the Jewish side on Leszno Street. I've never seen a picture of it.

History / Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) started anti-Semitism? [101]


I find it odd too that there are so many threads about Jews. But I swear I'm not polonius or anyone else. I have only this one account and I don't start threads. When I see a comment about Jews or Israel, I react. You, on the other hand, Sokrates write more about Jews than anyone else. If you don't care, why do you have so much to say?

History / Casimir the Great (Kazimierz Wielki) started anti-Semitism? [101]


It's not as if everyone had one situation and the Jews had another one. In medieval times there was no such thing as a "regular Pole" and there was not one body of law that all were equally bound to except the Jews. People were either nobles, clergy, burgers, peasants... or Jews. We were a socio/religious/economic class. And each class had it's legal privileges and/or burdens. So there were privileges for Jews but there were severe limitations too. Jews didn't own land and neither did peasants. Jews had their own courts and so did the clergy.

So I don't think our "privileges" created anti-semitism. Anti-Jewish feeling was an ingrained part of European Christian culture and it needed no help from King Casimir.

Genealogy / Jewish Roots of Poland [636]


I have to correct you on the history. The word "Ashkenazi" in classical Hebrew simply means "German". The Ashkenazi Jews first formed a distinct identity in the rhineland in the early middle ages, and then spread to other parts of germany and france. In the late middle ages they started migrating Eastward to poland and later to Ukraine and Lithuania. The movement was from west to east until the 19th century when it reversed.

You can see this trend by looking at where the famous ashkenazi jewish scholars came from. Gershom Ben Yehuda was born in Metz in the 900s. A century later there was Rashi in Troyes and his grandchildren were the Tosafists who lived in Worms, Mainz and Speyer. (They were descendants of Jews who migrated from Italy and elsewhere.) Later scholars were in Rothenberg and Frankfurt. In the rennaissance period the big Jewish scholars were in Prague and German cities. You start hearing about big Polish and Lithuanian Jewish scholars in the 17th century. That's when the Hassidic movement was born. The greatest scholar of the 18th century was Elijah of Vilna. From then, the center of gravity for Jewish scholarship was Lithuania and Poland till WWII. During the 19th century Ashkenazim drifted to western europe the US and Palestine. The main centers of scholarship are now in Israel and the US, reflecting where most jews live.

News / Changing Face in Poland: Skinnhead Puts on a Skullcap [90]


The problem is that you believe all the bullsht arab propaganda that says we stole their country. What country did we steal from? There was no arab country here. There were arab people, and there still are. And if you look west from here to gibralatar and to the east from here to iraq there are arab countries as far as the eye can see.

News / Changing Face in Poland: Skinnhead Puts on a Skullcap [90]


This is called "Polish Forum" not any other name. And you, a Pole living in Poland, said what you said. Is it anti-polish to quote you?

News / Changing Face in Poland: Skinnhead Puts on a Skullcap [90]


There is no Jewish fraternity. And if there is, they haven't been telling me when the meetings are scheduled.

Genealogy / THE MEANING AND RESEARCH OF MY POLISH LAST NAME, SURNAME? [4501]


Bachur in Hebrew means young man. (Bachura means young woman).
Maybe it made its way to Polish through Yiddish, where it is pronounced "Bochur".

News / Changing Face in Poland: Skinnhead Puts on a Skullcap [90]






A simple story about a skinhead turning into the very person he used to hate – sounds like a good human interest story. But on Polish forum this creates a frenzy of nasty comments about Israel, Jew and Zionism and calls by Sokrates to kill Israelis. You're a sick lot of losers.

Meanwhile here in Israel, the weather today is balmy. The beaches are full of happy bathers (arabs too). The streets of my town are full of shoppers, and the parks have kids playing. The Israeli economy is doing well. The wheat in the fields is being harvested and there's a nice smell of orange blossoms in the air. I drove out to Jerusalem last night for dinner and had a lovely time. Lots of tourists around. The view of the full moon over the hills around Jerusalem was beautiful. Thank G-d, life here is great.

