ARIK SHARON Z”L. HE WAS MY HERO

Times of Israel

ARIEL SHARON DIES AT 85; Obituary: Sharon emblemized military audacity, evolving politics; Israeli leaders mourn loss; Palestinians condemn ‘butcher’
Former prime minister Ariel Sharon, in 2004 (photo credit: AP/Oded Balilty/File)

Sharon, as both military leader and prime minister, was the man to whom the Israeli public looked in its hours of need, yearning for the protection he provided and cognizant of the consequences it sometimes entailed. As Ari Shavit wrote in a piercing profile in the New Yorker in 2006, Israelis turned to Sharon in the 1950s, during the devastating fedayun raids; as they did on Yom Kippur 1973, when even the defense minister was said to have feared the “fall of the Third Temple”; and yet again, most overwhelmingly, during the savagely bloody days of the Second Intifada.

He was defense minister during the 1982 Lebanon War and was found to bear personal responsibility for failing to prevent the Phalangist massacre of Palestinian Muslims in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. Early in his career, in October 1953, he led a reprisal raid on the Jordanian village of Qibya in response to a terror attack in Israel. Forty two houses were detonated in the raid and 69 people were killed. In the field with his troops, Sharon had a reputation for pushing the license and limits of his orders to the maximum.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel "Arik" Sharon 1928 - 2013  (photo credit: Sharon Perry/Flash90)

Toward the end of his political career, he was welcomed into the mainstream. In August 2005, he presided over the withdrawal from Gaza, uprooting some 24 settlements in total and irrevocably severing his ties with the settlement movement that he had an instrumental role in founding.

Three months later, on November 21, 2005, Sharon announced his departure from Likud, the party he had co-founded in 1973. A reporter asked at the press conference why he thought he would succeed where so many others had failed, with a centrist party. He laughed — even his greatest detractors admitted that he could be charming — and said: “Planning is something a lot of people know how to do, but executing, as you know, far fewer, far fewer.”

Farm roots

Sharon was born, on a rainy February 26, 1928, to a violin-playing agronomist father and a legendarily tenacious mother.

His father, Samuil Scheinerman, was from Brest-Litovsk and had been raised a Zionist. His father’s father, Mordechai, had been best friends with Menachem Begin’s father, and the two had broken down the door of the local synagogue when the rabbi refused to hold a memorial for Theodor Herzl. Mordechai’s wife, Miriam, was a midwife: she birthed Menachem Begin.

Moshe Dayan famously said of his generals that he preferred to restrain war horses than “prod oxen who refuse to move.” Sharon, though, proved difficult to contain.

Sharon’s mother, Vera Schneerof, from the tiny Belarussian village of Halavenchichi, was a reluctant Zionist. Her dream was to be a doctor. But in 1921, with the Red Army advancing on Tiflis, she hastily married Samuil, dropped out of medical school, and set sail for Palestine.

Gilad Sharon, in his 2011 memoir, “The Life of a Leader” (full disclosure: this reporter translated the book into English), had this to say of his grandmother Vera: “Because of her slanting eyes, her size, and her strength, both physical and predominantly mental, she always seemed to me a descendant of Genghis Khan. Every time there was some mention of her ancestry, I’d make galloping noises for my father, by drumming on the table. Everyone in the house knew what that sound meant: Mongolian horsemen, thousands of them, galloping on their short horses across the Russian plain. Short, strong, and determined, they ride with eyes narrowed against the wind. Nothing deters them, nothing stops them. Between their saddle and their horse’s back they store a piece of meat, softened by the friction and the horse’s sweat. All this came to mind when I saw my beloved grandmother.”

She slept with a firearm beneath her bed until age 80.

Arik’s father, Samuil, who was an outcast in the cooperative farming village of Kfar Malal, left careful instructions in his will: He did not want his body taken to the cemetery in the village truck; instead, Arik should use the family pickup. He didn’t want any of his neighbors eulogizing him, either.

A soldier of valor and controversy

In the summer of 1945, Sharon took part in the Haganah’s squad leader training course, far from the eyes of the British, deep in the desert. He thought he had done well but his commanders graduated him with the rank of “probationary corporal.”

That status was erased during the war.

