History of the Jewish People

[Slavicus Sniperus]

Hey, my aim for this topic is to get a better understanding of their history, religion, how they think, why they are hated so much ect ect.

I want to hear different peoples opinion on this subject as I have some of my own but I don't know all to well about them.

I have a few questions also.

What do they worship? Why were they placed in Jerusalem after WW2 seeing as it's one of the most holy places on earth, if not the holiest to my understanding. Why throughout history have they been hated? Are they evil? what is neopost? What do they believe in?

Why does america arm them to the teeth? Why can they get away with expanding their borders taking homes from palestine?

If you could answer these questions, great, if not can you share your thoughts on this subject as I would like to hear what people think/know about this.

[Dr Zoidberg]

What do they worship?

They worship Yaweh, aka God. Hes the God of the Old Testament. They also believe in a Messiah but Jesus wasn't it. They're still waiting.

Why were they placed in Jerusalem after WW2 seeing as it's one of the most holy places on earth, if not the holiest to my understanding.

Jerusalem and the surrounding area was tradionally their home. Many of events in the old testament occur in what is now modern Israel.

Why throughout history have they been hated?

Well, a number of reasons really. Fear, ignorance, scape-goating of minorities. There is no one reason. The persectution of Jews is tied in with the Christian church blaming them for the death of Chritst, something they only repealled in 1967 during the Second Vatican council.

Are they evil?

No! Most definitely not.

what is neopost?

I am not sure of this one... somebody help.

Why does america arm them to the teeth?

Because Israel is a valuable ally in a region that otherwise hates the US.

Why can they get away with expanding their borders taking homes from palestine?

Because technically its their land. There has never been a Palestinian state. The Palestinians are essentially Arab nomads and refugees who have been forgotten and ignored by the rest of the Arab world. They cause problems for Israel which makes the Arab states happy as they hate Israel with a pasison.

[username]

What do they worship?

First of all, many Jews are atheists (like Allen Conigsberg, also known as Woody Allen) and hence dont worship anything, but those who worship belong to the religion called Judaism. If you have ever read or at least held the bible in your hands - Judaism is the religion of the old testament. If you havent - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism .

Why were they placed in Jerusalem after WW2 seeing as it's one of the most holy places on earth, if not the holiest to my understanding

They were not placed there, they were there before anyone else was there :rolleyes As for 'one of the most holy places on earth', I wasnt aware there is a register of holy places and am very curious what is the criterion of 'most holy' and who came up with it.

Why throughout history have they been hated?

It's not true 'they' have been hated throughout history - for that to be the case you have to limit history to several periods in the development of the Mediterranean and have to take for granted that everyone who was non-jewish hated 'them'. I havent heard of any Aztech-Jewish, Mayan-Jewish, Bantu-Jewish, Tao-Jewish, Buddhist-Jewish or Manitu-Jewish conflicts. One can better say it that Judaism has had an 'uneasy relationship' with two cultures - that of the Roman Empire and that of Christianity. The latter should be credited with the full scope of anti-semitism. More on anti-semitism here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-semitism

are they evil?

To answer this question you have to define what is evil as an absolute category and I dont think you are up to that yet.

what is neopost?

Huh?

What do they believe in?

I guess you just wanted to repeat your first question ('What do they worship?&#39 in order to reinforce the newly-acquired knowledge :rolleyes

Why does america arm them to the teeth?

I wasnt aware the US is arming Jews to their teeth - it rather arms the country known as Israel which is populated by many Jews but also Arabs . As for the reasons why Israel receives lots of military aid from the US - it depends on which side of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict you are. Heres something to enlighten you what am I talkin about: : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel#...r_the_conflict

Why can they get away with expanding their borders taking homes from palestine?

Good question, the answer to which lies in your previous question - because the US is arming them to the teeth...

[Slavicus Sniperus]

Neopost (I'm not sure the correct spelling) it's something that was written by the jews saying to get rich you have to overcome 3 things, family, love and god. Not too sure on the correct spelling.

"Jerusalem and the surrounding area was tradionally their home"

- Throughout history, ownership of lands has changed by conflict ect. If everyone takes back their "traditional" land, who owns what? I don't think it's a god given right for anyone to be placed somewhere they used to live. What would stop everyone from doing it? Do you see my point?

"Because Israel is a valuable ally in a region that otherwise hates the US"

-I see your point about protection I think I understand this now.


"Because technically its their land. There has never been a Palestinian state. The Palestinians are essentially Arab nomads and refugees who have been forgotten and ignored by the rest of the Arab world. They cause problems for Israel which makes the Arab states happy as they hate Israel with a pasison."

- I don't like this answer you have given. I don't think Arab states are happy fellow arabs are slaughtered, I think this is just another reason for terrorism. Again, because they once owned it, doesn't mean they have more right than people living their now. How could you justify taking peoples homes away and leaving them nowhere to live? I don't understand.

[smack]

Split this original thread from the Palestine-Israel debate.