News / Changing Face in Poland: Skinnhead Puts on a Skullcap [90]


Which people do you think an orthodox jew in Warsaw is going to harass? Why do you have to judge everyone badly? I don't know this person or his personality, but I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt. If the story is true and he was confronted suddenly with the truth about his identity he could have reacted in much less constructive ways. Instead he undertook to change his life and try to repent. I hope he succeeds and that you all stop being so cynical.


...and here you're using circular reasoning.
First you claim that orthodox jews are backward and have dark age traditions (an odd accusation coming from a pagan). Then when confronted with the fact that many orthodox jews are wonderful, progressive people, you state that this makes them no longer orthodox – because they don't meet your definition of "orthodox".

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]

The source is the palestinian prisoners themselves. I see you don't believe that the Jerusalem Post is capable of writing a factual news story and must have made up the quote. So here's the story from the site of the Palestinian news agency Maan:

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]

I just came across an interesting article that should put an end to the nonsense about Israelis raping palestinian women, whether in prison or elsewhere:

jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=172472

The key sentence is this statement by female prisoners:
"Those who think that a Palestinian female prisoner is raped when she's arrested are living in an illusion and are mistaken," the female prisoners said. "There has never been such a case. Nor have we heard of a Palestinian family that killed their daughter after her release."

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


Most Israelis are patriotic but not fanatical about it. I don't know any Israelis who think supporting rapists will help preserve the homeland. Is that the way people think in Iran?

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]

Now I opened the other 2 links. One is identical to the first one about the case of the girl on the airbase and nothing to do with palestinians. And one indeed talks about Israeli interrogators raping palestinian prisoners. The source is Turkish quoting palestinians, so I'm skeptical about the truth of the report. Is there any corroboration of the report from any other source?

The accusation was made in 2004, six years ago. If this turned out to be true, it's hard to imagine that no one would know about it here where everyone talks about everything and everyone knows someone in the Shabak. The left wing press lives to expose scandals like this and would have put it on the front page of every newspaper, and yet I've never heard anything about it. So I doubt that it's true.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


So that's Grunwald's proof of Israelis raping palestinian women!? In the case you brought up from 2006, an Israeli girl, the daughter of an Israeli officer on an airbase was having sex with soldiers on the base. She was a minor and this was a sex crime. The case was investigated by both the police and the military police. The soldiers were punished. You've proven the obvious fact that Israel, like any society in the world, has cases of sex crimes. The good news is that we have a police and justice system that prosecutes offenders.

But where are the israeli soldiers raping palestinian women that the persian is so certain of?

History / Israeli wants to wipe Poland off the map! [198]

You people are all crazy! Why would Israel bomb Poland? Why not Portugal or Mauritius? Look how a stupid quote taken out of context from an article written in 2003 about something else has generated so many comments.


This quote is totally manufactured. If you believe that Menachem Begin actually said this then you are an idiot. Where is your source, Stormfront?

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


It's clear you've made up your mind. You make allegations based on anti-israel propaganda and when you can't prove your allegations you call the other side close-minded. Your world-class education seems to be lacking something.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


Before Zionism came along, palestine was a primitive neglected region of the Ottoman empire with no industry or infrastructure to speak of. Other parts of the Arab world, such as Iraq and Egypt, were far more developed. Zionist immigration created jobs for people from surrounding regions, which explains the dramatic increase in Arab population during the 1st half of the 20th century. After 1948, the west bank was under jordanian rule and gaza was under egyptian rule and they were worse off than under the british. Since 1967 when we took over, both areas grew in terms of economy, education and healthcare. Until the intifada, tens of thousands of palestinians worked in Israel and their economy was growing. All the problems they have now are due to their violent struggle against israel, which continued even after we left Gaza.

History / Why did Hitler kill so many Jews in Poland? [261]


Are you saying that the French police did not round up the Jews of Paris and that Lithuanians and Latvians didn't help murder their Jews and that the Croatians didn't participate? These are facts. You can explain the reasons all you want, but you can't deny that it happened. It wasn't one man and it wasn't one nation that did this.