Ariel Sharon talks with David Ben-Gurion during a bus ride along the Israeli Army positions on the Egyptian border. (photo credit: IDF/Flash90)

Shortly after the November 29, 1947 vote that authorized the partition of Palestine, Sharon, then still known as Scheinerman, led a company of troops through the mud and heavy rain to the outskirts of Bir Addas, an Arab village that was host to Iraqi troops. They exchanged fire but the call to charge on the Israeli side never came. Sharon led his men forward regardless. He was ultimately given complete command over the platoon in a sign of things to come.

General Sharon, as he was often known abroad, never went to officer’s school.

He was, however, a gifted commander. In 1967, he planned the IDF’s first divisional battle, against the Abu Agheila stronghold in the Sinai, completely on his own; till today, the battle is taught in military academies across the world.

During the Yom Kippur War, he led Israeli troops across the Suez Canal, breaking the back of the Egyptian offensive. As his troops encircled Egypt’s Third Army, Sharon, a reserves officer at the time, instructed them to plant Israeli flags on the high ground, so that the Egyptians would look back across the water and see that they were trapped.

Sharon, known to all as Arik, did not need to have orders spelled out for him. In 1952, Moshe Dayan asked him “to see” whether it would be possible to capture Jordanian soldiers and exchange them for Israeli POWs. That same day, without being told, Sharon rounded up a friend and a pickup truck and drove down to the Jordan River. He waded into the water, pretended to inquire about missing cows, and promptly disarmed two Jordanian soldiers. He cuffed and blindfolded them, and drove them back to headquarters in Nazareth, his friend Shlomo Hever riding on the sideboard with a pistol aimed at their heads. When they arrived, Dayan was out. Sharon left him a note: “Moshe — the mission is accomplished, the prisoners are in the cellar. Shalom. Arik.”

Dayan, who recommended him for a citation after that mission, famously said of his generals that he preferred to restrain war horses than “prod oxen who refuse to move.” Sharon, though, proved difficult to contain. In 1956, during the Suez War, he stretched his orders to the maximum and beyond, when he sent paratroopers into the Mitla Pass, engaging in a gruesome and unnecessary face-to-face fight with the Egyptian soldiers who were dug into the craggy mountain side. The mission resulted in 38 Israeli deaths and cemented a lifelong feud with future chief of the General Staff Motta Gur.

In the aftermath of the Suez War, then-prime minister David Ben-Gurion wrote of Sharon in his journal: “The lad is a thinker, an original. Were he to be weaned of his fault of not speaking the truth in his reports he would make an exemplary military leader.”

Ben-Gurion, nonetheless, supported Sharon throughout his military life. In 1953, after the unintentional massacre in Qibya, the elder statesman kindly changed the young major’s name from Scheinerman to Sharon, reassuring him that what is important is “how it will be looked at here in this region,” to which Sharon remarked in his 1989 autobiography, tellingly entitled “Warrior,” “I couldn’t have agreed with him more.”

Despite Ben-Gurion’s persistent backing — he told military historian Uri Milstein that Sharon was “the greatest field commander in the history of the IDF” – and Sharon’s stunning tactical successes in the Six Day War, he was eventually pushed out of the army — after many previous attempts — on July 15, 1973.

Battles on the home front

Sharon was a family man. In stark opposition to many other Israeli generals and leaders, he was not a womanizer. Throughout his life, even as prime minister, he always rose to his feet when a woman entered the room. But in mid-life, over the span of five-and-a-half years, his personal life was ripped to shreds.

He first saw his wife, Margalit (Gali) Zimmerman, through the bright green leaves of an orange grove during the waning days of the British Mandate in Palestine. She was 16 and wore braids and was planting in the field of the dormitory school she attended. Sharon wrote in his autobiography that he had never seen anyone so beautiful in his life. By the time he pulled himself from his reverie, the water in his irrigation ditch was at his knees.

Several years after the War of Independence, they eloped. A rabbi friend of Sharon’s married them with no friends or relatives in attendance. Nine years later she was dead, killed in a car crash, on the way to her job as a psychiatric nurse in Jerusalem.

Their son, Gur, was five years old. The boy grew gaunt and frail and acquired “a hollow” look to his eyes. Slowly he recovered. “It was a remarkable experience watching him regain his strength, as if sorrow had reached to the depths and had broken on some inner strength it found there,” Sharon wrote.

