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Tyranny is our foe. Whatever trapping or disguise it wears [read the religion of peace], whatever language it speaks, be it external or internal [read the religion of peace], we must for ever be on our guard, ever mobilized, ever vigilant, always ready to spring at its throat. — Winston Churchill
Tens of thousands of Gazans are attempting to storm into Israel. If they were to succeed many among them would rape and slaughter Israelis living in nearby towns. They are being urged on by Hamas leaders. The mobs (called “protestors” to torture the English language) are using petrol bombs and slingshots and burning tyres to provide cover. It’s all on the tele to be seen with those who have eyes to see.
Apparently, the British government has expressed concern about the violence and loss of Gazan life. Macron blamed Israel for the deaths of those storming the border. Julie Bishop called on Israel “to be proportionate in its response and refrain from excessive force.” It is in fact a miracle that so few Gazan lives have been lost. Imagine the carnage with the same mobs, with the same malign intent, coming up against a less disciplined and restrained army. Some young children have been killed. What the heck are their parents thinking bringing them to the front lines? Well, hold that thought pending Indonesia.
Meanwhile in the world of truth, outside of sanctimony and delusion, the White House blamed Hamas for the violence. Niki Haley walked out of the UN as the Palestinian representative got up to propagandise, having vetoed yet another of those anti-Israel resolutions. If you still don’t know why the world needs Trump you should. Unless, of course, you can’t get beyond his hairstyle.
Does anyone with even half a brain not understand that blood would be flowing in the streets if Hamas terrorists managed to get into Israeli towns. I visited Sderot in November, 2014. It is the closest Israeli town to the Gaza border. Twenty-eight thousand rockets had been fired at Sderot since 2000. I saw the piles of shrapnel kept at a local police station. I was told that the town is so close to the border that once you hear a “red alert” you have just fifteen seconds to find cover. All playgrounds have adjoining bomb shelters.
Barbarians are on their doorsteps and Ms Bishop calls on Israel to be “proportionate”. What does that mean exactly? Was Churchill proportionate enough for Bishop, I wonder. Let me see. If Israel were to ever lose, millions of Israeli Jews would be tortured, enslaved and killed. Do the sums, designer-gowned empty-head!
Back to the tragedy of children being effectively sacrificed by their parents at the Gaza border. You can argue about the intent in this case, but you can’t in Indonesia. It is beyond belief that a mother and father would strap explosives to their young children to blow up Christian churches. Or is it? Religious fanatics are capable of anything when Paradise awaits those who kill infidels. As Allah puts it: “Then smite their necks and smite of them each finger.” And, as his infallible messenger explains, “the man who dies without participating in jihad, who never desired to wage holy war, dies the death of a hypocrite.”
Despite the clear riding instructions that Allah and Mohammed give to their followers, The Australian’s Greg Sheridan, among the most grounded and gifted of foreign correspondents, can describe the ideology prompting heinous terrorist acts as an “utter perversion” of Islam. According to ‘The Religion of Peace’ website, Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 33,000 deadly attacks since 9/11. Exercises in perversion alright but not, I suggest, religious perversion.
It must be a devil of a puzzle to Islam’s apologists. All of the terrorists and their imam cheerleaders have obviously not read the same Koranic and Sunnah scripture as Mr Sheridan or Indonesian presidents who he writes will never “accept that terrorism represents anything like a legitimate strand of Islamic thought and practice.” Whether they accept it or not, killing non-believers is part and parcel of Islam. Can Allah and Mohammed have misspoke? I think not.
Unless we draw a direct line from the scripture to the problem, the problem cannot be tackled effectively. Do you mean to say that if Christians rather than Muslims had lived in the land now identified as Gaza, Israel and the West Bank prior to 1948 that Christian terrorists would be urging men, women and children to throw themselves against Israeli border fences? What a bountiful, prosperous and peaceful land it would be.
Islamic scripture provides grist for grievance and barbarism. It clearly corrupts men’s souls. It surely corrupted the souls of the mother and father sending their children to death in Indonesia. It has wreaked this havoc since the seventh century. So many great Western leaders of the past have known this. Now, excepting Trump, we have a bunch of know-nothing, panty-waisted appeasers ready only, on any distorted pretext, to reflexively spring at the throat of the only free and enlightened nation in the Middle East. And all the while, the tyrannous enemy inside and outside the gates plot their takeover. Jesus wept.
Not in the news – slaughter and displacement of Palestinians – in Syria.
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2018/05/hugh-fitzgerald-so-much-news-about-gaza-when-there-was-so-little-about-yarmouk
thanks for this link gary@erko; I certainly didn’t know about it and I’m a current affairs junkie.
