Gen Mattis and the Fatah tautology

24 Comments / 24 Comments

1. :
   What kind of person joins the military during peacetime?

   When [undeclared] war breaks out, suddenly those people have “work” to do.

   That comes with more [dubious] responsibility, and .. HIGHER RANK.

   Military conscription makes this situation obvious to the competent, private sector types who get drafted into the system. They quickly recognize that their “superiors” are complete idiot-misfits.

2. @ yamit82: Perhaps Liberman can educate Mattis today. And, do not write-off the complexity of what the US military is doing in the ME, and Hezbollah IS in the cross-hairs:

   “…Though Mattis will inevitably be meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he will be the official guest of his colleague, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman. This will be the third meeting between Mattis and Liberman in as many months. One Israeli participant in some of these meetings, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there is a “rare chemistry” between the two men. In conversations with his associates, Liberman has nothing but compliments for the new US secretary of defense. At their March 7 meeting in Washington, Mattis and Liberman were supposed to meet in private for just 15 minutes, yet the meeting lasted almost an hour, until Mattis’ chief aide was forced to intervene.

   …while Mattis’ Israeli hosts will also plead with the US defense secretary to keep Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi afloat no matter what it takes. One of Israel’s other strategic allies, King Abdullah II of Jordan, is also a priority, but in the case of Jordan, the cost is relatively small change.
   “Maintaining stability in Egypt is not just in the strategic interest of Syria, Israel or the West. It is in the interest of anyone concerned about the continuing chaos in the Middle East,” the same security source told Al-Monitor. …”

   Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2017/04/israel-liberman-mattis-visit-us-syria-iran-security-defense.html#ixzz4enSCkiri

   Yamit82: I’ll come back in the next Mattis thread. Maybe after the Tomahawks land in Sinai.

3. Sebastien Zorn Said:

   @ yamit82:
   Iran would become nice to Israel?

   From a terrific article by the ever-unpredictable Dershowitz
   “

   “There are several ways in which Iran could use nuclear weapons. The first is by dropping an atomic bomb on Israel, as its leaders have repeatedly threatened to do. Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of Iran, boasted in 2004 that an Iranian attack would kill as many as five million Jews. Mr. Rafsanjani estimated that even if Israel retaliated with its own nuclear bombs, Iran would probably lose about 15 million people, which he said would be a small “sacrifice” of the billion Muslims in the world.”

   though I wish I knew what his source was in claiming that

   “A National Intelligence Report, issued on President George W. Bush’s watch, distorted the truth by suggestion that Iran had ended its quest for nuclear weapons. It also withheld the fact that U.S. intelligence had discovered a nuclear facility near Qum, Iran, that could be used only for the production of nuclear weapons. “

   contradicting the claim I just made that Iran backed off like Quadafy during Dubya’s invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.

   https://today.law.harvard.edu/dershowitz-in-wsj-obamas-legacy-and-the-iranian-bomb/

4. @ Sebastien Zorn:

   “Before Islam: When Saudi Arabia Was a Jewish Kingdom
   The discovery of the oldest-known pre-Islamic Arabic writing in Saudi Arabia, from ca. 470 CE, evidently caused some consternation, given its Christian and Jewish context.

   The Najran Fort today, Saudi Arabia: Early Christians in the city of Najran were persecuted by the Himyarites, leading some to speculate that the Himyarites couldn’t have been true Jews. Wikimedia Commons
   Oldest modern human remains outside Africa found in Israel
   Not by bread alone Neolithic people in Israel first to farm fava beans, 10,000 years ago
   Paleo-etiquette Israeli researchers reveal cavemen’s table manners
   In 2014, researchers from a French-Saudi expedition studying rock inscriptions in southern Saudi Arabia announced they had discovered what could be the oldest texts written in the Arabic alphabet. But they did so very quietly, perhaps because the context of the texts is something of an embarrassment to some.
   >> 2016’s Top Haaretz Reads. Click Here
   The dozen or so engravings had been carved into the soft sandstone of the mountain passes around Bir Hima – a site about 100 kilometers north of the city of Najran, which over millennia has been plastered with thousands of inscriptions by passing travelers and officials. Conveniently, at least two of the early Arabic petroglyphs that were discovered cited dates in an ancient calendar, and expert epigraphists quickly calculated that the oldest one corresponded to the year 469 or 470 CE.

   The discovery was sensational: the earliest ancient inscriptions using this pre-Islamic stage of Arabic script had been dated at least half a century later, and had all been found in Syria, which had suggested that the alphabet used to write the Koran had been developed far from the birthplace of Islam and its prophet.
   Yet the announcement of the discovery was subdued. A few outlets in the French and Arab media tersely summarized the news, hailing the text as the “missing link” between Arabic and the earlier alphabets used previously in the region, such as Nabatean. Most of the articles were accompanied by stock photos of archaeological sites or other ancient inscriptions: it is almost impossible to find a picture of the inscription online or a reference to the actual content of the text.
   Thawban son of Malik, the Christian

   Only by delving into the 100-page-long report of that archaeological season published in December by France’s Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres – which supports the study – is it possible to see the find and learn more about it.
   According to the report, the Arabic text, scrawled on a large rectangular stone, is simply of a name,  “Thawban (son of) Malik,” followed by the date.