Gali’s sister, Lily, stepped into the void. In Uzi Benziman’s highly critical biography, “Sharon: an Israeli Caesar,” the author cited anonymous sources who contended that Sharon and Lily had been having an affair, and that Gali was driven to take her own life. That claim remains unsubstantiated. The two raised Gur together after Gali’s death, fell in love and had two more children, Omri and Gilad.

But on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 1967, tragedy struck once again. Gur, age 10, saw that his father was busy on the phone, snapped him a playful salute and went out to the yard to play. Moments later, Sharon heard a gunshot. He ran to the yard. His youngest, Gilad, not yet a year old, was in the play pen; Omri, 3, stood by his side; and Gur was splayed out on the grass. He and a friend had been playing with an antique rifle. They had apparently loaded it with gun powder and a piece of metal. “I had seen so many wounds in my life; no one had to tell me that this one was hopeless,” he wrote. He bundled him in his arms and waded out into the street to catch a ride to the hospital. In the back seat of the car, Gur died in his arms.

In his memoir, Gilad Sharon wrote that his father once said, “The pain’s intensity is not diminished by the years; it’s only the intervals between the stabbings that grow longer.”

Lily Sharon, Arik’s beloved wife, who died in March 2000, is quoted in the 2006 biography “Ariel Sharon: A Life” [also translated by this reporter] as saying, “Arik never got over it. He just learned to live with it.”

Political engagement… and disengagement

Sharon founded the Likud. But he spent his first decade in politics serving under Menachem Begin. The two could not have been more different: lawyer and farmer, ideologue and pragmatist. When they first met in 1969, with Sharon still in uniform and looking for a way into politics, he was awed by Begin’s “extraordinarily powerful presence” and admitted to breaking into a cold sweat when they spoke.

Pragmatic Zionism, to which Sharon ardently subscribed, is based on “facts on the ground: reclaim another acre, drain another swamp, acquire another cow…don’t talk about it, just get it done.” This was the attitude with which he built the settlement enterprise, and this was the attitude that enabled him to dismantle it

During the peace talks with Egypt, their differences rose to the surface. Begin would agree only to Palestinian autonomy in the West Bank. Sharon, his son revealed in his 2011 memoir, was willing to grant them a state. “Better to have a Palestinian state on part of the territory than autonomy across all of it,” Gilad heard him say countless times. The terminology, he felt, was irrelevant. The word autonomy on a document could metamorphose into a state, but an internationally recognized Palestinian state, which seemed like a bigger achievement for Egypt, would have fixed borders, allowing Israel to maintain the areas crucial to its security.

Sharon felt that Begin, a political Zionist like Herzl and Jabotinsky, “was a man who believed in the power of words and legal terms and consequently he gave a high priority to such things as pronouncements, declarations and formal agreements,” he wrote in his autobiography. Pragmatic Zionism, to which Sharon ardently subscribed, is based on “facts on the ground: reclaim another acre, drain another swamp, acquire another cow… don’t talk about it, just get it done.”

This was the attitude with which he built the settlement enterprise, and this was the attitude with which he dismantled it.

Sharon admired Begin’s bravery, his decision to strike in Iraq, and his frugality — he once noted that there wasn’t so much as a single chair in Begin’s home that he trusted with his weight. But the Lebanon War and the subsequent committee of inquiry brought an end to their relationship. All Cabinet members save Sharon voted to accept the findings of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut, or as it has become known, the Kahan Commission.

Months after his February 14, 1983 resignation from the post of defense minister, Sharon approached the prime minister and told him how his father had made him vow, decades earlier, that he would “never turn Jews over.” The vow was taken at a time when the Palmach was aiding the British in their battle against Begin’s Irgun and the other pre-state underground organizations. The period was known as the “saison” or hunting season. British police officers jailed and executed many of the underground fighters. “Menachem,” Sharon reportedly said in ’83, “it was you who handed me over to them. You are the one who did it.”

Sharon’s rise to the premiership, after years of backwater positions, began in earnest on September 28, 2000, when he came through the Mughrabi Gate and visited the Temple Mount. The so-called Al Aqsa, or Second Intifada ensued. Amid the bloodshed and the chaos, Ehud Barak stepped down, calling for new elections for prime minister. On February 6, 2001, Israelis chose Sharon over Barak by a 62%-38% margin. Dayan’s prediction from years earlier had come true: “You will have to wait for a crisis to come along,” he said to Sharon. “It’s only then that they will let you out.”