History / Why did Hitler kill so many Jews in Poland? [261]

You're all talking about why Hitler wanted to kill the jews. There are all kinds of nutjobs who think that killing the Jews will save the world. You can find them in the gutters of any city and even on this forum. The real question is how this maniac got the cultured German nation to carry it out. And how did the Germans get the Balts, Ukrainians and French (and others) to help them murder. So why ask about Hitler? Ask why Europe wanted to kill the Jews.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


You can repeat bullsh*t as many times as you want and it still won't make it true.
As far as rights to education: There were no palestinian universities in the west bank before the israeli takeover in 1967. Not one. Now there are 7 universities. And palestinians also study at Hebrew University, Haifa University, Ben Gurion U and elsewhere in Israel.

As far as healthcare, here you really show your ignorance. Every hospital in Israel, particularly those in Jerusalem, has plenty of arab patients and staff both from Israel proper and the "territories", as you'll see in this article:

israelseen.com/2008/05/18/another-ridiculous-fabrication-racism-in-israeli-hospitals-by-ralph-dobrin/

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


And what a superficial and ludicrous point it is.
Lots of people died here and lots of people died there. So it must be a similar situation.
Except that Germany really was trying to create an empire while Israel is about the size of Wales and is not looking to conquer any territory beyond what it now controls. You can say we don't have a right to have any territory at all including the ground we're standing on, but that doesn't make us empire builders. Oh, and there was that detail of ghettos, death trains going to extermination camps, crematoriums and an industrialized program to exterminate an entire people, men women and children that succeeded in killing 6 million or so Jews and millions of non-Jews. I guess that's the same as the 1300 killed unintentionally in the fighting between Hamas and Israel.

Stop throwing around your recycled propaganda as if it was an informed opinion.

Genealogy / Looking for a Polish Jew "Nina" saved in the war [10]

I'm not sure why Nina's family would mind if your father decided to move to Australia. But anyway, keep us posted. It's an interesting story.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


No. Revenge against idiots like you who would like to see us fail.


Actually it's the other way around: Israeli prosperity benefits palestinians, increasing jobs. Palestinian prosperity is good for us too because it tends to encourage moderation. It doesn't have to be a zero sum game.


The barking dogs reference was not about Arabs but about people like you who keep criticizing while we build the country. Dogs can come from any race.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


There you've gotten to the crux of the issue. If you think every nation in the world has a right to self-determination except for the Jews that would explain why you so easily accept the most outrageous assumptions about Israel.

But there is an israeli expression, adapted from Arabic, that says "the dogs will bark but the caravan will keep moving". You keep on with your ignorance. You keep barking. Meanwhile, we'll keep building our country. The best revenge is living a good life. And that we will do.

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


I agree. We don't justify it and we don't do that.


I agree. We don't systematically kill palestinians. There is no policy to do that. We do however fight armed groups that fight us, as any country would.

Again, you have assumptions that are either completely baseless or highly exaggerated, and you're basing you opinions on that.


There's an easy answer for that. The arabs would outnumber the Jews at some point simply by encouraging immigration from the arab world that surrounds us (25 countries with a combined population of 358 million people). If that would happen, Jews would not be allowed in anymore. This scenario would lead to a civil war far bloodier than what's happening now.


That's called Leftist defeatism. It happens in the best of countries.

By the way, there are many Persian Jews prominent in Israel, such as Shaul Mofaz, former chief of staff, Rita Yahan-Farouz a very popular singer. You can listen to her here:

...

Travel / Poland from a Persian Tourist's Perspective [269]


No it's not true. In most places here you don't see more of a police presence than any city in Europe or the US. Even less. Your wife was touring so she likely went to the Old City in Jerusalem. There you would find soldiers or police patrolling on foot.


What your wife also probably saw were soldiers on leave who normally carry their weapon on the way home or to their base. So it's very normal here to sit next to a soldier on a bus who has an M16 between his knees. They are not ready to fire, and if your wife knows anything about guns she would probably have noticed that the magazine is not inserted and the Safety is on. In my army years I would often ride on a bus with an M16, but in a crowded place you hold it with the butt down and the barrel facing up to avoid accidents.


You don't really notice it unless there's some security situation going on.