   Ancient engravings carved into the soft sandstone of the mountain passes around Bir HimaScreengrab from YouTube
   Underwhelming? Well, there is the matter of the large, unmistakably Christian cross that decorates the head of this inscription. The same cross systematically appears on the other similar stelae dating more or less to the same period.
   Behind the low-key announcement of the find, one can almost sense the mixed feelings of Saudi officials faced with an important discovery for their heritage, which, however, seems to connect the origins of the alphabet used to pen their sacred book to a Christian context, some 150 years before the rise of Islam.
   Further consternation may have arisen when realizing that these texts are not only the legacy of a once-numerous Christian community, but are also linked to the story of an ancient Jewish kingdom that once ruled over much of what is today Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
   Jews vs. Christians in the desert
   While the Koran and later Muslim tradition make no bones about the presence of Jewish and Christian communities across the peninsula in Mohammed’s day, the general picture that is painted of pre-Islamic Arabia is one of chaos and anarchy. The region is described as being dominated by jahilliyah – ignorance – lawlessness, illiteracy and barbaric pagan cults.
   The decades immediately before the start of the Islamic calendar (marked by Mohammed’s “hijra” – migration – from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE) were marked by a weakening of societies and centralized states in Europe and the Middle East, partly due to a plague pandemic and the incessant  warfare between the Byzantine and Persian empires.
   The bleak representation of pre-Islamic Arabia was less an accurate description, it seems, than a literary metaphor to emphasize the unifying and enlightening power of Mohammed’s message.
   Reexamination of works by Muslim and Christian chroniclers in recent years, as well as finds like the one in Saudi Arabia, are producing a much more elaborate picture, leading scholars to rediscover the rich and complex history of the region before the rise of Islam.
   One of the key, but often forgotten, players in Arabia at the time was the kingdom of Himyar.

   Petroglyphs in Wadi Rum, JordanEtan J. Tal, Wikimedia Commons
   Established around the 2nd century CE, by the 4th century it had become a regional power. Headquartered in what is today Yemen, Himyar had conquered neighboring states, including the ancient kingdom of Sheba (whose legendary queen features in a biblical meeting with Solomon).
   In a recent article titled “What kind of Judaism in Arabia?” Christian Robin, a French epigraphist and historian who also leads the expedition at Bir Hima, says most scholars now agree that, around 380 CE, the elites of the kingdom of Himyar converted to some form of Judaism.
   United in Judaism
   The Himyarite rulers may have seen in Judaism a potential unifying force for their new, culturally diverse empire, and an identity to rally resistance against creeping encroachment by the Byzantine and Ethiopian Christians, as well as the Zoroastrian empire of Persia.
   It is unclear how much of the population converted, but what is sure is that in the Himyarite capital of Zafar (south of Sana’a), references to pagan gods largely disappear from royal inscriptions and texts on public buildings, and are replaced by writings that refer to a single deity.
   Using mostly the local Sabean language (and in some rare cases Hebrew), this god is alternatively described as Rahmanan – the Merciful – the “Lord of the Heavens and Earth,” the “God of Israel” and “Lord of the Jews.” Prayers invoke his blessings on the “people of Israel” and those invocations often end with shalom and amen.
   For the next century and a half, the Himyarite kingdom expanded its influence into central Arabia, the Persian Gulf area and the Hijaz (the region of Mecca and Medina), as attested by royal inscriptions of its kings that have been found not only at Bir Hima, just north of Yemen, but also near what is today the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
   Thawban the martyr
   Returning to the early Arabic texts discovered at Bir Hima, the French-Saudi team notes that the name of Thawban son of Malik appears on eight inscriptions, along with the names of other Christians in what was probably a form of commemoration.
   According to Christian chroniclers, around 470 (the date of the Thawban inscription), the Christians of the nearby city of Najran suffered a wave of persecution by the Himyarites. The French experts suspect that Thawban and his fellow Christians may have been martyred. The choice of the early Arabic script to commemorate them would have been, in itself, a powerful symbol of defiance.
   This pre-Islamic alphabet is also called Nabatean Arabic, because it evolved from the script used by the Nabateans, the once-powerful nation that built Petra and dominated the trade routes in the southern Levant and northern Arabia before being annexed by the Romans in the early 2nd century. Used at the gates of Yemen, this northern alphabet would have stood in sharp contrast to the inscriptions left by Himyarite rulers in their native Sabaean.
   “The adoption of a new writing signaled a distancing from Himyar and a reconciliation with the rest of the Arabs,” the French researchers write in their report. “The inscriptions of Hima reveal a strong movement of cultural unification of the Arabs, from the Euphrates to Najran, which manifested itself by the use of the same writing.”
   Joseph the rebel
   The growing outside pressures ultimately took their toll on Himyar. Sometime around the year 500, it fell to Christian invaders from the Ethiopian kingdom of Aksum.
   In a last bid for independence, in 522, a Jewish Himyarite leader, Yusuf As’ar Yath’ar, rebelled against the puppet ruler enthroned by the negus and put the Aksumite garrison to the sword. He then besieged Najran, which had refused to provide him with troops, and massacred part of its Christian population – a martyrdom that sparked outrage amongst Yusuf’s enemies and hastened retribution from Ethiopia.
   In 2014, the French-Saudi expedition at Bir Hima discovered an inscription recording Yusuf’s passage there after the Najran massacre as he marched north with 12,000 men into the Arabian desert to reclaim the rest of his kingdom. After that, we lose track of him, but Christian chroniclers recorded that around 525 the Ethiopians caught up with the rebel leader and defeated him.
   According to different traditions, the last Jewish king of Arabia was either killed in battle, or committed suicide by riding with his horse into the Red Sea.
   For the next century, Himyar was a Christian kingdom that continued to dominate Arabia. In the middle of the sixth century, one of its rulers, Abraha, marched through Bir Hima, leaving on the stones a depiction of the African elephant that led his mighty army. A later inscription, dated 552 and found in central Arabia, records the many locations he conquered, including Yathrib, the desert oasis that just 70 years later would become known as Madinat al-Nabi (the City of the Prophet) – or, more simply, Medina.
   Were they ‘real’ Jews?
   One big question that remains about the Jews of Himyar is what kind of Judaism they practiced. Did they observe the Sabbath? Or the rules of kashrut?
   Some scholars, like the 19th century Jewish-French orientalist Joseph Halevy, refused to believe that a Jewish king could persecute and massacre his Christian subjects, and dismissed the Himyarites as belonging to one of the many sects in which Christianity was divided in its early days.
   Robin, the French epigraphist, writes in his article that the official religion of Himyar may be described as “Judeo-monotheism” – “a minimalist variety of Judaism” that followed some of the religion’s basic principles.
   The fact is that the few inscriptions found so far, along with the writings of later chroniclers, who may have been biased against the Himyarites, do not allow scholars to form a clear picture of the kingdom’s spirituality.
   But there is another way to look at the question. 
   Through Christian and Muslim rule, Jews continued to be a strong presence in the Arabian Peninsula. This is clear not only from Mohammed’s (often conflictual) dealings with them, but also from the influence that Judaism had on the new religion’s rituals and prohibitions (daily prayers, circumcision, ritual purity, pilgrimage, charity, ban on images and eating pork).
   In Yemen, the heartland of the Himyarites, the Jewish community endured through centuries of persecution, until 1949-1950, when almost all its remaining members – around 50,000 – were airlifted to Israel in Operation Magic Carpet. And while they maintain some unique rituals and traditions, which set them apart from Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews, no one would doubt that they are indeed, the last, very much Jewish descendants of the lost kingdom of Himyar.”