Newly-elected Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (with then-Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert behind him) visiting the Western Wall the morning following his victory over Ehud Barak. (photo credit: Nati Shohat/Flash 90)

As prime minister, Sharon flattened the wave of rising Palestinian terror; threw himself heart and soul into a global campaign to sideline and delegitimize Yasser Arafat [perhaps his most successful campaign]; and, aided by the heinous events of 9/11 and a keen understanding of the American president, he maintained a strong relationship with then-president Bush and his administration.

In 2005, with the “Disengagement” from Gaza, he severed his ties to the settlement movement. Gush Emunim, the religious arm of the movement, Sharon once noted, had seen him as “the Messiah’s donkey,” or the beast upon which their salvation would arrive.

Several weeks later, he addressed the General Assembly on the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations. “I stand before you at the gate of nations as a Jew and as a citizen of the democratic, free, and sovereign State of Israel, a proud representative of an ancient people,” he said. “I was born in the Land of Israel, the son of pioneers — people who tilled the land and sought no fights — who did not come to Israel to dispossess its residents. If the circumstances had not demanded it, I would not have become a soldier, but rather a farmer and agriculturist. My first love was, and remains, manual labor; sowing and harvesting, the pastures, the flock and the cattle.

“I, as someone whose path of life led him to be a fighter and commander in all Israel’s wars, reach out today to our Palestinian neighbors in a call for reconciliation and compromise to end the bloody conflict, and embark on the path that leads to peace and understanding between our peoples. I view this as my calling and my primary mission for the coming years.”

The man who for years had been scorned by the international community, depicted as a butcher and a blood thirsty leader, drew applause from all corners of the room.

Three and a half months later, before revealing the full extent of his future plans, he fell, terminally, from consciousness.

Read more: Israel’s indomitable protector, Ariel Sharon emblemized military audacity, evolving politics | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/israels-indomitable-protector-ariel-sharon-emblemized-military-audacity-evolving-politics/#ixzz2q71nNxR4
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January 11, 2014 | 106 Comments »

Leave a Reply

50 Comments / 106 Comments

  1. @ honeybee:

    “many Amer.Indian tribes trace linage throught the mother.”

    Yes, I seem to recall something to that effect.

    Why do you suppose they do that?

  2. @ yamit82:

    “Your post contained a lot of quotes — but no argument. If you have one, make it.”

    “Those quotes were the answer to your statement that: “I repeat: ‘I’ve yet to be shown anything false about him despite how hard you’ve tried to’….”

    Quotations are not responsive to a question.

    Answers are responsive to a question.

    Quotations may (or may not) help to illustrate a point.

    But they do not answer a question.

    They do not constitute an argument.

    They do not make a case.

    “Either you support ‘Paul the Liar’ or the lying apostles.”

    You have yet to identify a ‘lie’ on the part of Paul or any other apostle.

    When you do point out a ‘lie’ — and show what makes it a ‘lie’ — I’ll be happy to address your claims to that effect.

    “You are again obfuscating and ducking the question.”

    Quite the contrary; I’m insisting that you either shit or get off the pot.

    “Matter of fact you even left skid marks trying to escape the question.”

    What you call “skid marks” are not mine, but your own.

  3. dweller Said:

    unless, of course, there’s a payoff anticipated.

    You mean that’s the only reason you would take a Lady out??????????

    dweller Said:

    In which case she’s no lady. . . .

    Are those the type of women you date????????

  4. @ the phoenix:

    “A more interesting question, in my view [than DiFi’s religious afiliation], is why among Jews, it is the mother whose faith community determines that of the child — while among Muslims, it is the father.”

    “The musloid cult is one of supremacy, conquest and forced conversions. The subhuman musloids that have emerged from the Arabian peninsula, were carrying the wishes of their pedophile cult leader. In order to spread out, as they raped the women in their path, this ensured that the newborn will be a new member of the cult.”

    Yes, that was the first explanation that occurred to me also, some yrs ago — and it may be the correct one.

    Of course, it doesn’t address why Jews place the decision on the mother’s faith

    — unless it be that as a much conquered people — whose women were thus subject to being raped — they needed some assurance as to the paternity of the child, and presumably the mother would know.