[Bovril]

My (incredibly) brief history of the Jews up till 1939:

Identifyible Jewish people and religion came into being in the period of unpheavel that marked the end of the Bronze age and start of the Iron age in the Near East. Whilst traditionally they have been seen as having a much longer history than that there is really no non-mythological/legendary evidence for it. They were hill farmers in Galilee, but slowly extended their influence into the fertile coastal plain. It is likely that many Jewish leaders, including David (provided he is a historical figure) were mercenaries cum chieftans and there was no unified Jewish state untill Saul united the hill tribes. Even then, a unified religion is bot born out by archaeological evidence.
Anyhoo, the Jewish state split in two after and didn't last long, getting trashed first by Assyria and then by Babylon, who took alot of Jews, especially nobles, to Babylonia this was a formative period for Jewish religion, and alot of traditions and scripture date to this time, since the Jews reacted to exile by strengthening their identity. A bit later Cyrus freed them and helped them rebuild the temple. Israel was part of the Persian Empire, then Alexander's Empire, then the Selucid and Ptolomeic Empires. Then they rebelled under the Macabees. Soon Rome swallowed them up, and after tehy rebelled twice against Rome they were dispersed. This was the end of beggining of the diaspoa, with Jews living everywhere, from India to Egypt to Britain, but very few living in what has once been the kingdom of Israel.
The Jews were for the most part ok under Roman/Byzantine/Islamic/Sassanian rule in the following decades, and the talmuds (extensive interpretation of the scripture) got written in late antiquity and the medieval period under these regimes, mainly in Babylon and Jerusalem. There long distance contacts helped them facilitate trade.

In Medieval Christendom however, people weren't so keen on the jews. Lots of reasons for this including scapegoating, fanaticism, the belief that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, the fact that rulers forced them to become money lenders since Christians were forbidden from doing this, and their determination to maintain their own cultural identity were all facoters. Pogroms and inquisitions killed or exciled many jews across Europe. From the enlightenment on we see a gradual acceptance of jews in Europe, and in many countries they finally gained equal rights and full citizenship.

In the mid 19th century Zionism, the belief that jews should form a state for themselves in thier traditional homland of some 2 millenia ago, gathered steam. This was based around the belief that the diaspora way of life was not good for jews or anyone else (Herzl, Zionism's most prominent figure, said that the number of jews in Germany were so many it gave the country 'stomach pains&#39. Consequently, incresing nubers of jews started moving to Palestine and settling there. The founders of Zionism had envisaged a peaceful co-existance between jews and Arabs in palestine, but the increasingly religious and anti-arab wing of the Zionist movement and the local arabs who saw a large scale influx of jews as a threat to their way of life started to fight each other. In early exchanges the jews were chiefly the victims, but as time went on they armed and organised themselves, and when the British withdrew from Palestine it was pretty much a free for all. The Israelis citied the balfour agreement as grounds for the borders of israel, and the arabs cited the U.N. resolution, and the fact that 600,000 of them had been forcibly evicted from their land and a further 200,000 thousand had fled as proof that they should have their own state. Anyway I slipped into the realms of the other thread so I'll finish the history. Hope it was useful!

[general maximus decimus]

Why were they placed in Jerusalem after WW2 seeing as it's one of the most holy places on earth, if not the holiest to my understanding.

first of all, there have allways been jews in palestine, and especially in Jerusalem

Second of all jews have been migrating to palestine ever since the Britisch signed/issued the balfour decleration (1917 I think).

Third, they didn't asked to be placed in palestine, they were thinking more in the lines of Ethiopië. But offcourse when the Britisch proposed Palestine they never let that idea go.

Fourth, the majority of the jewish refugees didn't migrate to Palestine untill the Britisch left it in 1948. After the rebellion of the local arabs in 1937(?) the britisch tried to minimize the number of jews entering the country.

[Bovril]

I'm not sure its true that the choice of Israel was a British sugestion. Herzl, in 'The Jewish State', envisages the Jewish homeland as being in Israel, although he also proposed Argentina as an option. Still in the first Zionist council 1897 (I think) they had a big old debate and decided to go for Israel. This was well before the Balfour declaration, and even before then Jewish emegration to Palestine was common. For example Moses Hess wrote advocating it in the 1860s. The kibutz movement began in 1909. The First British proposal was a state in what is now Kenya, which was rejected by the Zionist movement. The Soviet Union established a 'Jewish autonomous republic' in Siberia, but this did not catch on (for obvious reasons&#33.

[general maximus decimus]

Originally posted by Bovril@May 26 2005, 06:53 PM
I'm not sure its true that the choice of Israel was a British sugestion. Herzl, in 'The Jewish State', envisages the Jewish homeland as being in Israel, although he also proposed Argentina as an option. Still in the first Zionist council 1897 (I think) they had a big old debate and decided to go for Israel. This was well before the Balfour declaration, and even before then Jewish emegration to Palestine was common. For example Moses Hess wrote advocating it in the 1860s. The kibutz movement began in 1909. The First British proposal was a state in what is now Kenya, which was rejected by the Zionist movement. The Soviet Union established a 'Jewish autonomous republic' in Siberia, but this did not catch on (for obvious reasons&#33.

hmm, never knew that. I might have read it wrong, or remembered it wrong.

[Turek The Terrible]

Modern Israel was formed in 1948 through the War of Independence. Jews that had fought in WWII on the allied side trained and formed units in advance, transferred weapons and equipment to be ready when the British would leave.