No Jews to blame, so not newsworthy. They weren’t interested in reporting when the Jordanians drove tanks into the Palestinian refugee camps to chase them out of the country, nor in reporting the genocide of Palestinians by Kuwaitis.
Ignorance is a shocking thing. It is Israeli propaganda that Hamas, a prisoner support group in the Gaza concentration camp is somehow an enemy.
These people are imprisoned. The fence is not a border, it is a fence surrounding a concentration camp which is controlled by the Israeli military.
those men, women and children are fighting for their lives and their freedom. Would the same have been said of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto or prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who dares to resist their occupiers? No.
So, why the double standard for Palestinians?
The hypocrisy of this article is breathtaking. Tens of thousands of Palestinians are trying to march into Israel. No, they are trying to get out of a prison and beyond that prison fence is not Israel but Occupied Palestine.
Israel’s borders have never been tested in a court of law but they remain, only potentially legal as the UN Mandate. Everything else is Occupied Palestine.
My question is, why did we sacrifice millions of lives in two world wars, fighting occupation, only to support the horrors that is Israel’s occupation of Palestine today?
Peter Smith, I would like to hear from you why the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had a right to resist and the Palestinians do not?
rosross: Peter doesn’t suffer fools. If you genuinely believe Auschwitz and Gaza are comparable in any way, you’re a bigger dill than the Gazans. They tolerate a corrupt leadership. They refuse to recognise the commercial possibilities conveyed by owning a plot of land in a corner of Mediterranean adjacent to Suez. They take their kids to demonstrations where their welfare is endangered, then dress up the surviving ones as martyrs. They are a ‘society’ that has elevated dysfunction to an art form.
If you have something sensible to say — you don’t, but nevertheless — put some thought into a single, coherent post that is as close to fact-based and logical as you can manage.
Keep up the barrage of idiocies and grossly offensive comparisons and I’ll not only ban you, I’ll do it with great pleasure, subscriber or not.
Clear on that? Probably not, but at least I can say I tried.
Got to agree with you. And the repetitive, “death to Israel” is conveniently airbrushed. There’s a great deal of truth in this too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG1C7gorfQA
A concentration camp is a concentration camp, whether methods differ in terms of actions by the occupying forces. People end up dead all the same.
For a while I saw Quadrant as a beacon of free speech and informed comment.
Censorship is a bad look but yes, you make yourself clear. Having just resubscribed, if you ban me, I would like a refund.
By the way, my reference was to the Warsaw Ghetto, not Auschwitz. And I saw your reply last and if that means other replies constitute a crime requiring censorship there is little I can do about it.
.p.s. There are no Gazans, there are only Palestinians. The concentration camp of Gaza is in Occupied Palestine.
The more I reread your article, the more gobsmacked I am. How dare you cite the name of Jesus in the same breath with such ignorance, intolerance and total lack of humanity? And I am not a Christian but I can value the sentiments of Jesus Christ which your view betrays utterly.
Actually, I know I shouldn’t feed the troll, but if I may. How can you chastise someone for citing the name of Jesus, and in the same paragraph say you don’t believe in Jesus? That’s not defensible.
I support the teachings of Jesus, if he ever existed, teachings which came from ancient Egypt. I support the concept of a Christ whether he existed in a literal sense or not.
Tell me, how does one become a troll by speaking the truth and defending rule of law, human rights, democracy and common human decency?
I know I shouldn’t… when you argue with an idiot, no-one can tell the difference.
That resonates. I also like John (Sam) Newman’s take:
“Never argue with an idiot; they bring you down to their level then beat you on experience”.
You need to increase the dosage of whatever you are taking for your mental illness.
Unfortunately your bias and unreasoned hatred are not treatable.
I think Peter believes what he says even as he supports human rights atrocities and war crimes.
You have been tragically seduced by the modern cult of the victim. Somebody else is ALWAYS to blame. You shoulda done this; you shoulda done that. Bwaaa. Throw toys from cots. Send your bile and bombs and when they are turned DOUBLE you resort to sticks and stones and then you bawl. The Left LOVES this stuff; it thrives on the victimhood of those at the mercy of the patriarchy; it’s their meat and three veg. Then ‘white privilege’ – don’t forget that, of course. Now there’s a new category; Jewish privilege.
Well, you know what rosross – the Jewish people know ALL ABOUT atrocities and war crimes. Everyone of them. And one of the consequences of that is the tendency to want to protect yourself with BIGGER BOMBS. Any halfwit knows that. Or should.
You are quite wrong. I reject victimhood because it is destructive, whether it is Aboriginal Australians or Jewish Israelis playing victim.