    If so, however, it would seem that for Jews, exclusively matrilineal determination would now be obsolete. . . .

    In any case, I hadn’t intended to address the matter here, as it didn’t seem pertinent to the thread; I only said that it seemed a more interesting question to me than the matter of DiFi’s religious affiliation.

    “Btw, as shy guy has determined about your ‘american’ friend, he should be in the best place to answer your query…”

    That’s a little too cryptic for me; no idea what you mean.

  5. @ honeybee:

    “A woman who comes with a price tag ISN’T a lady”

    “All women ,ladies or businesswomen, come with a price.”

    “Obviously you don’t get out often enough. . . .”

    “And,obviously, neither do you,;Darlin!”

    Oh, but I do.

    That’s how I know there are women who DON’T have a price-tag on them.

    “cheap skate, you let them buy YOU dinner and drinks?”

    Buying a lady’s dinner isn’t about her having a price tag

    — unless, of course, there’s a payoff anticipated.

    In which case she’s no lady. . . .

  6. dweller Said:

    That’s how I know there are women who DON’T have a price-tag on them.

    cheap scape, you let them buy YOU dinner and drinks??????? Wana play Tx is watchen football.

  7. @ dweller:

    “A woman who comes with a price tag ISN’T a lady”

    “All women ,ladies or businesswomen, come with a price.”

    “Obviously you don’t get out often enough. . . .”

    “And,obviously, neither do you,;Darlin!”

    Oh, but I do.

    That’s how I know there are women who DON’T have a price-tag on them.

  8. yamit82 Said:

    I saw him in a video of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing his head off

    Have you ever been to the Great Salt Lake. Visited the Taberncale, m Dad was fasinated by the Saints.

  9. dweller Said:

    “Yamit comes from a Jewish position which believes in tradition and rule.

    Reminds ME of the Grand Inquisitor of the RC Church. (I’ve often said that he missed his calling. Temperamentally & intellectually he seems so well fitted for it.)

    Tradition yes but not rule. Jews have only obligations but no rights. We were chosen to serve and to do what our creator has commanded us to do, even if we disagree and do not understand the reasoning.

    According all Jewish authoritative beliefs Judaism stems from either the written law or the oral law in other words the written law the 5 books of Moses is our foundation for what HaShem expects us to believe and do. Within those 5 books is also the sanction of a court to guard and explain the laws within the five books, and this is what is known as the Oral Law or Rabbinic Law.

    The Torah (5 books of Moses) has full authority to institute belief and practice in the life of every Jew.

    The Oral law only has authority to establish practice but not belief, and only when it does not contradict the written law.

    This is Judaism!!!

    Everything a Jew does must comport to either the written or oral law as set by the the court (Sanhedrin)

    dweller has self-assumed equal or greater authority than the Torah, the Oral Law and the Sanhedrin ( today = rabbinic authority). Under Jewish law written and oral he is a heretic and would be not only cut off from the Jewish people but would be stoned to death if we were still living under Jewish law.

    Therefore his claim of being Jewish must be viewed from a Jewish POV as a self defined claim with no basis in Jewish law. He rejects the authority of Torah both written and oral and the authority of those who hold legal authority in Judaism.

    Ms Feinstein can as does dweller claim to be whatever they chose but it is their own definition and their own device. Any claim to being Jewish Must be based on sound Jewish authoritative sources not what one feels or thinks. dwellers claims to being Jewish seem to be based only on his own assertions with no basis in authoritative Jewish sources.

    Unlike christianity Judaism is not dependent on the concept of a messiah. A messiah is not a principle Torah concept, in fact never mentioned not once in the Torah.

    dweller explained the classical christian position of what was the purpose of yesu ( defeat of satan).
    Hebrews 2:14

    New International Version (NIV)

    14 Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—

    But yeshu did not defeat satan did he? According to the christian (Dante) concept of the devil have the works of your Satan been destroyed in the world?

    1 John 3:8

    New International Version (NIV)

    8 The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

    (Seems to me even believers in yeshu sin) So of what value and power did yeshu have then or now?

    Only yeshu crushes the head of satan???? 🙂 You betcha Show us some example?? Only one will do.

    If he was a diety he has no power and if he a messiah had to be a fake!!! Satan and his power according to christian beliefs has not been crushed as of this post even of his true believers.

    Your friend Paul said:

    1 Timothy 1:15

    New International Version (NIV)

    15 Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst.

    He also said:

    1 Thessalonians 2:18

    Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)

    18 Wherefore we would have come unto you, even I Paul, once and again; but Satan hindered us.

    Yeshu failed to defeat satan even according to your friend Paul.

    Romans 16:20

    Authorized (King James) Version (AKJV)

    20 And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly…

    Shortly??????? 🙂

    Paul calls yeshu god! I have to believe you to accept this because you said there was nothing Paul said you disagree with.

  10. dweller Said:

    “All women ,ladies or businesswomen, come with a price.”

    And men don’t come with a price?

    IS THERE ANYONE WHO DOES NOT COME WITH A PRICE?

    Think before answering.

  11. dweller Said:

    Your post contained a lot of quotes

    — but no argument.

    If you have one, make it

    Those quotes were the answer to your statement that: ““I repeat: ‘I’ve yet to be shown anything false about him despite how hard you’ve tried to’….”

    Either you support ‘Paul the Liar’ or the lying apostles.

    You are again obfuscating and ducking the question. Matter of fact you even left skid marks trying to escape the question. 😛

  12. @ dweller:

    A more interesting question, in my view, is why among Jews, it is the mother whose faith community determines that of the child — while among Muslims, it is the father.

    The musloid cult is one of supremacy, conquest and forced conversions. The subhuman musloids that have emerged from the Arabian peninsula, were carrying the wishes of their pedophile cult leader. In order to spread out, as they raped the women in their path, this ensured that the newborn will be a new member of the cult.
    Btw, as shy guy has determined about your ‘american’ friend, he should be in the best place to answer your query…
    😉

  13. @ honeybee:

    “A woman who comes with a price tag ISN’T a lady”

    “All women ,ladies or businesswomen, come with a price.”

    Obviously you don’t get out often enough. . . .

  14. @ honeybee:

    “Never discuss matters of price with a lady.”

    “Can’t afford a computor,can’t afford a lady!”

    A woman who comes with a price tag ISN’T a lady

    — rather, a . . . [ahem!] . . . businesswoman.

    (HAVE a computer [never said I didn’t]; it’s on the fritz.)

  15. @ honeybee:

    “This may be your idea of how to conduct an argument. If so, I respectfully disagree.”

    “Well whoop-dee-doo!”

    “Tx’s favorite saying”

    “Mine too. Well, second only to, ‘You’re lazy’…”

    “I’am not lazy”

    Wasn’t directed at you. (Not that you AREN’T lazy; only that it wasn’t about you in that particular instance.)

    “I[‘m] kept! And worth it!”

    Never discuss matters of price with a lady.

  16. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “[Sen. Dianne] Feinstein had a Jewish father, and a mother of possible Jewish ancestry, but who (the mother) was raised Christian. Ms Feinstein went to temple as a kid. The Jewish Virtual Library referred to her as Jewish. Yet, because of some halachic ambiquity in her bloodline, the common consensus was that Ms Feinstein was not a Jew.”

    Hitler would’ve had no problem sending her off to the gas chambers as a Jew. . . .

    Jewish law, however, holds that unless the mother is confirmed Jewish, the individual is obliged to undergo formal conversion if he/she wishes to be regarded as Jewish. And in Israel, the Orthodox hold that card exclusively.

    I have long found the issue tiresome — & the discussions over it, less-than-constructive.

    A more interesting question, in my view, is why among Jews, it is the mother whose faith community determines that of the child — while among Muslims, it is the father. I’ve speculated over it for years, and someday when the context seems suitable, I’ll perhaps lay out what I think.

    Anyway, when the article was posted, I read it but ignored it afterward. I knew where the discourse would go

    — so I stifled a yawn & then proceeded to pass on it.

  17. yamit82 Said:

    I’ll stay with NE. Brady is a winner

    That is Tx’s thinking all the was to the Super Bowl!!!!!!!!!!! He took me to the Indian Market and I took him to the cleaners. He ready to crate me and all my stuff up and ship me off.

  18. @ honeybee:

    “If you have a point to make, you haven’t made it yet; you haven’t even asserted it yet. All you’ve done is linked to a 10-minute video. This may be your idea of how to conduct an argument. If so, I respectfully disagree.”

