Obama's Outreach To Muslims Laudable But Passions Block Reasonable Solutions

For more than a decade, Jewish, Orthodox Christian, and Roma have been involved in a lawsuit against Vatican Bank, which thieved from Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma slaughtered by fifteen hundred Franciscan priests. You will find a significant amount of information at the link below.

The Vatican will not settle. Many people, including Orthodox Christians, Jews, Roma, are putting pressure on the Vatican to settle and account for its horrible crimes in this matter. The suit has been monitored all over the world. These Franciscan priests' crimes include cutting up with scissors living Jews, Orthodox Christians, and Roma.

http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/news.html

Please contact the Vatican and ask them to act justly. More information on the Ustasha Franciscan crimes against humanity, including the names of every one of the fifteen hundred Franciscan murderers is available on the web.

frederic2 & TIMMY2, I'll pop my head up from the "Primordial Ooze" to say right on. Keep up the good work. Please hang around Frederic2.

Frederic,

You:
"This thread used to be my "favourite anti-religion hobby-horse", to use your plastic picture, Onofrio, but since you and Farnaz rediscovered your essential religious truths, decorated with huge amounts of poetry and other associative thinking patterns, I have checked out."

I'm sorry that you feel you must away. That's a pity. Up to you, of course.

I can see why you might be verse-averse in this context, but it is a public forum. Anytime you like you can post something that resets the table, redirects the gist. You have presence here; you can do that easily. If you choose not to, fine, but don't then begrudge others their use of the space. It has no "reserved" seats. Your protege Timmy2 has had plenty to say, and straddles the thread triumphal-galumphal in the end. So it's off-the-mark to get all in a huff over some Farnazian/Onofrian poesy banter.

As for those "essential religious truths", I'd like to know what they might be. Reads like a sulky jab to me, using ascription of *religious* motives as a sort of smear, rather like you imagine obtains with the term *antisemitism*. To Timmy2, antisemitism is a phantom category, and Jews who use it are culpable for their own oppression. He has spelled it out, then backpedals and protesteth-too-much when its commonality with crypto-Nazism is pointed out, by the likes of mere "associative" me.

Odd that when I'm providing clear evidence - which is always demanded - I'm on a "witch hunt". Now that's a grasp at noble martyrdom!

Yes, Frederic, some of us even Onofrio, do strive for reason and justice, even with the flaw of not being Timmy2.

You:
"I happen not to be a Jew. Thus, I find myself in the anti-semitic (sp?!) box, from where, at least on this thread, there is no escape."

Calm down Frederic. I am not Jewish either. No one's on your case. As for any boxes, those who are in them put themselves there.

Timmy2 to Onofrio:
"Do you really think that anyone is going to follow your witch-hunt links?"

Probably not. But they're there for anyone who wishes to see the lengths to which Timmy2 will go. People can make up their own mind, or ignore. Whatever.

Timmy2 is an opinionated blowhard and a fake. He has made common cause with the Holocaust denier and crypto-Nazi, LUCYLOU1.
See:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2009/01/obamas_outreach_to_muslims_lau/all_comments.html
ONOFRIO:
February 5, 2009 1:38 AM
February 5, 2009 6:29 PM
February 5, 2009 6:26 PM

Compare the original context of LUCYLOU1:February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. at:
http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

Oh No Frio,

I really must laugh at this point. Do you really think that anyone is going to follow your witch-hunt links? So pathetic. So lost. So reaching. So desperate.

Frederick,

So sad to see that you have been driven away by the demagogue poet society. I can certainly relate, but I'll not let these two self proclaimed keepers of the Jacoby thread put an end to my rational input. They can call me a Nazi because I have a distaste for the words "antisemitism" "goy" and "my people". They can call me antisemitic because I criticize Jewish ethnocentricity, Israel, and and the Tanakh. Unfortunately for them, they call so many people these names that there is really no meaning left to such accusations. I really don't think they can even hear themselves talking or they'd have noticed by now that everyone who disagrees with them on any subject get labeled and antisemite.

The extreme oxymoronishness of Farnaz wanting to end racism whilst acting more tribal than anyone I've ever seen on these threads is mind boggling. She doesn't want an end to racism, she wants revenge for "her people" who had the Tanakh stolen from them. She wants to saddle every Jewish child born today with the grievance of the shoah. She wants them to know that the people who died in the Holocaust were "their people" not everyone's people.

It seems that every day on these threads, Farnaz screams at the top of her lungs, "I AM A JEW!" "NOW STOP SEEING ME AS A JEW". She makes no sense to me, and from what I can see, she makes no sense to most of the posters on these boards. Save Onofrio of course. And maybe Arminius, although given Farnaz's most recent savage and maniacal attack on "the Christian ethnicity" as she calls it, I'm not sure if she makes much sense to Arminius anymore either. They seem to have driven him away as well.

I hope that you don't leave us forever Frederick. Your reasoned voice will be truly missed. Except by those who's mindset is still stuck in ancient tribalism mode. They will be all too happy not to have to listen to your sensible rational speak anymore. It gets in the way of their chants for tribal justice.