My position is very simple. I support and strive to protect rule of law, human rights, democratic principles, justice and common human decency and anyone who does that will call out Israel as occupier, coloniser and apartheid State.
This is not about Jews. Most Jews do not live in UN Mandated Israel or Occupied Palestine, never did and never will. This is about the colonial war Israeli Zionists wage against the indigenous people of the land they occupy.
A good follow on to this article is an article by Mark Durie in yesterday’s Oz, 16/5, (“Terrorists not defaming Islam, but attempting to observe it”) and three letters in support of Durie in today’s Oz, 17/5. All tell the truth that our leaders continue to ignore.
Ever seen a map of Gaza,Rosross?You will see it has a frontage to the sea of 40km,so saying it is a prison is hyperbole.
Ever seen that bit of sea Sabena where Israeli gunboats patrol it 24/7 and shoot at Palestinian fishermen trying to keep their families alive?
https://english.palinfo.com/news/2017/5/12/israeli-navy-gunboats-open-fire-at-fishermen-north-of-gaza
Now you’re making me bawl with your lies. “Hey boys; are you one and the same from the tribe who want to see us exterminated? Just checking fellas. In case you’re in any doubt we have these here guns. Just in case…”.
Dear Mr. Franklin,
Please give this rosross peanut the flick. Quadrant’s admirable standards are at risk of being trashed by such people as rosross.
I feel confident that Quadrant maintains faith in freedom of speech and diversity of opinion. My views are substantiated by facts. You should try it. Begin with objective research.
rosross, show me an example of you protesting against one of the many atrocities committed against the Palestinians by their Arab neighbours, and I’ll consider the possibility that you are motivated by something other than hatred and hypocrisy. (Granted, I’ll assume stupidity, but no law against being dumb). Until then, it is *you* who are no different to genocidal maniacs.
@whitelaughter,
To answer your question, my view is very simple and sourced in principles of rule of law, justice, human rights and democracy.
I apply those principles to Israel as I do to Indonesia’s occupation of West Paupa, and as I did to the occupation of East Timor. I also apply them to Russia’s occupation of Chechnya and China’s occupation of Tibet.
In other words, as a matter of principle I reject occupation.
Israel however, because it claims to be a Western democracy is judged by that bar, the bar it has set itself, a bar which is different to Indonesia, Russia and China.
You seek to compare Israel to Middle Eastern tyrannies – I compare Israel to Western democracies where she is found terribly wanting.
If you find the application of such principles to be genocidal then I suggest you look up the meaning of principles and genocidal.
I’m suprised at the number of trolls on the Quadrant site commenting their anti-Israeli/Pro-Palesitinian propaganda, making outrageous false claims (prison indeed! I’ve been there; the people are not in a prison, unless it’s a prison crated by their own leadership).
What on earth is ‘occupied Palestine’? It just shows a shocking ignorance of history and a lack of awareness of realpolitik by Yasser Arafat and his cronies in the 50’s, creating terrorist organisations.
Please leave Quadrant for the grown-ups and go and infest Honi Soit.
If defence of rule of law, democracy and human rights is trolling then we need more trolls.
Occupied Palestine is everything beyond the UN Mandated borders and even they have never been tested in a court of law.
The UN Mandated partition of Palestine, against the will of its people was certainly immoral and probably illegal to boot. I doubt many people would sit back and watch European armies and colonists invade and occupy their country because the UN said so.
And just when were you in the Gaza prison? I have driven around Palestine in decades past but that has not been possible for a very long time.
Next you’ll be telling us that the arrival of Europeans into Australia wasn’t “UN mandated”. Go on; pull the other one!!
A bit like talking to Julian Burnside. You can see the words flow back and forth but you can’t quite convince yourself that rosross is in the same conversation as you.
We are not in the same conversation. I am talking truths to rebut prejudice and propaganda.
I fail to understand your comment. Are you claiming that the British settled Australia as part of a UN Mandate? Since the UN did not exist in 1788 the question you ask makes no sense.
The UN did not exist when the League of Nations voted for the creation of the state of Israel.
@whitelaughter,
We are talking about Nov. 29, 1947 | United Nations Partitions Palestine. The UN was formed in 1945. The UN was responsible for the partition of Palestine and the imposing of the State of Israel upon Palestine.
Even now that partition has not been tested in a court of law. However, common sense decrees that Israel exists and as many nations have been founded through imposed colonisation it cannot be dismissed on that count.
However, all other nations so founded have given full and equal rights to their indigenous people.Israel must do the same.
I wrote the following in 2015, but it is still true today:
“This strikes me as the familiar ‘victimhood’ problem we have with the aboriginal ‘gimme-gimme’ culture. In the Palestinian case they are into their 4th generation of handouts with the latest generation brought up to do no work, but to yearn for a lost land they have never seen and would not know what to do with if they got it back. Witness their destruction of the Gaza settlements handed back to them by Israel.
Their handouts require that there should ALWAYS be a refugee problem, so they cannot afford to be resettled anywhere else or to build a new society (that would require work) so the status quo is the ideal beggar society.
Not that much different from our own Oz situation where tiny-part aborigines depend on victimhood, complaining and special privileges to get something for nothing (if you call endless whingeing ‘nothing’).
What sort of parents condemn their children to a useless life rather than one of self fulfillment and achievement? Poor old Steve Jobs of war torn Lebanon. Rejected by his parents, taken in by American foster-parents the poor soul had to work for a living. With a start like that what could he achieve?
It is long past the time they (and our own local grievance industry’) got over it and recognized that it is not where you start in life that counts, but where you finish it.”
Ever wondered how our taxpayer funded Aid $$ are spent on the poor deprived Palestinian leadership? Then this will make you feel good.
Impoverished Palestinians? Many Arabs in Judea and Samaria enjoy a high standard of life and have no qualms displaying visible signs of affluence. Cut and paste the following and try not to be envious …
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-palestinian-mansions-and-luxury-cars-shatter-myth-of-arab-poverty/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email
No, I didn’t think so.
I watched Gary’s link to the article on Hamas (and suicidal and child sacrificing Mamas) and was struck with the reality faced by the Israelis to survive and the fantasy world of Oz (and EU) politicians.
When I watched some YouTubes filmed from the Gazan side I could not contemplate using the word ‘peaceful’ in the attacks on Israel’s borders. Would you like some url links to violent terrorists trying to storm the fences? I note that an 8-month old baby died from tear gas inhalation: what sort of mother takes a baby with them to be sacrificed in a riot? Oh, a Palestinian or muslim one.
So, shooting them was wrong? When 35,000 islamists hoping to kill Jews arrives to tear down the border, why was our new, non-lethal, LGBTIQWERTY, equal opportunity ADF not deployed to negotiate with them?
By the way, look into the case of LtCol Tim Collins of the Irish Guards (https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/may/23/military.iraq) and you will see why I would NEVER join the ADF or risk my life defending the New Oz today. Let the armchair warriors, politicians and lawyers fight the next war.
All of that might have some relevance if it were not for the fact that we are not talking about Palestinians in foreign refugee camps but about Palestinians held under military occupation in their own country and denied human and civil rights.
You seem to have no awareness of the horrendous toll the apartheid wall takes on the Palestinians, cutting through fields, towns, villages, backyards, dividing people from farms, vineyards, orchards, schools, jobs, family etc. and the checkpoints where they waste hours waiting for permission from whimsical IDF bullies armed with guns and regulations.
Quite how you think people can function in such an environment beggars belief.
And sorry, why is it okay for Israel to regularly slaughter thousands of Palestinians, most of them children, in the Gaza concentration camp, for settlers to burn down Palestinian homes killing children and adults, for settlers and the IDF to shoot Palestinians on a daily basis and for there to be no reaction to those actions?
Israel is the occupier and has all of the power and responsibility. If you think those prisoners in Gaza, armed with what, rocks and slingshots against Israeli military might are any sort of threat to Israeli Jews you are deluded.
Here is the thing, Israel must do what every other coloniser has done and give full and equal rights to its indigenous people. End the occupation, end the continued colonisation and end apartheid.
The only reason they have not done that is religious bigotry and the belief that non-Jews are inferior and Palestinian non-Jews are subhuman.
It beats me how any sane Australian can support that.
Because so many Australians have Irish ancestry, we know about the Peace Walls in Ireland – exactly the same as the barriers protecting Israel. Roman Catholics celebrate the Peace Wall for keeping the PAF out, Protestants for keeping the IRA out: and thus both sides learned that the majority of people on the other side were good Christians who just wanted peace.
Hamas hates the security barrier for the same reason that the Irish love the Peace Walls – they create peace.
@whitelaughter,
The British did not and do not deny full and equal civil and human rights to the Irish. There is no comparison. Neither did the British slaughter helpless civilians for resisting occupation.
I have had a lot of respect for Quadrant on many issues and in truth, I have no issue with this being published although it is distorted, prejudiced and highly subjective. I look forward to seeing the counter-view very soon, which is what any ethical and responsible media source would provide.
What is most troubling is how successful the Zionist propaganda machine has been in terrifying Australians in regard to Muslims so that even in light of the clear injustice of what Israel does to the Palestinians, many of whom by the way are Christians, the fear drives even sensible people to support the worst of atrocities.
And people wonder how Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia came into being. Look at yourself for you are the fact of such horrors.
You are the deluded one RR, Islam doesn’t need Zionist Propaganda to terrify Australians, Islam is perfectly capable of doing that itself
Checkout the att list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks and maybe pull your head in
“And people wonder how Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia came into being. Look at yourself for you are the fact of such horrors.”
Your antisemitism is appalling and constitutes hate speech. But I won’t call in Timmy-boy SoupNazi because you’ll provide enough rope to hang yourself.
Making valid criticisms of Israel is not anti-semitic. Israel no more represents Jews or Judaism than it represents Christians.
We live in a sad world when verifiable and factual and much-needed criticisms are called hate speech.
What is terrifying is how reasonable, generally sensible, probably very decent people can be so brainwashed to hate another group that they support the worst of atrocities being done to them. No doubt it has ever been thus. How could it happen, they said of Germany?
Well, take a mirror – this is how it happens.
Just remember, the principles you betray to wreak some sort of deluded vengeance against Palestinians – one presumes you grieve for the Christians who die and celebrate the Muslims, regardless of age – will come back to bite us all. What a travesty to hand down to future generations. What crass, immoral, unethical, fear-driven grovelling and bloodletting because the propaganda campaign to hate Muslims has been so effective in brainwashing the gullible.
@rosross. You’re not going to win this one, ever.. All marks for trying, and your humanitarian concern is most admirable, but geopolitics, real politics, international high finance and the karma hanging like the sword of Damocles over the heads of the West is going to sort this out for you. Best to take cognisance of Jewish dissenters. They know the situation inside out. You are welcome to go on ranting, of course, it’s a free world. There must be some countries where you would be able to have a public debate on this one. Maybe the States, I don’t know. In Eastern European countries you will have more luck, but, no offence, you need to be more subtle in your thinking to understand why in the democratic so-called old West you cannot have an open and honest debate on this issue. Absolutely no point trying. Have a rant and feel better, if you can. You could study the human condition?
The Jews are a special people, however that came about is beside the point. They stole esoteric secrets from the Pharaohs. They were slaves there. Anyway, it’s all in the O.T. Genetics and the will to survive as a separate people did the rest. As a people, they never integrate. As people, they do integrate, to a degree. Anyway, they are more intelligent as a people than any other known ethnic group-Survival of the fittest. In this case, survival of the most intelligent organised as a group, as a wandering nation. Maybe you ought to study the history of the Jews, and Tibetan Buddhism at the same time. You might see the light, although, my hopes on that score are low. My experience in life is such, I think it is very hard for people to rise above their natural level of intelligence-But you can try. You have a head-start on most. Your heart is in the right place. Speak to Jesus, he’s still available to earnest seekers.
The Ashkenazy Jews and the Sikhs have the highest intelligence quotient of any ethnic/religious grouping. Fact.
Richard Lynn’s “Race Differences in Intelligence” gives an interesting explanation of why the Ashkenazy Jews are, on average, more intelligent than non- Ashkenazy. He also claims (proves?) that Jews in the USA and Britain are much more intelligent on average than those in Israel.
Don’t read if you think that Australian Aborigines have the same average intelligence (as measured by standard tests – I’m aware of the limitations and different types of intelligence) as non-Aborigines
Tables don’t display as it’s text
Given the tiny difference genetically between races it is hard to see how races can impact intelligence. Ashkenazi Jews are not a race anyway. They are simply northern European Jews. The Sephardim Jews have more connection with the Middle East and therefore Hebrews in ancient times and they seem not to stand out in Nobel prizewinning terms.
And there is something a bit odd about trying to establish this or that race is more intelligent than another – racist in fact.
Culture plays more of a part in how people think than does race. What is more significant in terms of achievement is how often the individual is from a northern European culture, particularly Germany and the UK. Religion is unlikely to play, much if any part in intellectual development, but culture certainly does.
The top five countries with the most Nobel laureates are all western nations – with the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Sweden topping the rankings for the best minds in peace, literature, science and economics. The United States has had the most Nobel Prize winners, with 336 winners overall. But, in regard to the US, it needs to be borne in mind that the country has a long tradition of ‘buying’ and ‘collecting’ the best minds and that would impact results.
It would also need to be established that the Nobel Prize system is reliable in terms of objectivity and integrity, and the Peace Prize for Obama puts that into serious question. Which means that Nobel Prizewinners are indicative of nothing really but Nobel Prizewinners.
There are only four established races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid, and variations on those themes, with followers of all religions sourced in all races and all sub-races. Genetic differences between races are so small as to be irrelevant.
Quote: The idea that intelligence can differ between populations has made headlines again, but the rules of evolution make it implausible.
Source: The Guardian – why-genetic-iq-differences-between-races-are-unlikely
@rosross. You’re doing well, being still on board. Anyway, I just this morning got a parable through on the Indranet. There is the Lie and the Truth. The Lie is the Hare, the Truth is the Turtle. The Hare, as we all know, is very quick, on land, not so quick in the water. The Turtle is very slow on land, but a bit quicker in the water. There are times when the Hare is all at sea. It can then only survive by riding on the back of the Turtle. As we know the Hare can swim, but not very far, not at sea. In order for the Hare to get on the back of the Turtle, the Hare tricks the Turtle, or at least, the Hare thinks it has tricked the Turtle. So the Hare is all at sea, riding on the Turtle, making a mess of things, generally. This Turtle lives very long, longer than the Hare. Occasionally the Turtle wishes to wash its backside, because the Hare has been sh…defecatiing all over it. The Turtle goes down for a while. Pity the poor Hare, it drowns. You know where you stand, dive or swim, so does the Hare, but many a hare is ignorant of what it’s sitting on, with and without the h inserted between the es and the aye. Life is a riddle on the back of an enigma, yet, quantum philosophically speaking, quite simple to Divines.
well done, you’ve proven useful rebutting this engenics rubbish. Now, apply that form of thought to the hateful antiJewish propaganda you’re spouting.
@Jacob Jonker,
I have no issue with Hare and Turtle stories but I fail to see how they reflect the principles which underpin our modern world, at least our modern Western world. These are principles for which millions have fought and died.
I merely seek to apply them equally, to everyone, and that includes Israel. Just as one cannot be half-pregnant, neither can one apply principles selectively, i.e. occupation and forced colonisation is fine here, but not there. Refusing millions of people human and civil rights is okay in this instance and not in that.
As to still being here, my faith in what I have long believed Quadrant to be about has been restored.
I do not believe one engages in such conversations to win anything. It is merely an exchange of views.
I have studied the history of the Jews and of Tibetan Buddhism for what it is worth. I have also spent time in Israel and worked with and for Israelis. And with Jewish ancestry I would be eligible to become an Israeli citizen except my ancestors gave up all religions and I am of the same view. Having sourced and taken what is of value in many religions I now stick with my interpretation of God. It works well.
Being sarcastic toward others because you do not agree with their views is a poor look. My position is very simple and sourced in respect and appreciation for rule of law, democracy, human rights, justice and common human decency.
RosRos,
You repeated the canard that the ‘refugees’ are being held back by the Jews, yet you did not comment on the link I sent you showing the luxurious homes and cars driven by their elite. Why not? Didn’t it fit your rabid, frothing at the mouth narrative?
I have never been to Israel, but I spent a total of over 3+ years working in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Algeria, Egypt and Abu Dhabi, so I have some first-hand knowledge of the area, its politics and its people. They have such ‘distorted’ cultures that every so often I had to take a break as their attitudes and behaviour would begin to get to me. One minor example? An engineer I worked with would hang up the phone if a female rang him. That is insanity rivalling your own limited perceptions.
The Nobel Prizes have recently become corrupted (Obama was awarded the ‘Peace Prize – for what?) and are therefore an inexact measure, but can you supply a reason for the large discrepancy between the Arab/Islamic population’s contribution to the prizes and that of the Jews? There are 165 Jews listed as Nobel Prize winners from a pool of 12 million Jews which is 0.2% of the World’s Population (2 out of every 1,000 people). They are mostly in the ‘hard sciences’ of Physics & Chemistry (or Economics). There are six Nobel Prize winners from a pool of 1.4 Billion (1:20 of the world) on the Arab/Muslim side. Three are for the pseudo-Peace Prize, and one each for Literature, Chemistry & Physics.
Question: which ethnic group is more likely to advance world civilization? Which is likely to be a better, friendly neighbour?
Finally, a West Bank Arab friend of mine, Nabil, was granted a scholarship to Haifa University to study IT. He accepted, but his ‘Pali’ family cut him off. 30+ years later he is now the CEO of a Telecoms company. His family has again finally made contact – and DEMANDED money from him as they are poor refugees in need of a handout …
According to Israeli and international human rights groups, and I believe the UN, Gaza is a prison. Even a British Prime Minister referred to it as the world’s largest open-air prison.
I have seen the images you have posted but unless we have been to Gaza, neither of us can know how accurate they are, or indeed, how their existence, if they do exist, ‘compensates’ for the fact that the Palestinians living in Gaza are imprisoned.
I have been to Israel and I have worked with and for Israelis. I was also fortunate enough to be able to drive around Palestine when such things were still possible.
I am not quite sure how relevant Nobel Prizewinning is to the core issue of a people denied human and civil rights by those who occupy their country. Is your position that if someone can demonstrate such skills they should be free to do to others whatever they choose? That hardly seems ethical. Indeed many of those Nobel winners did not practice Judaism and were not therefore Jewish. Einstein had secular/atheist parents and was educated in Catholic schools.
Jews comprise all races and hundreds of nationalities and are not an ethnic group. Indeed Jews in Israel are divided on many counts with Ashkenazi or European Jews, discriminating against Sephardim, or southern European and Middle Eastern Jews. Such seems to be the way of human nature.
As to advancing world civilization, I believe that so many have died through the centuries to gain the levels of enlightenment we see today that ensuring principles of rule of law, democracy, human rights and justice are strong, is the best any of us can do to not so much advance world civilization but to hopefully secure its survival.
Those principles should never be tinkered with in the name of race, religion, nationality or culture. They are universal and that is their power.
Aside from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict (the major point in Peter Smith’s article here), one of the issues that turned up in the ensuing comments is the old one about possible racial differences in IQ.
Race is really just a collection of utterly trivial genetic characteristics such as skin colour, hair form, epithelial folds and so on. Completely without IQ import. IQ is genetically determined and nurtured (or not) by culture. Being genetically determined, it is basically inherited and because high IQ people generally prefer to choose mates with similar characteristics, pools of these genes tend to be preserved within groups with no reference to the trivial characteristics listed above.
As noted in one of the comments, Ashkenazys, Sikhs, and some groupings of the Chinese, Japanese and Korean demographies clearly show the elevated IQ traits. It is in fact a benign genetic variance on the right hand side of the normal Bell distribution curve. Well, perhaps not so benign for the recipients – people are uncomfortable with, disturbed by, even fearful of, elevated IQ. The Ashkenazy history of persecution in Europe is not entirely due to cultural “Jewishness”, but has an element of primal fear of the different. Despite the obvious need for elevated IQ input into multiple cultures to keep them dynamic, it is also a truism that intelligence only gets you into trouble when you use it.
@ianl. IQ; It depends how IQ gets used whether a people, or rather the lesser IQ-gifted part of a resident population in a given nation-state infiltrated by highly intelligent groups who do not, even after umpteenth generations, integrate, will be fearful of the consequences of other groups being of superior average intelligence. Normally, those in a resident population of lesser intelligence take much longer to wake up to any adverse, to them, effects of other groups taking over the running of their country when it is already a well-established fact. This is how politics works, but nevertheless there is a strong, perhaps overriding genetic basis for politics, both on the part of they of higher average IQ, to the right of the curve, and those of lesser IQ, in the way they operate, act and react. Innate is a strong survival mechanism in people. It determines how they cooperate and compete at basis, but tribalism, ethnicity, and over that, culture and outside influences determine what kind of combination ensues. In the case of Jewry, the recent history beinwell documented, it is noted that some countries are more accommodating than others. There also appears to be cycle of accommodation turning to an adverse reaction over a period of a few hundred years or more. To my knowledge, this phenomenon has not been under scholarly scrutiny, or else not published widely enough to come to my notice. I grew up in Holland in the Fifties and Sixties, hence, I am quite familiar with things Jewish. As every Jew knows, whatever their religious or political bent, non-Jews and those who have no direct relation, other than a blood relation going back generations, do usually have an opinion about Jews. The Dutch especially, since they have had a long association with Jews in their society. Anyway, as I have wrote before, amongst other places I got a letter published in the Australian Rationalist a few years ago, on the subject, this is an issue best teased out by the Jews themselves. They are more intelligent.
Forgot to mention; people, individuals and groups of higher than average intelligence act as catalysts when within groups with an average on the left of the more intelligent, curve-wise.
@Jacob Jonker,
History records that intelligence exists in all cultures. And research has shown that the more equality and education for women, the more intelligence. No doubt that is why Western cultures have, eventually, stood out from the rest.
Tying intelligence to a religion is hard to see, although where the religion encourages education and curiosity, as the Catholics did so well, there is likely to be the appearance of greater intelligence. But then what is intelligence? If it is university qualifications then we have to explain why so many highly educated people, and increasingly so, are lacking in intelligence.
And since some of the most brilliant people left school at 12, and I have met a few in many Third World countries, and in generations past, in Australia, the issue of education equating with intelligence needs to be questioned.
You seem to think a religion can confer intelligence although with close association with Jews as employers, family, friends, colleagues, that has not been my experience. Ditto for the Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jains who have been in my life.
Is it not a slippery slope to be trying to equate intelligence with any category for it must at some point lead to racist beliefs?
Oh Ross, pray tell, where did I equate or tie intelligence with religion? If I did, I must check and maybe withdraw or rephrase. As you well know, Jews are very intelligent. I would urge you to study quantum physics. Once you get the gist of it, move onto quantum philosophy. Think superpositions, the Void, out of time-out of mind, that kind of thing. Mighty interesting. You know the pen is mightier than the sword. Pen actually means prison of the mind here, not a writing implement but a righting implement. Ok, when it suits the argument, for argument’s sake, we are a race, however, the superposition is held in abeyance while the argument runs. Now, for instance, it becomes profitable for us to be a religion, for the sake of the same argument or the argument we are surreptitiously morphing into. The superposition is directed to make us part of an organised institutional religion. So far so good. If you get stuck, pull out another superposition or two, to slip into the debate, half in-half out, so you can pull ’em out if you get cornered. Quantum philosophy is a wonderful tool. So, again, you get cornered once more, or you see an opportunity opening up to bury the opposition, you move your race-religion superposition into position for genetically conditioned traits. And so on. It takes a bit of practice. Of course, you need to study the matter, and the non-matter. Quantum physics, as I remarked before, had Einstein flummoxed. There is quantum physics as physics and quantum physics as supernatural positioning. The superpositions do not exist in universal time, even as they exist in the universe. This means not only non-local ties, but also non-time related ties. By this method, once understood, you can spot the ties that bind, provided you know the elementary truth about a subject. So, that is now all clear. It’s a bit like rebirthing. You are intelligent, I can see that. Now look at the facts and cast your mind back a few thousand years. Do you see a connection, a bind that ties? Bonded people show certain traits you can’t miss, once you understand. People who are bound by a tie or ties cannot help themselves. That is not a matter of race, religion or politics. It’s a known fact. Read Frankle, Freud, Jung and that crowd. They were onto something. See oh Sophie!
@Jacob Jonker,
The man who originated Quantum Theory, Max Planck, was a devoted Christian, as were many of the great scientists who went on to develop Quantum Theory. Like Einstein, Planck did not believe in a personal God, but he was deeply religious.
I am not sure if you are referring to Quantum Theory in terms of the influence of German culture on intelligence.
Yes, well said.
Quote: “The most important aspect of our policy must be our ever-present, manifest desire to institute complete equality for the Arab citizens living in our midst … The attitude we adopt toward the Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a people. … What saddens me is less the fact that the Jews are not smart enough to understand this, but rather, that they are not just smart enough to want it.” – Albert Einstein
@Jacob Jonker,
My apologies. Was I in error reading that you believe Jews equate with higher intelligence? Judaism is a religion and Jews are members of that religion. Ergo, if Jews are more intelligent then you are claiming that a religion for some reason, confers higher intelligence.
I have read a lot about Einstein.And I have a good understanding of quantum mechanics. He was never comfortable with the concept and resisted it, but what he cared most about was good, honest, ethical science and he did his best to come to terms with the radical new theory.
I have read Frankel, Freud and Jung, the latter of course being a Christian.
Do I see a connection going back thousands of years? Yes, for all of us. The first Jew was a convert as was the first Christian. Judaism like all religions forced conversions and for those reasons alone, followers of all religions are of very mixed race and culture. How does one winkle out which bit of that comes to the fore? We see the same issue today with part-Aboriginal Australians. If they achieve or if they fail, how do they know which ‘bit’ of their ancestry played a major part? They do not.
I actually believe strongly in cellular memory, and that we inherit experiences of our ancestors to much greater levels than generally believed although the field of epigenetics today is beginning to work with such possible inheritances.
When you say bonded people have certain traits, that can be true, but where religion is the ‘glue’ the bond is generally a religious one. I have Australian Jewish friends and family, who are very different to Jews I have known in the UK, Europe, Canada, United States, India, Israel, South Africa and various other places where I have lived or spent a lot of time.
The same applies to Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jain friends. They are bonded through religion but most of what they are comes from the culture in which they live.
I do not believe intelligence is linked to any religion. I do believe that some cultures are more fertile in terms of encouraging intelligence and indeed, after living in four African countries and India for many years, I do not believe all cultures are equal. But the capacity for intelligence is something I see equally shared in all human beings.
Taking the view that one group, whether religious, racial, national etc., is more intelligent than other human beings, seem to smack of irrational bigotry and dangerously so. But I suppose that is also because, I strive to apply principles equally and I have met clever and very stupid people in every religion, race and culture.
Do we really want a society where we believe one group is more intelligent than everyone else? More to the point, can any such society be democratic and civilized?