    “Well whoop-dee-doo!”

    “Tx’s favorite saying”

    Mine too.

    Well, second only to

    — “You’re lazy.”

  19. @ CuriousAmerican:

    “Many Jews who come to an appreciation of Christ call themselves Messianic Jews, in preference to Christian. They want to distance themselves from historic Christianity but not from Yeshua HaMoshiach.”

    I’ve yet to encounter a soi-disant “Messianic Jew” who didn’t sign-on to the “Jesus as God” proposition.

    So far as I can see, that makes them (effectively) traditional Christians who incline toward Jewish customs & ceremonies, perhaps Jewish cultural trappings & paraphernalia, etc.

    But not Jews

    — they may well be splendid persons in every way; they just aren’t Jews.

    The divinity question (not the Moshiakh question, but the divinity question specifically) is the one & ONLY doctrine that has that capability of actually separating someone from the spiritual fellowship of the Jewish community

    — because it raises questions of polytheism & idolatry amongst the one people arguably “created from scratch” by the only true God, who made clear His “jealousy” at Sinai, and who has continued to shape & mold them to His Purpose from the very day He began making His intentions known to Avram during the Bronze Age.

    “Yamit comes from a Jewish position which believes in tradition and rule.

    Reminds ME of the Grand Inquisitor of the RC Church. (I’ve often said that he missed his calling. Temperamentally & intellectually he seems so well fitted for it.)

    “There are some classic accepted Christian doctrines, which are accepted across denominational lines by Baptists, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants etc. These doctrines are that Yeshua is the begotton son of YHWH (through his human nature); and YHWH Almighty come in the flesh.

    However, even though you take exception with that second doctrine…”

    Actually, I’d incline to challenge the first doctrine as well, insofar as you posit it in a way which suggests haNitzri had/has both a human nature and a ‘divine’ one.

    “I get condemned for saying that Dianne Feinstein is Jewish, but it seems okay for some of them to de-Yeshuaize you?!”

    But they don’t “de-Yeshuaize” me

    — they de-Judaize me (perhaps that’s what you meant), because I like the Nazarene.

    A few of ’em have been doing it for years.

    Rolls off me like water off a duck’s back. (It’s made me a stronger Jew, actually.)

  20. bernard ross Said:

    I haven’t read many details but what do you think of his Peres accusations, larry silverman, and this frankish conspiracy(of which I have read none yet)

    I can’t know the truth of the Rabin assassination, there are a myriad of plot scenarios all plausible. That said Chamish in his book and articles raised enough as yet unanswered questions about the official reports that even Rabins family bought into the obvious and apparent anomalies. That Peres hated Rabin and Rabin hated Peres is an Israeli open non-secret. That Peres was capable of manipulating all of the necessary pawns and accomplices is to me believable. That the Shin Bet carried it out is almost a given since they were the originators of the plot that involved the alleged/convicted shooter. They were also responsible for providing security for Rabin which suddenly was non existent at the time and moment of the shooting. It’s a safe conclusion to say that Both Rabin and the Shooter “Yigal Amir”

    I have not read any of Chamish’s stuff on other topics except to say he has shown to research his topics well and supplies a lot of corroboration. If I have a problem with him,- it’s his conclusions not his research and attributions. He has long been of the opinion that Israel’s leadership is being run out of the CFR.(Very believable) The Israeli government and elites have rendered him a Kook and mostly ignore him. Chamish claims the Shin Bet or others have tried to kill him and partially succeeded. He fled Israel he claims, for personal safety. I can believe him on that, he knows too much and has good sources.

    He has been rendered a nobody except to the mostly anti-Israel conspiracy blogs on the American political right but sometimes from the Left as well depending on who is being criticized by Chamish.

  21. yamit82 Said:

    Who is the Real Ariel Sharon?:

    this was really interesting, especially the deal to deliver lebanon to the syrians; which seemed feasible to me. also, the description of arik being a mole to implode the right wing appears to me to describe BB today, according to his behavior of levy, livni, etc. what do you think of these Chamish writings, some appear quite believable to me and I am amazed that he is able to publish his conclusions. I haven’t read many details but what do you think of his Peres accusations, larry silverman, and this frankish conspiracy(of which I have read none yet)

  22. yamit82 Said:

    Kiss christians asses

    Even if it’s female!!and red-headed!!!!! Saw two bald eagles courting this morning,enjoyed the discussion of Israeli eagles! off to the Indian market.