This thread used to be my "favourite anti-religion hobby-horse", to use your plastic picture, Onofrio, but since you and Farnaz rediscovered your essential religious truths, decorated with huge amounts of poetry and other associative thinking patterns, I have checked out.

Wish you all the best with your tribal ("we" and "they") righteousness, and continuing poetic fantasy in creating straw-men. There are a few people outside, even atheists, who strive for reason and justice, even with the flaw of not being Jews.

I happen not to be a Jew. Thus, I find myself in the anti-semitic (sp?!) box, from where, at least on this thread, there is no escape.

And Farnaz, I have also seen people die near me by machine gun fire on youngsters by low flying airplanes at the end of WW2.

Why is it impossible to call atrocities atrocities without tying them to a tribe?
This question seems to be at the root of all the screaming and of the religion-grounded impossibility to find solutions.

Corrected LUCYLOU1 link for preceding post:

LUCYLOU1: February 4, 2009 10:10 PM

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

Timmy2 is an opinionated blowhard and a fake. He has made common cause with the Holocaust denier and crypto-Nazi, LUCYLOU1.

See:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_jacoby/2009/01/obamas_outreach_to_muslims_lau/all_comments.html

ONOFRIO:
February 5, 2009 1:38 AM
February 5, 2009 6:29 PM
February 5, 2009 6:26 PM

Compare the original context of LUCYLOU1:February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. at:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/cgi-bin/mte-admin/mt-comments.cgi

Onofrio,

Up yours, you slimiest of demagogues.

Timmy,

You're an opinionated blowhard and a fake. You make common cause with a Nazi.

Oh No Frio,

Part three,

YOU SPEW: Just like one of those gun nuts who uses the Shoah to justify their firearm addiction.

Ah, you've always used demagoguery, but you've finally learned from Farnaz to make it as slimy as possible. Bravo.

YOU: "On the Jacoby boards, you have spent far more words on attacking those who resist antisemitism - calling it for what it is - than you have on confronting the perpetrators"

Not "those who resist antisemitism" but those who unjustly call everyone who criticizes Israel, Judaism or certain Jewish cultural practices, an antisemite. I am attacking those who have called me an antisemite, and a racist, when in fact I am the antithesis of a racist. I am the true anti-racist and Farnaz, who's 3000 year old book written by perfect strangers was stolen from her because she is of "their people", is the real racist. Why do you spend spend so much of your words defending that racist and trying to take down a man who rails against all false human divisions and speaks constantly of seeing absolutely no differences between people of different races or ethnicities or nationalities, and begs people to give up their alegiances to their tribal pasts. Is that not "being against antisemitism?" Do I need to go around calling everyone who criticizes anything Jewish an antisemite to prove that I am against it? I am light years beyond where you are at sir. Waiting for y'all to catch up. Race and ethnicity are over in my mind. I'm Just trying to raise awareness that it should be over in everybody's mind. We can all make it go away. But not while we're obsessed with getting justice for "our people" for atrocities past that were caused by the concept of "our people". When we give all that up, there will be justice for ALL PEOPLE. Get it? Probably not. Sigh.

YOU: You're an opinionated blowhard and a fake. You make common cause with a Nazi.

Up yours, you slimiest of demagogues.

Oh No Frio,

Part two

YOU: "This is of a piece with your persistent claims on the Susan Jacoby boards that Jews are self-racialised, and hence complicit in their own persecution"

You make it sound as though I imply that Jews are completely self racialized. I certainly did not, but yet again, you choose to go with the easiest no brainer position to argue against instead of arguing against my actual and very difficult position to argue with. Jews were racialized by others in the most horrible unspeakable way. But like all ethnicities, they are also guilty of self racialization. We will all be one ethnicity one day. We know that we are headed there. Is there really any reason to hold on to the idea of Italians being "my people" or Aryans being "my people" or Jews being "my people"?

My position on this is not a position on the Jewish ethnic culture, it is a position on ALL ethnic culture across the board. But that is a very difficult position to argue against. So you put upon me your Jew hater/blamer straw man, and ague against him. Then you look like the hero. And impress that girl you seem to have your eye on.

YOU: Your post of FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:13 AM on Menachem Rosensaft's thread is thus a disingenuous, tokenistic attempt to airbrush your own image, posted tardily to play catch-up,

Actually it was one of the most reasoned posts on that toxic thread and represents the position I have held since coming to "On faith". That being that religion (not spirituality) is perhaps the most toxic of all of the false divisions between human groups that cause all of our wars and most of our strife. The other false divisions I have identified are race, ethnicity, gender and nationalism. In the post you refer to I drive home my point, that I start out with on all of these threads, that we need to dispense with all of these false divisions and see ourselves as one human race. Oh the things we could accomplish. We spend the majority of our time competing against the rest of the world when we should be working together. On the issue of race, I always point out the often overlooked racism of believing in "my people" "our people" based on race, ethnicity or even nationality. My first post on every thread is usually of this nature. But that is a very difficult position to argue with. It is so much easier to be righteous when arguing against Jew haters. So make some up if you have to. You got to impress that girl.

YOU CONTINUE: and features a gallop on your favourite anti-religion hobby-horse to boot.

Um, I know that you get lost in the fantasy that this is the Farnaz and Onofrio poetry appreciation association but what it actually is is the thread from an atheist's post on the "On Faith" forum. It's not just my favorite anti-religion hobby horse, it's everybody's. If you don't want to hear any anti-religion talk, what the hell are you dong here????

Oh no Frio,

YOU: Timmy, you have stated you agree with LucyLou about antisemitism.

No I have not. I made it perfectly clear that I stand by MY reasoning for MY opinion of that word, not Lucky Lou's. This is a pathetic attempt, really pathetic attempt, to try and brand me an antisemite by association. Nothing could be further from the truth.

YOU: So, based on YOUR reasoning, use of the term antisemitism (especially by Jews)

I never said (especially by Jews) you added that in your continued pathetic attempt to argue with a position that is all to easy to argue against as opposed to my actual position, which is not so easy to argue with, and you know it.

YOU CONTINUE: So, based on YOUR reasoning, use of the term antisemitism to describe endemic anti-Jewish racism actually perpetuates that racism. The logical implication of this is that the victims of anti-Jewish racism are responsible for their own persecution, based on word choice.

I'd say nice try, but it really wasn't. It was yet another pathetic reaching stretching attempt to put upon me a position that anyone could and would argue against. The LOGICAL implication is that any self racialization by any ethnic group, perpetuates racism. Saying "My people" based on ethnicity is a form of racism just as saying "those people" based on ethnicity, is a form of racism. Any word that singles out any ethnicity as a distinct race of people is racialization and perpetuates a false division between the one human race. Any other implication from this obvious fact is yours and yours alone. Of course I do not consider Jews as being responsible for their own persecution. Racism is. And we are all complicit in racism when we speak of people of our ethnicity as "our people" or "our kind" or "us".

YOU: (btw, not a term coined by Jews).

As I said earlier, all the more reason they should be against using such a term.

Farnaz,

Re the non-rhyming rime,

Thou:
"I can't believe they took that off. Something's amiss here."

It may have something to do with the quote marks I originally put around the bits which were *in character* to distinguish them from my own voice. Didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea. But someone got another idea, a litigious one perhaps, that I did not anticipate - you know defamation et alii. Or perhaps the title "filth-on-file" for my "litany of lunacy" was judged offensive. Other than these possibilities, I cannot understand the censorship.

Onofrio,

I posted to you below. Scroll down, please. Hope to see you on the Wiesel thread, Main Page. DITLD and I have been holding down the fort at Rosensaft. I've been posting to you there, as well.

Farnaz
________________________________

Posted on February 5, 2009 20:49
Farnaz2 Author Profile Page:

Hi Onofrio,

So glad to find you here! Certes! They took the Rosensaft blog off the main page, but folks are still blogging. (Un)fortunately, the scholarly Farnaz departed for parts unknown, with Durga announcing her intent to visit, much provoked I might add by the hugely unwelcome appearance of timmy2 and justilthen.

Here is the link: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html
___________________________

As well, some of WaPo's most notorious antisemites have shown up on Elie Wiesel's thread. This Durga could not abide. She gave Farnaz a minute or too, and then suggested she return to her studies.

Kali's about, Onofrio :]

February 5, 2009 8:40 PM | Report Offensive Comments

Hi Farnaz,

I will have to go and check the Elie Wiesel thread. These people have no shame, so they must deal with Durga, or even Kali.

I heard somehwhere that racists' gizzards go down well with a crisp Cabernet Merlot.

Onofrio,

I can't believe they took that off. Something's amiss here. They leave racist filth on and take this off. Perhaps it's time for Farnaz to write the publisher. Or maybe Durga should write....

Hmmmm {:[

And here's the offending poem. Not much to look at, is it?

Mitred Pruning

*Continents bled, precision drowned,
So what’s a quartered million?
The allies could have smelted that
In firestorms dropped in a week or so.
Stalin coughed, and something near that number
Fell, unsung, in punishment platoons.
It’s the population of just one
Modest city of the sort that litters Europe.
What’s one less? A mere provincial town
With a fine old spire.
So all this talk of herding and murder,
Nation-sized, a glut of numbers - just war deaths
Of here and there, in pockets, no more.
What do you expect from a war?*

So topiary of slaughter hallows hatred,
Coops and culls a sea in minisculing revisions,
Not denying horrors came, nor slayings,
*such as they were*, with due lip service,
And an ever-so-slightly wrinkled brow,
*But only* maybe forgettable *thousands*.
The parting plea: a tired opining sigh
For the ears of the young and the bored:
*Must we forever dwell on this unpleasantness?*

We'll see what happens to this one...

Hi Onofrio,

So glad to find you here! Certes! They took the Rosensaft blog off the main page, but folks are still blogging. (Un)fortunately, the scholarly Farnaz departed for parts unknown, with Durga announcing her intent to visit, much provoked I might add by the hugely unwelcome appearance of timmy2 and justilthen.

Here is the link: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html
___________________________

As well, some of WaPo's most notorious antisemites have shown up on Elie Wiesel's thread. This Durga could not abide. She gave Farnaz a minute or too, and then suggested she return to her studies.

Kali's about, Onofrio :]

Yes, it would seem that I have been blocked from the Menachem Rosensaft board. Despite persistent attempts, I cannot get anything through.

I note that a post of mine has been removed. It was a list of the most egregious antisemitic posters on that thread. An earlier one is still extant, at February 4, 2009 7:18 PM http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

The latter one differed from the first in that it added the post of TOBEN1 February 4, 2009 9:32 PM to the list. I challenged this poster at February 4, 2009 10:21 PM as to his identity, suspecting that it may have been the notorious FREDRICK TOBEN of the Nazi-sympathising Adelaide Institute. No response, surprise, surprise.

I titled my second list a "litany of lunacy", and added the word "filth". I assume that someone took exception to this, and had my post excised in-toto. Alternatively, someone at WAPO might have got the jitters about a poem I included with the "litany of lunacy", called "Mitred Pruning", in which I imagined the thought processes of a Bishop Williamson-like figure. Ah, litigation!

Whatever the reasons, I can no longer post at the Rosensaft thread.

So I'll try again here, for what it's worth. My "litany of lunacy" will not be erased. All the following at http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2009/02/pope_must_denounce_holocaust_d/allcomments.html

EDARI2:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:07 AM

BEER2MIAMI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:36 AM

SCOOTERLIBRE:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:07 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 5:00 PM

SOMALI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:22 PM

PNP-KS:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:57 PM

CAPTAINKONA:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 12:58 PM

FALCON269:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 1:11 PM

WHISTLING:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:17 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:24 PM
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 3:33 PM

ReporterNotebook, aka MICHAEL SANTOMAURO:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 5:04 PM

FRANCESCA2:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 6:29 PM

TOBEN1:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 9:32 PM

LUCYLOU1:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 10:10 PM

To this the excised list I will add, from the same thread,

RUDEISRAELI:
FEBRUARY 4, 2009 11:35 PM

MONO1:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 1:41 AM

ASIZK:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 9:07 AM

FREESPEECH3:
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 9:17 AM

Again, not exhaustive, but a representative sample of the sort of poison that has flowed on the Rosensaft board.

Farnaz,

The Rosensaft site seems to be accepting no more posts from me, so I'll speak here. Thanks for all your data, references, citations, et cetera, and for the anti-racist ally credit. Glad to stand, if only in text. Rosensaft's article has drawn out the very dregs of the septic tank - abjectly retchworthy.

I'm done with Timmy-striving, certes.

No more fuel for fires;

now, all is ouroboric to this fool,

as the slurry mires

wings, as the threading spool

unsings, and mind expires.

Timmy, part 1,

Timmy2, on the Susan Jacoby boards, FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:45 AM

Timmy to Onofrio:
"Just because LucyLou1 is a moron, and thinks that there is no need for the word antisemitism, and points out that there is no such word for racism towards any other ethnicity or race, doesn't make it not true."

Clearly, you think LucyLou1 is right about antisemitism, Timmy. What does she say about it?

LUCYLOU1
February 4, 2009 10:10 PM. on the Menachem Rosensaft thread.

""Why do the Jews, as a race, have such a need to brandish anyone who disagrees with them as anti-semitic? Why does the word anti-semitic even EXIST?"

"If the Jews are so victimized, why are they the only ones? Why doesn't the word "anti-Muslim" exist in our language?"

This in a post that extols the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as "prophetic".

Timmy, you have stated you agree with LucyLou about antisemitism. You also state emphatically:

"I stand by MY reasoning for my opinions on that word." (i.e. antisemitism) "And they are, that it is a racialization itself, thus perpetuating the very thing it labels."
FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:45 AM, Susan Jacoby boards

continued below

Timmy, part 2,

So, based on YOUR reasoning, use of the term antisemitism (especially by Jews) to describe endemic anti-Jewish racism actually perpetuates that racism. The logical implication of this is that the victims of anti-Jewish racism are responsible for their own persecution, based on word choice (btw, not a term coined by Jews).

This is of a piece with your persistent claims on the Susan Jacoby boards that Jews are self-racialised, and hence complicit in their own persecution.

Your post of FEBRUARY 5, 2009 2:13 AM on Menachem Rosensaft's thread is thus a disingenuous, tokenistic attempt to airbrush your own image, posted tardily to play catch-up, and features a gallop on your favourite anti-religion hobby-horse to boot. Just like one of those gun nuts who uses the Shoah to justify their firearm addiction.

On the Jacoby boards, you have spent far more words on attacking those who resist antisemitism - calling it for what it is - than you have on confronting the perpetrators.

You're an opinionated blowhard and a fake. You make common cause with a Nazi.

Timmy, see about 25 posts back for a post to you I sent.

Hey Timmy, did you get my post where I said you could very well be right? See about twenty posts back.

Farnaz,

"It is only that directly engaging them feeds the immoral parasites that have infected them."

Thank you for your obvious awareness of and concern for my health that you remain silent. Actually, as the Durga gopi you are, it is safer that way. And a happier world. Particularly after seeing some of your rant on Menachem Z. Rosensafts board. You seem to take to some of the boring tactics of the splammers around.
Well, at least you are passionate about something that matters to you.

But, as a self professed "mortal anti-racist", still, all I hear from you is racism. Pure and simple.

Oh no Frio,

Just because LucyLou1 is a moron, and thinks that there is no need for the word antisemitism, and points out that there is no such word for racism towards any other ethnicity or race, doesn't make it not true. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Should trains not run on time because Muscolini thought it was a good idea? I stand by MY reasoning for my opinions on that word. And they are, that it is a racialization itself, thus perpetuating the very thing it labels.

And Onofrio, I'll ask you again. Who did Farnaz mean when she said that the Tanakh was stolen from "us"? Was it "The Jews?" Who was she referring to?

I'd ask why you won't address this question, but I know why. It exposes your girlfriend a racist.

Timmy,

The following post is from a crypto-Nazi who posted in response to Menachem Rosensaft's article. I note that you still have not taken up my earlier suggestion to deploy your anti-racist ire on that thread.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LucyLou1 :
For starters, no-one knows how many died in the Holocaust. Hell, we don't even know how many we've murdered in Iraq; the numbers vary by nearly two orders of magnitude (100), at least. So why is merely pointing out a natural and indisputable fact considered a crime? Why do the Jews, as a race, have such a need to brandish anyone who disagrees with them as anti-semitic? Why does the word anti-semitic even EXIST? Is it because normal people suddenly wake up one morning and say, "Gee, I've got nothing to do today. I think I'll persecute some Jews for NO REASON?" If the Jews are so victimized, why are they the only ones? Why doesn't the word "anti-Muslim" exist in our language? Why is the US so ignorant of Zionism and world history that it doesn't realize that the Balfour Declaration (1917) and the creation of Israel and it's racist debauchery came BEFORE Hitler? Why is our media so silent about the holocaust of millions of Muslims at the hands of the judeo-christian neocons, when the rest of the world is screaming in justifiable rage? I'm not expecting the fundamentalist nutjobs on this page to grow a cranium any time soon, but maybe if the guy who forged the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" hadn't turned out to be such a prophet, the Chosen Ones wouldn't have such an overwhelming need for all their blatant and racist propaganda."

February 4, 2009 10:10 PM

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I would point out how closely this racist's rants about antisemitism resemble statements you've made repeatedly about the term.

Again, from LucyLou1, for emphasis:

"Why do the Jews, as a race, have such a need to brandish anyone who disagrees with them as anti-semitic? Why does the word anti-semitic even EXIST?"

"If the Jews are so victimized, why are they the only ones? Why doesn't the word "anti-Muslim" exist in our language?"

Heard of the Protocols, Timmy? This LucyLou thinks they're prophetic. And she completely agrees with you about antisemtism. Whaddya know, you're sharing the same gripes as the lunar right.

Farnaz says: "I am only one mortal anti-racist, like Onofrio and DITLD"

No I am an anti-racist. You are a racist. Clearly.
I don't believe in "my people" according to ethnicity. You do.
I don't see a 3000 year old book written by perfect strangers as the property of "my people". You do. And who do you mean by "us"? How does the Tanakh belong to an atheist except by race. I am against such racism. I am against your racism. That is your problem with me. Face facts.

Onofrio,

I did not mean to suggest that you shouldn't comment on ("third-person") Timmy's racism or Justil's or anyone else's. It is only that directly engaging them feeds the immoral parasites that have infected them.

Farnaz

_________________________________________
Justilthen writes:

Perhaps you are that. Durga, is it?
________________________

I wish to whatever gods may be that you were correct, but I am not. I am only one mortal anti-racist, like Onofrio and DITLD.

Onofrio:

"So, why are people so unkind, Moderate?"

Because:

Some have been hurt
Some have had their loved ones hurt
Some are angry about insults or slights
Some are insecure and expect rejection
Some are depressed because the journey has been too long
Some are fearful and project it upon others

Others are to settle scores for battles lost
Others are driven by greed and covetousness
Others are harboring ancient hatreds handed down to them
Others are sadists and enjoy inflicting pain
Others simply enjoy combat

There more reasons too. Why do you think they are?

Onofrio,

Just to answer this.

"...but if you log on to Menachem Rosensaft's article, you might like to remind him of how totally, unashamedly bored you are with all those done-to-death Shoah stories."

I have no desire or interest in "chastening" anyone that finds meaning and purpose in anything. Especially if they are not bodybashing me with their urgency that I agree with them. The Shoah was without a doubt one of the most horrific and virulent violations of humanity in recent history. It has taken and will continue to take the time that it does for the people affected to heal of the pain of it. And no doubt related insult is suffered by those affected. I was not one of them.

I support the process of healing, and I agree that the memory of the atrocity not be forgotten, by those affected or by those that were not touched, so that they may not need to repeat the experience in the future. We all have something important to learn from this violation in history.
And quite recent history as that evil tendency is and continues to be repeated. Congo, South Africa, Cambodia and Laos, Bosnia... The Sudan.

Now that I have said that, I also say what is true for me. I am unashamedly bored with the regurgitations of the story. Too many, too often, too much the same emotional wrecking. Humans can be horrible. I don't want to see another one for some while. I do not feel shame for that truth. I got it, and I don't want to keep getting pounded by it, as if I need to live through it along with those that did. This has spread for me from stories of the Holocaust to a wider area.

So, again, as you and Farnaz will, call me a racist for that sacrilege.

Or, consider what it may mean if it is that I am not an 'enemy', but a conscientious and decent person that just got the song played at me too many times.

Peace.

Hello Onofrio,

Combating cosmos threatening monsters is one take on Durga. She is a militant and warrager. Some say she is the dark side, (not that dark means bad), of Devi, or more familiar to me, Parvati. Mother goddess, Goddess of Love. Durga is the pissed off form and is not so closely aligned to love at all. Warfare, hatred of what she hates, warrior for what she seeks to protect.

This association seems to fit Farnaz, for the little bit that I have seen of her. She undoubtably love deeply what she loves, but she does not seem to carry the archtype of Love as much as War, from my experience. No doubt your experience is different. But you do stand in for her in some ways now...

Next, to this:

"They are not all *slight suggestions*, and to claim that they merely air *distaste* and *disinterest* is an egregious misrepresentation."

I can only speak to my own experience. You may read back on my posts. I did not, in my view, (you have inferred otherwise I know), make virulent antisemetic or racist rants against Jews. I voiced boredom, distaste and disaffection for the imbalance and constance of projewish and proisraeli propaganda in media in my culture. Like too many MacDonalds on the road I don't want to see more.
This is not virulent, or racist, or wrong. But Durga thought I was the evil to stamp out.

I find that immature and reactionary. And a bigger form of racism than I am accused of practicing.

With respect.

Oh no Frio,

Whatcha gonna do now?

Farnaz wants you to stop responding to me, and yet you only ever do so on her behalf? Whatcha gonna do? Conundrum? Best follow her wishes. You don't want to be added to her list of bigots and racists and antisemites and the "owned" where she puts everyone who crosses her.

Onofrio,

Continued,

YOU: "Yes, we are all hurt by the Shoah, but the spectre of that event is not stalking you or I"

Sure it is. I have Jewish friends and family. And Farnaz is making things worse (not better) for them with her self racializations.

YOU: "Put yourself in her shoes. How would your temperament fare if someone stomped on the reasons why you had fled murder?"

I have put myself in her shoes. I would stop all self racializations like referring to Jews as "my people" and saying things like "you stole the Tanakh from "us". I would be agreeing with Timmy that ethnocentric marriage practices perpetuate exactly what I am trying to denounce.

YOU: "Farnaz supplies citations, excerpts, links, and references aplenty to back her position on antisemitism. Yet she gets no real credit from the likes of you"

Sure she does. I have never disputed any of her stats, in fact I have said that they are apolling and that I abhore such behavior. But that is not good enough for Farnaz. She is too busy calling anyone critical of Judaism or Israel or Jewish cultural practices a bigot, antisemite, and a racist.

YOU: "There is no chorus of voices supporting Farnaz at the hard edge of this debate"

Because she does not deserve one. She is a racializer and the very slimiest of demagogues, using the emotionally charged subject of the holocaust and other pogroms to try and label those who are in disagreement with her as racists.

And you did not even come close to addressing who Farnaz is referring to by "us" when she says that Christians stole the Tanakh from "us". Who is "us" to a former Christian, now atheist, who happens to be of Jewish Heritage? Your friend is a hypocrite and you are blinded by your shared love of poetry or something to see it. You need a Farnaz agenda awareness raising.

Onofrio,

YOU: Your posts here and on earlier threads, insofar as they insist on the self-racialisation of Jews and the abolition of antisemitism as a term, are antisemite soundalikes"

I have never insisted on the abolition of the term antisemite. I simply asked for opinions regarding it's necessity and perpetuation of the very thing it refers to. I would love to see racism towards Jews go the way of the dodo bird, and I think that the word antisemitism, just like the word "goy" are not helping along that front.

As for self racialization. What would you call an atheist ethnic Jew referring to Jews as "her people" and saying that the Tanakh was stolen from "us"? What would you call creating a word for the non Jew (Keeping in mind there are no such words for the non white or non black or non Italian) What would you call the extremely ethnocentric practice of only marrying other Jews in a multicultural country? What would you call believing that a parcel of land was given to your ethnicity by the one true creator of the universe? I call all of those things self racialization. And I criticize those things as such.

YOU: "It's as if, in your desire to git Farnaz, that you've waived your commitments to the higher cause you espouse, and pursue a vendetta instead"

No, I simply do not agree with both her assessment , and yours that most of the people she is calling racists and bigots are guilty of those things. All I see is the same slimy demagoguery and race card playing that she has attempted with me. I find Farnaz to be the most racist person on this thread with all of this talk of people who wrote a book 3000 years ago being "her people".

YOU ASK: "Did you really think that the posts from Abhab that raised Farnaz' ire were fair and reasonable to Jews, and to her personally?

And so it is okay for her to refer to Jews as one group? And so the people who wrote the Tanakh are "her people" or "us", and represent all Jews as she implies?

Justillthen,

You to Farnaz:
"At the slightest suggestion of disinterest or distaste for your cultural and religious choices you rant "antisemitism!!!". "Racist!!!" "Bigot!!!"

They are not all *slight suggestions*, and to claim that they merely air *distaste* and *disinterest* is an egregious misrepresentation.

Ah Farnaz,
Our messages of brother/sisterhood and planetary peace nearly passed each other in flight.

This "point of clarification" may be important to you for good reason, but to me it is just semantics and more justification for bitterness. I will respect that having the article "the" in front of "Jews" is an a-front to you. I will try to bear that in mind. Yet I believe that all are subject to this abstraction, as you put it, not just jews. "The Catholics" is used in a derogatory way by evangelicals, as is "those liberals". Nothing new.

"Jews, whether they convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Animism are still Jews in the eyes of The Christians."

You generalize far too much here, Farnaz. I am clear that is not true for all or even a majority. But you may hold it as some sacred truth. Generalizing leads to stereotyping, which leads to profiling. Don't do the same evil as the evildoers do!

"Not so, JUSTTIL. Hence you may be whatever you wish, you, and Jesus, Timothy, Vito, and Luke, but you are Christians."

Oh dddrat. There you go labeling, another of the evils that you rail against!

I have no power over what is run in media, be it run by jew, chrisian or moslim, or even buddhist, ( a clear minority).

I am sorry that you do not recognize my spiritual alignment. I do not believe that we are limited to the choices of ancestors through genetics or, as Susan Jacoby suggested, by the watering of a human sproout with 'holy water'. We make ourselves into who we are, carrying what we love, and hate, dumping what we choose.

You should support that ideal.

Justillthen,

"Perhaps you are that. Durga, is it?"

Durga combats cosmos-threatening monsters, Justill. Quite necessary, in the scheme of things.

Farnaz,

Just a couple more things, though this thread has gone past-dated and I do not know that you will bless this post with your light...

You to Onofrio:

"I could say that they aren't responsible, that there has never been a healthy critique, an indoctrination effort to rid this country of anti-Jewish racism as there was to rid it of anti-Black racism."

You are wrong here, and it is central to my issue. I should be surprised that you do not openly recognize it, but prejudice is a blinding thing, as is the persistent subconscious press of the ego to only validate what supports it's own preconceptions and justifications.

There has been an indoctrination effort, at least in most western countries and certainly in America, to get rid of anti-jewish racism, and it has been run by the media and the wealth of owners, producers, directors, writers, PR people and consultants, actors, stagehands, columnists..... that are of jewish decent, in tv, news, radio, theater, motion pictures, music industries and want to tell their stories. And some great stories, some of the best.

But the fact is that we have for decades been subject to a sales campaign for pro-jewish sources to win our emotional and spiritual alignment to their causes.

You know this.

I suggest that you are the racist. At the slightest suggestion of disinterest or distaste for your cultural and religious choices you rant "antisemitism!!!". "Racist!!!" "Bigot!!!"

Is there some unwritten spiritual law that I must continue to like all things pro-jewish or I turn, akin to Irit, into a pillar of bigotry and racism?

My you are dark, Farnaz.

Perhaps you are that. Durga, is it?

Onofrio,

I don't mind you third personing me. I do mind reading this racist filth of Timmy. It has gone too far. Way too far. One never knows who could be logging on to such sites, children perhaps.

For them, for Christians being brainwashed, for Jewish children being verbally or physically brutalized seeing a different kind of response could be salutary. Reading an incorrigible bigot like Timmy could not.

I beg you, do not reply to him. Let him continue to reveal himself for what he is. In time, those who can see will see. Some have, no doubt, already done so.

There are some who cannot be brought back into the fold. They must return, like the prodigal son.

From the bored, but not bigoted Christian (Catholic) JUstilthen to Me:

"Since you bring it up, I would love to get them to shut up as well. Far more insulting and offensive than being labeled antisemite by quickdraw IDF boosters is to be preached to by idiot fundamentalists that think they have the key to my soulular salvation."

"My problem is that my mouth usually is shut. The messages in media and in community seeking alignment to a pro-jewish agenda, (along with pro christian/evangelical one! like uncomfortable lovers that pretend they are going the same way in life but are not), is pervasive. And one sided."

A point of clarification: In the view of the Christians (generically speaking, including Catholics, et al), we Jews, are "The Jews" as you can see from the foregoing of Justil and others. As "The Jews" we are the embodiment of an abstract form. This type of notion is known as "essentialism." (See any dictionary of philosophy), hypostasy, reification. It is invariabley racist, sexist, classist, etc.

Obviously, is The Christians and now many Muslims to whom The Christians exported antisemitic probaganda refer to Jews as The Jews, and The Christians are the majority, with hegemony, it is only fitting that The Christians be referred to as The Christians and Jews referred to as Jews when they are the speakers.

Should The Christians choose to end this way of speaking, I as one Jew would be happy to follow suit. Jews, whether they convert to Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, Animism are still Jews in the eyes of The Christians. This obtains even if said Jews are atheists.

AS SUSAN JACOBY PUT IT, JUDAISM IS MORE "Complex."
Not so, JUSTTIL. Hence you may be whatever you wish, you, and Jesus, Timothy, Vito, and Luke, but you are Christians.

Keeping us out of your CHRISTIAN owned media, would be very gratifying for the rest of us. If you would leave us alone in your media, we'd be delighted. Shutting it permanently where we're concerned, returned out text, purging the N(sic)T would help.

Justillthen,

I wouldn't expect you to be able to stomach yet more Jewish reiterations, but if you log on to Menachem Rosensaft's article, you might like to remind him of how totally, unashamedly bored you are with all those done-to-death Shoah stories. Maybe he'll feel chastened.

O brave Timmy,

Why don't you go over and have a read of Menachem Rosensaft's article on Holocaust denial, and then enlighten him as to why there should be no such term as antisemitism, and why Jews are self-racialised.

Courage of your convictions, lad!

Daniel12,

"To Onofrio from Daniel. I read your post and I see what you mean. I too am troubled--which is to say I too do not think the human race can responsibly deal with the progress of genetics."

Thank you for engaging with my post, Daniel. I respect your honest willingness to be challenged by what you read.

You say, regarding the challenge to "genetically improve the human race without trampling on human rights."

"...in fact it may be the most sensitive topic out there. I really should try to be more careful when discussing it--but often my science fiction imagination runs ahead of me. I will try to be more careful in the future."

That's humble of you, Daniel. I too get carried away betimes, with wordplay and allusion, and rue it. Your posts reveal you a fascinated speculator. Sometimes what is conceptually gripping to you might come across as abstruse or contextually tangential to others. It's not the concepts temselves, but the timing and manner of their expression that can get you into hot water.

Timmy,

You:
"And Farnaz used to be a.... Get ready for it..... A CHRISTIAN!

Yes. At one time, Farnaz was stealing her book from her people."

Again, you cast doubt on your claims to be a lover of humankind right here. Farnaz shared honestly about her encounter with Catholicism in response to a question from another poster. Straight up. So what does the kindly Timmy do with it. Not a simple "Thanks for sharing that." Oh no. Back it comes at an opportune moment, as just another piece of ammo, or, should I say, another example of your *tough love*?

You:
"And yes, for quite some time, Onofrio too was stealing the book of Farnaz's people."

What is that? Bit of wedge politics? Again, I've been quite open about my religious past, and rather than engage with that, you just trash it and throw it back in my face. Galumph! Yes, I was in a sense, stealing the Tanakh. I became acutely conscious of this, in fact, years before I had ever heard of a WAPO blog! It's part of why I jumped ship, religion-wise. Have a problem with that, Timmy?

You:
"But he and Farnaz have given all of that up now. Now Onofrio shares poems with Farnaz, and helps her to bash the Christians who have stolen the book of Farnaz's people and are antisemites by birth."

So, now I'm a Christian-basher? And you call ME a "slimy demagogue"? Do you think it's *Christian bashing* to call attention to the endemic nature of Christendom's antisemitism (or racism, if you prefer) on a thread about antisemitism? Which bit of Christendom's record would you like toned down? Some more balance on Luther (like his sola fide, do you)? Calm down about the Vatican-Nazi entente? The First Crusade? Seems such a shame to gainsay Chrysostom's wonderful trinitarianism, just because of a few rants about Jews. And on matters non-Jewish, you'd really like Farnaz to shut up about that Las Casas fellow, wouldn't you. Indeed you'd prefer that Farnaz had become a Catholic, and I had stayed a Peter Huff, so you could contentedly pummell us both about our ridiculously irrational religions. And never a word about that wretched pretend category antisemitism!

Ah, see now the spiritual, humanity-loving, reasonable tough-lover summon up Christian ire against the apostate and the infidel. What say you, Christians? Feel bashed enough to join in with Timmy's auto-da-fe?

Timmy,

"And Onofrio, since you always speak on farnaz's behalf,..."

I speak for myself. Betimes that means I speak in support of Farnaz, at other times our statements are complemetary. She needs no one to speak on her behalf; she has more than the wherewithal to do it herself. She herself has already addressed the substance of all the questions you ask here of me. Will you really listen if I maul them further with my imperfect understanding?

As for Farnaz' invective, which you earlier earmarked for report:
You have opined in several posts that you are a sensitive, spiritual kinda guy. Being such, can you not appreciate why Farnaz might be so incensed? Antisemitism is not a matter of mere blog sophistry for her. Can you make no allowance for the outrage of one actually injured by the realities behind these terms, these uber und unter debating points we toss around, these blog barbs. Did you really think that the posts from Abhab that raised Farnaz' ire were fair and reasonable to Jews, and to her personally?

You've stated that you are as much injured by the Shoah as Farnaz, since you and its victims share a common humanity. Wonderful! You may recall that Farnaz posted a poem by Yevtushenko about Babi Yar, that expressed the very same. