History / Poles should emulate Jews? [153]

I was waiting to see where this discussion is going, before I jump in, but it's not going anywhere. People are just repeating their opinions for or against "The Jews". Nothing interesting yet.

Polonius, what reactions did you expect from your idea?

Life / Importance of Religion in Poland [187]


Not quite. The first christians were. But then Paul opened up membership to non-Jews. And later still, Constantine made it the official religion of the roman empire. By then your religion bore very little resemblance to the original, and Jesus went far beyond being merely the Messiah – he became the deity himself. Where did that idea come from? It couldn't have been from us.

Genealogy / I'm looking for family history information - Martha Forbrich [7]


Very unlikely. Yiska is a rarely used name among Jews in the last 4000 years, although it may have a comeback one day. It was the name of Abraham's niece.

I did hear of the name Yissachar being shortened to Yiska.

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]


Point of information:
Lot was not the ancestor of the Jews. He was the ancestor of the nations of Moab and Ammon. His uncle Abraham was the ancestor of the Jews and several other nations.

And by the way, as far as the discussion of biblical morality, the Bible gives no indication that Lot was a role model for anything. He was just Abraham's nephew who was always getting into trouble.

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]

All your quotes are from the New testament. Not my bible. You'd have to ask a christian about that. In the Jewish Bible Lot isn't referred to as righteous.

By the way, while we're on this topic, notice that Noah got drunk and was molested by his son Ham after the flood, and Lot was made drunk by his daughters and then molested (for lack of a better word) after the destruction of Sodom. Apparently the trauma of seeing the world destroyed led to screwed up behavior in some people.

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]


He wouldn't find that very pleasant. The arab christian population is gradually leaving the palestinian controlled areas because they are bullied by the Muslims, especially in Hamas-controlled Gaza.

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]


Ethnically they are Arabs, so they try to be as "palestinian" as their muslim neighbors. But the palestinian national movement is increasingly dominated by the muslims. In the past they had a bigger role but they've been overpowered.


I'd love to call you anti semite if i thought you were, but what did you say that was supposed to offend me?


Long story. Sure we're cousins, but there's a big quarrel over who gets the family estate.


Giving them territory won't finish the dispute. As our outspoken foreign minister said, even if we give them Tel Aviv, they won't call an end to the dispute. They already control most of the west bank and all of Gaza. The dispute defines them as a nation. Without it, they'd just be arabs, no different than syrians or jordanians.

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]


Stupid comment. The persecution of christians is common all over the Muslim world, not just in the palestinian areas. Did the iraqi muslims bomb that church out of solidarity with the palestinians?

blogs.news.sky.com/foreignmatters/Post:589c662c-561b-4078-80cd-939232efc60d

And for your "starving" palestinians, here's a list of restaurants in Ramallah they might want to try.

paltour.net/palestine-tourist-services/palestine-restaurants/restaurants-in-ramallah/187.php

News / A devestating verdict on the Polish church [279]


In other words, you're saying that we only let them have restaurants while we set up the trains to ship them off to extermination camps? That's the conclusion your ridiculous analogy leads to. No. They are simply not starving. There is no shortage of goods in the West Bank. Their economy has grown about 7% lately. In Gaza the situation is not good, but still there is plenty of food to eat. If not for Hamas, they'd be in the same situation as the west bank. For more information about the economic situation in the palestinian territories, try this link:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Palestinian_territories

History / Insoluble Judaeo-Polish imbroglio? [44]


Is it really important anymore? Our two peoples are no longer living together. Our two countries get along fine.

History / Insoluble Judaeo-Polish imbroglio? [44]


I didn't see it or hear of it till now. From what I see i the website, it's telling the arab narrative of what happened. It might be good television drama but don't assume that it's history.

History / Insoluble Judaeo-Polish imbroglio? [44]


What the fck are you talking about?! I re-read my comment and then your insane rant and I honestly don't know what set you off. I never said anything that you accuse me of saying. I just sent you a caveat that TV shows are not necessarily accurate history, and that the summary on their website sounded more arab-oriented than Jewish oriented (not a rare thing in Europe, not even rare in Israel) and you go flying off the handle with all kinds of imagined things that I never said. I wouldn't recommend Exodus as a source of history either. But you hear what you want to hear (there are medications for that problem). Just like you fabricated statements I never made and opinions I never expressed, your lot fabricate all kinds of nonsense about Israelis and what we think and do. The picture in your mind about who we are is a figment of your imagination fed by crap that you read on the internet. It has nothing at all to do with what we are, or what Israel is all about. You are ignorant and, apparently, deranged.

History / Insoluble Judaeo-Polish imbroglio? [44]


Please say you're joking. There is not one Jew living in Jordan except the Israeli ambassador. There is not one functioning Jewish community left in any Arab country except Morocco.

Life / The day Poland ran out of artists. [40]


I would hope that if the artist in question was a polish jew he wouldn't object. But she's actually an Israeli living part time in Amsterdam, so I find it odd that she was chosen by Poland. Her work relates to Poland but it's not Polish. Maybe poland really did run out of artists.

Off-Topic / Countries and your associations in 5 words/descriptions. [56]


Pile of stone? I guess you've never been there.
Here's 5 words: "Land of milk and honey".

News / Multi-culti (in Poland) -- roadmap to disaster? [344]


Ethnic, racial and cultural diversity are all good, but only if it's done in small doses. No country should be excpected to commit cultural suicide just to be nice to immigrants. But when it's done carefully, it enriches a country in every way: through cultural cross-pollenization it enriches the music and literature, and a bit of racial diversity can actually improve the gene pool by minimizing the chances for genetic diseases. The fact is that the US is one of the most mixed societies inthe world and look what it achieved. Israel is ,on the one hand, mostly Jewish, but on the other hand we absorb Jews from every part of the world so there's an incredible amount of cultural diversity and cross-fertilization. I think that a lot of what we accomplished in a short time is because of that diversity.

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.

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'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

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]

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]


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]


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]


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 / 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 / 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]


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]


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.

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?

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.