  23. @ dweller:
    “You Christians”? — who told you I was a “Christian”?

    Dweller, Yamit may not subscribe to the concept – or if he does, he plays coy to draw you in. Don’t give in to his game.

    He re-ifies labels.

    Many Jews who come to an appreciation of Christ call themselves Messianic Jews, in preference to Christian. They want to distance themselves from historic Christianity but not from Yeshua HaMoshiach.

    Yamit comes from a Jewish position which believes in tradition and rule.

    Christianity has a looser structure.

    Christianity is about Yeshua, not the organization.

    There are some classic accepted Christian doctrines, which are accepted across denominational lines by Baptists, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants etc.

    These doctrines are that Yeshua is the begotton son of YHWH (through his human nature); and YHWH Almighty come in the flesh.

    However, even though you take exception with that second doctrine I would still call you a follower of Yeshua for other reasons – because in the end, Christianity is about a relationship with Yeshua, not doctrine. Doctrine, though important, is secondary.

    Compare that with this morning’s debate I had, where many of Israpundit said Dianne Feinstein was not a Jew. Ms Feinstein had a Jewish father, and a mother of possible Jewish ancestry, but who (the mother) was raised Christian. Ms Feinstein went to temple as a kid. The Jewish Virtual Library referred to her as Jewish. Yet, because of some halachic ambiquity in her bloodline, the common consensus was that Ms Feinstein was not a Jew.

    Of course, I was condemned. Who was I – a Gentile?! – to define who a Jew is?

    But the issue to me was: Who were they to de-judaize a Jewish woman?

    Likewise, though you and I do not agree on doctrine, you strike me as a follower of Yeshua, which is all that matters in the end. Let Yeshua straighten out your doctrine over time. Let him straighten out my errors as well.

    Labels are immaterial.

    I get condemned for saying that Dianne Feinstein is Jewish, but it seems okay for some of them to de-Yeshuaize you?!

    Somethings on this board do not make sense.

  24. @ yamit82:

    “I repeat: ‘I’ve yet to be shown anything false about him despite how hard you’ve tried to’….”

    Your post contained a lot of quotes

    — but no argument.

    If you have one, make it.

    @ yamit82:

    “The Lord will not hold him [or her] guiltless that taketh His name in vain.”

    “you christians do not subscribe to that commandment.”

    “You Christians”? — who told you I was a “Christian”?

    If it wasn’t Christ who so informed you, then you don’t know.

    Moreover, this post of yours contains no more of a case than the other one cited here, above.

    Only a bunch of quotes.

    Best you can do?

  25. @ Shy Guy:

    I repeat: “I’ve yet to be shown anything ‘false’ about him despite how hard you’ve tried to.”

    “I agree with Paul. It’s not often I say that, so note it well.”

    If you have a point to make, you haven’t made it yet; you haven’t even asserted it yet.

    All you’ve done is linked to a 10-minute video.

    This may be your idea of how to conduct an argument.

    — If so, I respectfully disagree.

    If I need followup to your point AFTER YOU’VE MADE IT (and in your own words), then I may spend the time on the video.

  26. CuriousAmerican Said:

    Lots of posts like that from you … yet I am considered the offensive one?!

    There are many gentiles and christians I genuinely like and respect. I cannot say the same about christianity.

    My public disdain is one of the consequences of a Jew living in a society where we are the majority and no longer feel an urge or obligation even fear forcing us to Kiss christians asses from fear of what you will say or do to us. It’s a marvelous feeling, we Jews in Israel,like the truth, been set free. Waiting for BB to do likewise. 🙂

    ” We are not a religious community that keeps its G-d to itself and posits places for other religions. We are liberal enough to allow other religions their belief, but not so overly liberal that we credit them with the label “truth.” We ado not concede the possibility of a different Gate to heaven … therefore Our Temple’s gateways to Heaven are open to all.” 1Kings 8 Eldad

  27. @ CuriousAmerican:

    Fool, you miss the point!!! I don’t care if the text says with or without the words “with cause”. There was no cause and if you say there is, then Show cause!!!!!!!!!! The texts don’t

    Still: Yamit (3) yeshu, dweller and Ca (0)