   read more: http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/archaeology/.premium-1.709010

   “Medina, Islam’s second holiest city, was originally a Jewish
   “settlement”

   Although the fact is little publicized, more than one historian has affirmed at the Arab world’s second holiest city, Medina, was one of the allegedly “purely Arab” cities that actually was first settled by Jewish tribes.1
   And like the 16th Century English Protestants who financed their endeavors through the plunder of Catholic monasteries in England, the roots of Islamic anti-Semitism might be found in the initial plunder of Jewish settlements, and the imposition of a “poll tax” to fund Arab campaigns.

   Bernard Lewis writes:

   The city of Medina, some 280 miles north of Mecca, had originally been settled by Jewish tribes from the north, especially the Banu Nadir and Banu Quraiza. The comparative richness of the town attracted an infiltration of pagan Arabs who came at first as clients of the Jews and ultimately succeeded in dominating them. Medina, or, as it was known before Islam, Yathrib, had no form of stable government at all. The town was tom by the feuds of the rival Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, with the Jews maintaining an uneasy balance of power. The latter, engaged mainly in agriculture and handicrafts, were economically and culturally superior to the Arabs, and were consequently disliked…. as soon as the Arabs had attained unity through the agency of Muhammad they attacked and ultimately eliminated the Jews.2
   In the last half of the fifth century, many Persian Jews fled from persecution to Arabia, swelling the Jewish population there.3 But around the sixth century, Christian writers reported of the continuing importance of the Jewish community that remained in the Holy Land. For the dispersed Arabian Jewish settlers, Tiberias in Judea was central. In the Kingdom of Himyar on the Red Sea’s east coast in Arabia, “conversion to Judaism of influential circles” was popular, and the Kingdom’s rule stretched across “considerable portions of South Arabia.”
   The commoners as well as the royal family adopted Judaism, and one writer ports that “Jewish priests (presumably rabbis) from Tiberias … formed part the suite of King Du Noas and served as his envoys in negotiations with Christian cities.”4

   According to Guillaume,

   At the dawn of Islam the Jews dominated the economic life of the Hijaz [Arabia]. They held all the best land … ; at Medina they must have formed at least half of the population. There was also a Jewish settlement to the north of the Gulf of Aqaba…. What is important is to note that the Jews of the Hijaz made many proselytes [or converts] among the Arab tribesmen.5
   The first “Palestinian” or Judean refugees — the Jews — had resettled to become prosperous, influential Arabian settlers.
   The prosperity of the Jews was due to their superior knowledge of agriculture and irrigation and their energy and industry. Homeless [Jewish] refugees in the course of a few generations became large landowners in the country, [the refugees who had come to the Hijaz when the Romans conquered Palestine] controllers of its finance and trade…. Thus it can readily be seen that Jewish prosperity was a challenge to the Arabs, particularly the Quraysh at Mecca and … [other Arab tribes] at Medina.
   The Prophet Muhammad himself was a member of the Quraysh tribe, which coveted the Jews’ bounty, and
   when the Muslims took up arms they treated the Jews with much greater severity than the Christians, who, until the end of the purely Arab Caliphate, were not badly treated.6
   One of the reasons for “this discrimination” against the Jews is what Guillaurne called “the Quran’s scornful words” regarding the Jews7 The Jews’ development of land and culture was a prime source of booty in the Arabian desert peninsula. Beginning at the time of the Prophet Muhammad and Islam8 from the expulsions, depredations, extortion, forced conversions or murder of Jewish Arabians settled in Medina to the mass slaughter of Jews at Khaibar — the precedent was established among Arab-Muslims to expropriate that which belonged to the Jews. Relations between the Prophet Muhammad and the Jews were “never … easy”:
   They had irritated him by their refusal to recognize him as a prophet, by ridicule and by argument; and of course their economic supremacy … was a standing irritant.9
   It appears that the first “instigation” by the Prophet Muhammad himself against the Jews was an incident in which he had “one or two Jews … murdered and no blood money was paid to their next of kin.”
   … Their leaders opposed his claim to be an apostle sent by God, and though they doubtless drew some satisfaction from his acceptance of the divine mission of Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, they could hardly be expected to welcome the inclusion of Jesus and Ishmael among his chosen messengers.10
   … the existence of pockets of disaffected Jews in and around his base was a cause of uneasiness and they had to be eliminated if he [Muhammad] was to wage war without anxiety.11

   Because the Jews preferred to retain their own beliefs,
   a tribe of Jews in the neighborhood of Medina, fell under suspicion of treachery and were forced to lay down their arms and evacuate their settlements. Valuable land and much booty fell into the hands of the Muslims. The neighboring tribe of Qurayza, who were soon to suffer annihilation, made no move to help their co-religionists, and their allies, the Aus, were afraid to give them active support. 12
   The Prophet Muhammad’s pronouncement: “Two religions may not dwell together on the Arabian Peninsula.”13 This edict was carried out by Abu Bakr and Omar 1, the Prophet Muhammad’s successors; the entire community of Jewish settlements throughout northern Arabia was systematically slaughtered. According to Bernard Lewis, “the extermination of the Jewish tribe of Quraiza was followed by “an attack on the Jewish oasis of Khaibar.”14
   Messengers of Muhammad were sent to the Jews who had escaped to the safety and comfort of Khaibar, “inviting” Usayr, the Jewish “war chief,” to visit Medina for mediations.

   Usayr set off with thirty companions and a Muslim escort. Suspecting no foul play, the Jews went unarmed. On the way, the Muslims turned upon the defenseless delegation, killing all but one who managed to escape. “War is deception,” 15 according to an oft-quoted saying of the Prophet.16
   The late Israeli historian and former President, Itzhak Ben-Zvi, judged the “inhuman atrocities” of the Arabian communities as unparalleled since then:
   … the complete extermination of the two Arabian-Jewish tribes, the Nadhir and Kainuka’ by the mass massacre of their men, women and children, was a tragedy for which no parallel can be found in Jewish history until our own day …. 17
   The slaughter of Arabian Jews and the expropriation of their property became Allah’s will. According to the Koran,
   … some you slew and others you took captive. He (Allah] made you masters of their [the Jews’] land, their houses and their goods, and of yet another land [Khaibar] on which you had never set foot before. Truly, Allah has power over all things.18
   Guillaume reports that the anti-Jewish attack at Khaibar was fiercely fought off, but “though the inhabitants fought more bravely here than elsewhere, outnumbered and caught off their guard, they were defeated.”19 Those who somehow survived constituted the formula for Islam’s future successes. Some of the Jews, “non-Muslims” or infidels, “retained their land,” at least until Muslims could be recruited in sufficient numbers to replace the Jews. Meanwhile, the Arabian Jews paid a fifty-percent “tribute,” or tax, for the “protection” of the new plunderers. As Professor Lewis writes, “The Muslim victory in Khaibar marked the first contact between the Muslim state and a conquered non-Muslim people and formed the basis for later dealings of the same type.”20
   Thus the Jewish dhimmi evolved [the protected ones] — the robbery of freedom and political independence compounding the extortion and eventual expropriation of property. “Tolerated” between onslaughts, expulsions, and pillages from the Arab Muslim conquest onward, the non-Muslim dhimmi-predominantly Jewish but Christian too — provided the important source of religious revenue through the “infidel’s” head tax. He became very quickly a convenient political scapegoat and whipping boy as well.

   1.Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 1, pp. 308T

   2. Lewis, Arabs in History, p. 40.

   3. S. Safrai, “The Lands of the Diaspora,” in A History ofthe Jewish People, Ben-Sasson, ed., p. 380.

   4. S. Safrai, “From the Abolition of the Patriarchate to the Arab Conquest (425-W),” in History of the Jewish People, Ben-Sasson, ed., pp. 358-359. Of this little-known history Safrai writes: “Twice the Jews of Himyar succeeded in throwing off Ethiopian domination; even in the eyes of Byzantium it was a Jewish kingdom, small but occupying a strategic position. The king of Himyar prevented Byzantine traders from passing through to India on the grounds that Jews were being persecuted in Roman lands. Byzantium was reluctant to risk a war so far away in South Arabia, but was able to persuade Ethiopia to take up its quarrel. The king of Himyar hoped for Persian aid, but there was a lull in the fighting between Rome and Persia at the time, and the Persians did not appreciate the importance of this outlet from the Red Sea being controlled by an ally of Byzantium. Du Noas fell in a battle against an invading Ethiopian army, and the Jewish Kingdom came to an end.”

   5. Guillaume, Islam, pp. 11-12.

   6. Ibid., p. 12.

   7. Ibid. See examples in Chapter 4.

   8. For details of the Prophet Muhammad-Ab-u al-Qasim Muhammad ibn’Abd Alla ibn ‘Abd al-Muttal-ib ibn Hashim-see Guillaume, Islam, pp. 20-54; the “tradi-
   tional” biography of Muhammad (Arabic) is Ibn Hisham’s recension of Ibn Ishaq’s
   al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1955); The Life of Muhammad, abridged
   English trans. by A. Guillaume (Karachi, 1955). Cited by Norman A. Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, A History and Source Book (Philadelphia, 1979), p. 6, n. 9. See also Lewis, Arabs in History.

   9. Guillaume, Islam, p. 43.

   10. Ibid., pp. 43-44.

   11. Ibid., p. 44.

   12. The Nadir tribe. Ibid., p. 46. Also see Stillman, Jews of Arab Lands, pp. 8-10, for a study of “exclusively Muslim” sources, tracing Muhammad’s “face-to-face contact with a large, organized Jewish Community,” an “encounter” that “did not prove to be an auspicious one.” The Nadir tribe in Medina went to Khaibar in “exile,” Stillman, Jews~ p. 14.

   13. Salo W. Baron, Social and Religious History, Vol. 1, p. 311. He cites Muwatta, in Al-Zurkani’s commentary IV, p. 71.

   14. Lewis, The Arabs in History, p. 45.

   15. Al-Bukhari, al-Jami al-Sahih, bk. 56 (Kitab al-Jihad, Bab 157), ed. M. Ludolf Krehl (Leiden, 1864), Vol. 2, p. 254, cited by Stillman, Jews, p. 17. According to Stillman, “This hadith appears in several other canonical collections.”

   16. Stillman, Jews~ p. 17, citing Ibd Sa’d, Kitab al-Tabaqat al-Kabir, ed. by Edvard Sachau et al. (Leiden, 1909), Vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 66-67; al-Waqidi, Kitab al-MaghaZ4 Vol. 2, pp. 566-68; Ibn Hisham, al-Sira al-Nabawiyya, Vol. 2, pp. 618-619.

   17. Itzhak Ben-Zvi, The Exiled and the Redeemed (Philadelphia, 1961), p. 144. Also see Stillman, Jews, p. 14ff.

   18. The Koran, Surah 33, v. 26-32, Dawood translation.

   19. Guillaume, Islam, p. 49.

   20. Lewis, Arabs, p. 45.

   This page was produced by Joseph E. Katz
   Middle Eastern Political and Religious History Analyst
   Brooklyn, New York ”
   http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~peters/medina.html

5. @ Sebastien Zorn:
   They did exterminate us in Saudi Arabia under Mohammed, himself, may that rat’s ass bastard suffer for a thousand life times. He was the Hitler, or Martin Luther, take your pick, of his day.

   Not, I repeat, not hyperbole:

   “On the Jews and Their Lies (German: Von den Jüden und iren Lügen; in modern spelling Von den Juden und ihren Lügen) is a 65,000-word anti-Jewish treatise written in 1543 by the German Reformation leader Martin Luther.
   Luther’s attitude toward the Jews took different forms during his lifetime. In his earlier period, until 1537 or not much earlier, he wanted to convert Jews to Christianity, but failed. In his later period when he wrote this particular treatise, he denounced them and urged their persecution.[1]
   In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness,[2] afforded no legal protection,[3] and these “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.[4] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “[W]e are at fault in not slaying them”.[5]”

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies

   “Seems”???? Hello, hello, anybody home?

   it concludes:

   “History since publication[edit]
   The prevailing scholarly view since the Second World War is that the treatise exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany’s attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust.[23] Four hundred years after it was written, the Nazis displayed On the Jews and Their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, Roman Catholic editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it, on Streicher’s first encounter with the treatise in 1937, as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.[24] Against this view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the 18th and 19th centuries.[25] Hans Hillerbrand argues that to focus on Luther’s role in the development of German antisemitism is to underestimate the “larger peculiarities of German history.”[26]
   Since the 1980s, some Lutheran church bodies have formally denounced and dissociated themselves from Luther’s vitriol about the Jews. In November 1998, on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria issued a statement: “It is imperative for the Lutheran Church, which knows itself to be indebted to the work and tradition of Martin Luther, to take seriously also his anti-Jewish utterances, to acknowledge their theological function, and to reflect on their consequences. It has to distance itself from every [expression of] anti-Judaism in Lutheran theology.”[27]”

   Got that? Some. Only some.

   This is one of the liberal churches who support the Pale-Nazis, as opposed to the right wing pentacostal churches who support us.

   “It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.” – Lin Yutang

6. @ Sebastien Zorn:
   Correction: We Jews lost our majority to the Christians in the 5th Century who lost it to the Muslims in the 12th. Interesting, that in both cases, it took about 500 years for the conquerors to turn the conquered into a minority. Doesn’t take more than a few years today. Look at Cyprus, the Sudan. Progress. And people wonder why the Burmese Buddhists are so ferocious to their Rohinga Muslim minority, despite the fact that it really does violate every precept of their religion. Remember, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Muslim parts of India were Buddhist and they didn’t convert peacefully.

   “Wars and persecution[edit]
   Hun Invasions[edit]
   Chinese scholars travelling through the region between the 5th and 8th centuries, such as Faxian, Xuanzang, Yijing, Hui-sheng, and Sung-Yun, began to speak of a decline of the Buddhist Sangha in the north-west parts of Indian subcontinent, especially in the wake of the Hun invasion from central Asia.[1] Xuanzang wrote that numerous monasteries in north-western India had been reduced to ruins by the Huns.[1][43]
   Mihirakula, who ruled from 515 CE in north-western region (modern Afghanistan, Pakistan and north India), suppressed Buddhism as well. He did this by destroying monasteries as far away as modern-day Allahabad.[44]
   Turk-Mongol raids[edit]

   The image, in the chapter on India in Hutchison’s Story of the Nations edited by James Meston, depicts the Turkish general Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khilji’s massacre of Buddhist monks in Bihar. Khaliji destroyed the Nalanda and Vikramshila universities during his raids across North Indian plains, massacring many Buddhist and Brahmin scholars.[45]
   The Muslim conquest of the Indian subcontinent was the first great iconoclastic invasion into South Asia.[46] The Persian traveller Al Biruni’s memoirs suggest Buddhism had vanished from Ghazni (Afghanistan) and medieval Panjab region (northern Pakistan) by early 11th century.[47] By the end of twelfth century, Buddhism had further disappeared,[1][48] with the destruction of monasteries and stupas in medieval north-west and western India (now Pakistan and north India).[49]
   The Chach Nama records many instances of conversion of stupas to mosques such as at Nerun.[50]
   In the Gangetic plains, Orissa, north-east and the southern regions of India, Buddhism survived through the early centuries of the 2nd millennium CE.[42] According to William Johnston, hundreds of Buddhist monasteries and shrines were destroyed, Buddhist texts were burnt by the Muslim armies, monks and nuns killed during the 12th and 13th centuries in the Gangetic plains region.[5] The Islamic invasion plundered wealth and destroyed Buddhist images:[4]
   From 986 CE, the Muslim Turks started raiding northwest India from Afghanistan, plundering western India early in the eleventh century. Force conversions to Islam were made, and Buddhist images smashed, due to the Islamic dislike of idolatry. Indeed in India, the Islamic term for an ‘idol’ became ‘budd’.
   —?Peter Harvey, An Introduction to Buddhism[4]
   The north-west parts of South Asia fell to Islamic control, and the consequent take over of land holdings of Buddhist monasteries removed one source of necessary support for the Buddhists, while the economic upheaval and new taxes on laity sapped the laity support of Buddhist monks.[42]
   In the north-western parts of medieval India, the Himalayan regions, as well regions bordering central Asia, Buddhism once facilitated trade relations, states Lars Fogelin. With the Islamic invasion and expansion, and central Asians adopting Islam, the trade route-derived financial support sources and the economic foundations of Buddhist monasteries declined, on which the survival and growth of Buddhism was based.[42][51] The arrival of Islam removed the royal patronage to the monastic tradition of Buddhism, and the replacement of Buddhists in long-distance trade by the Muslims eroded the related sources of patronage.[49][51]
   Islamic conquest and rule[edit]

   Ruins of Vikramashila
   Muslim forces attacked the north-western regions of the Indian subcontinent many times.[52] Many places were destroyed and renamed. For example, Udantpur’s monasteries were destroyed in 1197 by Mohammed-bin-Bakhtiyar and the town was renamed.[53] Taranatha in his History of Buddhism in India (dpal dus kyi ‘khor lo’i chos bskor gyi byung khungs nyer mkho) of 1608,[54] gives an account of the last few centuries of Buddhism, mainly in Eastern India. Mahayana Buddhism reached its zenith during the Pala dynasty period, a dynasty that ended with the Islamic invasion of the Gangetic plains.[3]
   Vikramashila was destroyed by the forces of Muhammad bin Bakhtiyar Khilji around 1200.[55] Many Buddhist monks fled to Nepal, Tibet, and South India to avoid the consequences of war.[56] Tibetan pilgrim Chöjepal had to flee advancing Muslim troops multiple times, as they were sacking Buddhist sites.[57]
   A major empire to support Buddhism, the Pala dynasty, fell in the 12th century, and Muslim invaders destroyed monasteries and monuments.[1] According to Randall Collins, Buddhism was already declining in India by the 12th century, but with the pillage by Muslim invaders it nearly became extinct in India in the 1200s.[58] In the 13th century, states Craig Lockard, Buddhist monks in India escaped to Tibet to escape Islamic persecution;[59] while the monks in western India, states Peter Harvey, escaped persecution by moving to south Indian Hindu kingdoms that were able to resist the Muslim power.[60]
   Brief Muslim accounts and the one eye witness account of Dharmasmavim in wake of the conquest during the 1230s talks about abandoned viharas being used as camps by the Turukshahs.[61] Later historical traditions such as Taranathas are mixed with legendary materials and summarised as “the Turukshah conquered the whole of Magadha and destroyed many monasteries and did much damage at Nalanda, such that many monks fled abroad” thereby bringing about a demise of Buddhism with their destruction of the Viharas.[61]”

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_Buddhism_in_India#Islamic_conquest_and_rule

   A funny thought: We Non-Muslim Infidels are contrarians in such contrary ways from each other:

   Burmese and Sri Lankan Buddhists violate their core religious beliefs by persecuting their Rohinga Muslim (Burma, I refuse to say, “Myanmar”) minority, and Sri Lanka Buddhists the Tamil (Muslim and Hindu minority who have exterminated monks and nuns in their efforts to take the country from the Buddhist majority using salami tactics, migrate into a portion, become a majority there and demand independence, using terror as a tactic.)

   We Jews violate our core beliefs by refusing to persecute the Muslim minorities who want to exterminate us they way they exterminated the Buddhists in India, Pakistan and Afganistan, and are now exterminating Yazidis and Christians in Iraq and Syria.

   Buddhists and then Christians are the ones who came up with “turn the other cheek.” We’re the only ones living been that way as a people, for the most part. For thousands of years, now. That’s why these liberal idiots have no idea what the Torah says. Ain’t it hilarious?

7. yamit82 Said:

   The Maccabees were more practical: they had no qualms about switching from the progressive Syro-Grecians to the relatively barbarous Roman thugs.

   Good analogy. It was the Soviet Union and it’s satellite, newly Communist Czechoslovakia, not the U.S. who gave Israel support against the British led Arabs during the War of Independence. Look how well that turned out. It was the “relatively barbarous Roman thugs” who looted and destroyed the Temple, murdered and enslaved us and took away our sovereignty (it’s a myth that Jews ceased to be a majority then, it was the Muslims who accomplished that.)

   http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/roman-troops-carrying-away-the-menorah-from-the-temple-at-news-photo/463927475?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect#roman-troops-carrying-away-the-menorah-from-the-temple-at-jerusalem-picture-id463927475

   https://www.google.com/search?q=soviet+union+supports+israeli+independence+poster&safe=active&rlz=1CAACAO_enUS740US740&espv=2&tbm=isch&imgil=w8Qtzthib7JY2M%253A%253BLIGnoB8r9QZgDM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.pinterest.com%25252Fmrsjoysuch%25252Fpal%25252525C3%25252525A4stina-israel-1929-1948%25252F&source=iu&pf=m&fir=w8Qtzthib7JY2M%253A%252CLIGnoB8r9QZgDM%252C_&usg=__Fo8CuGDkBLKg0xMoQhCSK23rlGY%3D&biw=1745&bih=856&ved=0ahUKEwjXuIawubLTAhUEQyYKHS2VAdoQyjcINg&ei=s1r4WJeTL4SGmQGtqobQDQ#imgrc=SVgZWxwJWnsXcM:

8. In the mean time the West funds the expansion of Islamism to sub-equatorial Africa!!!!
   The International left is still in search for a final solution for the Jews with the help of many Jews!

9. @ Leon Kushner:
   I agree that Israel should annex Yesha and behave more like Russia but it would be foolish to exchange on client-state relationship for another. There’s no free lunch. The strategy towards Iran should be a)sanctions,m containment b) encirclement c)rollback d) regime change, war if necessary.

   When Dubya invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya gave up its nukes and chemical weapons and Iran suspended it’s nuke program. The only thing that will make them even back off is fear.

   I hope President Trump gives them plenty of reason to fear. But there is an order and a sequence to things. You can’t jump to war. In advocating this, Friedman is very suspiciously acting like a provocateur. Dershowitz is just confused as usual.

10. :
    So the key to improving relations between the BIG, bloated, Israeli and US *governments* is for the USG to rearrange the organizational charts of some its bureaucracies.

    This lady has no idea of what she’s talking about.

    Bureaucracies are naturally suspicious (and usually hateful) of one another.

    We don’t want those bureaucracies, in response to media pressure, executive orders, or whatever, effusing a public image that, by golly!, they’re getting along like kissin’ cousins.

    We want them to be ABOLISHED.

    Americans are a very good-natured people. They certainly don’t need a bunch of offensive, political appointees — who only represent special interests hostile to good relations — getting between them and the other, mostly American-admiring people of the world.

11. :
    All you have to know about this guy is encapsulated in a short, wiki sentence:

    Mattis has worked for FWA Consultants and also served as a member of the General Dynamics Board of Directors

    Look where they come from. Look where they go.

12. @ yamit82:Yamit, well said! I enjoyed reading your insightful comment as much as I always enjoy reading Caroline’s. Regarding her comments about Mattis and other Centcom officers I believe that antisemitism also plays a role. The fact that no US armed forces are situated alongside IDF personnel means that they can’t establish a healthy rapport amongst themselves or amongst Israeli civilians. For many reasons over a long period of time, US leaders (Trump included), both political and military have never (for the most part) understood the value of Israel as a true ally. Nor do they understand the Arab mentality and therefore the danger of underestimating both: Israel as an entity that has America’s back and the Arabs who absolutely do not. Yamit you raise some excellent points that are rarely spoken. I’ve often said that Israel should behave more like Russia. They do have a lot in common. I think they need to do more for themselves (like formerly annex Judea and Samaria) and stop looking over their shoulders as to what the West will think. The clock is ticking…

13. @ yamit82:
    @ yamit82:
    Iran would become nice to Israel? Iran, whose leaders say they would happily sacrifice 15 million of their own people in a nuclear exchange. The real question here is: Whatever you’ve been smoking, can I have some?

14. Much of the blame rests with U.S. Jewry and especially AIPAC. They have failed to educate U.S. leaders but they keep seeking money claiming that they are essential in gaining U.S. support for Israel.
    And the weak and corrupt Israeli government continues to talk of a two state solution despite the insanity of it all.
    I believe that G-d helps those who FIRST help themselves. As long as we Jews fail to demand ALL of our rights we do not deserve help from G-d.

15. @ yamit82:

    Crawled out of your cave to support the Russians???? Should have stayed in the Chisos.
    Israel should use the Russians only for whores they are !!!
    In my family we only spoke Russian when an obscenity was needed.
    Russia !!!!!!!!!!! I expected better yamit82, sob sob.

16. Birdalone Said:

    SecMattis will find a way to change the narrative, but he does have to consider the stability of Jordan and Egypt in fighting ISIS.

    He sounds like typical military Jew hater and his opinions I would guess preceded his tours of Duty in the ME. Only other reasons I can think of is that he is pretty stupid or corrupted by the Saudi money not their stupid opinions about Israel. Haley is not the brightest nugget among Trump’s political appointments.

17. Lev Azkhar Said:

    Almighty. Actualy it needs to forget about patrons and turn his eyes ONLY IN THE ALMIGHTY.

    Apparently you didn’t read what I wrote:
    yamit82 Said:

    It is always dangerous to rely on a protecting empire: Jews tried that with Assyria, Rome, and Persia.
    Fortunately, Israel need not rely on anyone: her arsenal of nuclear bombs, if wielded wildly enough, would force everyone from Tehran to Washington to behave to our liking in our region. No one would like the mad Jews to nuke the oilfields, and no one can do anything to prevent us from doing so.

    Since you seem to like Psalms try this:

    “let the high praises of G-d be in their throat and a two edged sword in their hand – to execute vengeance upon the nations…” (Psalms 58).

18. SecMattis will find a way to change the narrative, but he does have to consider the stability of Jordan and Egypt in fighting ISIS. Moving Israel into CENTCOM is an interesting dilemma.

    The new media Delegitimization spin on TeamTrump is that Amb Haley is ‘setting US foreign policy’.

19. Some of America’s support for Fatah-PLO is connected with perceived self-interest, not just ignorance. THE USG has been convinced for over seventy years that they must give some support to Arab demands on Israel in order to protect American business interests in the Arab-Muslim world and to enable the U.S. military to maintain a presence in some of these states. Right or wrong, that’s what the Washington “Mideast experts” have always believed. If American policy is ever to change, Ms. Glick and other defenders of Israel need to address this perception and refute it.

20. THE TORAH OPINION

    Question: how can Israel put his eyes only in The almighty?
    Answer: By obeying His Word Only. Psalms 119: 105 say it crystal clear.
    —Sal 119:105 NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.

21. @ yamit82:

    Sorry Yamit, but Israel doesn’t need patrons. Patrons change, and obama is proof of it. Israel only needs The Almighty. Actualy it needs to forget about patrons and turn his eyes ONLY IN THE ALMIGHTY.

22. The US has done harm to all the parties in the Near East by paying them to buy American weapons to kill each other. If there was peace, the money would stop. It’s an odd morality that supplies the tools that perpetuate death for others while maintaining our military-industrial complex.

23. Russia would be a better patron for Israel than America.

    http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Russian-envoy-Foreign-Ministry-to-discuss-recognition-of-Jlem-as-capital-488288
    Russian envoy, Foreign Ministry to discuss recognition of J’lem as capital

    Even though Russia recognized west Jerusalem as the capital, it does not mean that the embassy will move from Tel Aviv.

    It is always dangerous to rely on a protecting empire: Jews tried that with Assyria, Rome, and Persia.
    Fortunately, Israel need not rely on anyone: her arsenal of nuclear bombs, if wielded wildly enough, would force everyone from Tehran to Washington to behave to our liking in our region. No one would like the mad Jews to nuke the oilfields, and no one can do anything to prevent us from doing so.

    In terms of alliances, the American one is empty. Our earthly protector gives Egypt and Palestine more aid than us, supplies Arabs more weapons than us, and pushes us around diplomatically. Russia is better: it never pushed a client to suicidal peace with its enemies. Russia, if aligned with Israel, would be interested in our expansion rather than shrinking us into eight-mile-wide borders. Being a normal rather than professedly moral state, Russia would want its client to win rather than capitulate to defeated enemies. Russia would love to lure the proverbial American client and in a brink of an eye establish control over the Middle East.

    Russia cannot give us as much aid as America in nominal dollar terms, but can match it in purchasing-power-parity terms because Russian weapons cost three to ten times less than comparable American systems; Russian weapons are not perfect, but they are good enough against Arabs. More importantly, Russian military support would be unwavering: the Soviet Union has been arming Egypt for years—and for free—before the US started meager deliveries to Israel at high prices. During the Yom Kippur war, Russia launched an airlift to Egypt on day one and brought nuclear missiles to its client’s defense, while the US Administration procrastinated until Israel decided the war with what weapons were available.

    Israel the American client invokes no fear because everyone knows that Americans are slow to react. It’s totally different with Russia, which has no money to bribe its enemies and therefore chooses to fight, sabotage, or otherwise uproot them. Russia arouses a kind of raw-power respect among Arabs, and they would not dream of attacking Israel if we were a Russian associate. Palestinian and Lebanese terrorists, Syria, and Iran would suddenly become nice to Israel. It is not nice to join thugs, but if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. The Maccabees were more practical: they had no qualms about switching from the progressive Syro-Grecians to the relatively barbarous Roman thugs.

    True, Russians are anti-Semitic, but so were the Romans and so are the Americans. It was a joint Anglo-American-Russian decision to refuse to ransom a million Jews from Germany. All the Allies refused to announce the ongoing Holocaust during their radio broadcasts into the occupied territories so that Jews might know and flee. America, Europe, and Russia condemned the Israeli attack on Osiraq. Jews have no friends, but our allies should better be mad.

24. Terrific article though he was accused of 38 not 37 murders, leading dozens of terror attacks that led to hundreds of murders and being the paymaster and organizer of thousands of murders, and he was also convicted of attempted murder in addition to the five she mentions.

    . Good thing I quoted the 2002 Haaretz article in full, under the earlier posts about this event. They pulled it!
    ““Barghouti Convicted in Deaths of Five People
    Reuters and Roni Singer Haaretz Service May 20, 2004 12:00 AM

    The Tel Aviv District Court convicted former West Bank Tanzim commander Marwan Barghouti in the deaths of five people on Thursday.
    Barghouti was convicted of three terror attacks in which the five were murdered, as well as in another charge of attempted murder, membership in a terror organization and conspiring to commit a crime.
    However, the court acquitted him of 33 other murders with which he was charged, noting that there was no evidence that he was a full partner to those incidents.
    The prosecution on Thursday was seeking to sentence Barghouti to five life terms.
    Meanwhile, Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv after Barghouti’s hearing, holding up a poster of terror victims killed by Palestinians in the last few years.
    The court said in its verdict that “the defendant most of the time did not have direct contact with the field operatives who carried out the attacks. That connection was maintained through associates close to the defendant. Barghouti was responsible for providing the field units with money and arms via these associates.”The court ruled that Barghouti was directly responsible for a January 2002 terror attack on a gas station in Givat Zeev in which Israeli Yoela Chen was murdered. The attack, the judges said, was carried out at his direct order in revenge for the assassination of Raed Carmi. Barghouti had admitted his responsibility for this attack.
    The attack in which a Greek monk was murdered in Ma’aleh Adumim on June of 2001 was also carried out at the instruction of Barghouti, the judges said.
    The former Tanzim leader, the court ruled, also approved the March 2002 attack at Tel Aviv’s Seafood Market restaurant in which three people were murdered, as well as a car bomb attack in Jerusalem.
    The judges said Barghouti’s orders for terror attacks were sometimes “based on instructions” from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.
    “Arafat would never give explicit instructions for attacks but he let it be known when the timing was right,” the judges said.
    “He made sure his subordinates understood very well when he was interested in a cease-fire and when he was interested in terror attacks against Israel,” the verdict said.
    Barghouti, 43, was charged with leading dozens of terror operations against Israeli targets since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising, including suicide and shooting attacks that led to the death and injury of hundreds of Israeli citizens and Israel Defense Force soldiers.
    According to the charge sheet, Barghouti headed the Fatah, Tanzim and Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade terror groups in the West Bank and was subordinate to Arafat. Barghouti, who refused a lawyer, represented himself throughout his trial, which began in August 2003.
    The state prosecutor said Barghouti funded and planned terror attacks and is not the political activist he claimed to be. Court security personnel were deployed in increased numbers Thursday morning. Barghouti’s supporters in the European parliament were expected to show up for the ruling.
    Seized by Israel in 2002, Barghouti denied orchestrating attacks against Israelis. He has expressed pride in resistance to Israeli occupation while declaring his opposition to what he called “the killing of innocents”.
    Supporters said if Barghouti was found guilty, it would bolster him even more among the Palestinian public, where he is second only in popularity to Arafat.”

    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/news/barghouti-convicted-in-deaths-of-five-people-1.123019“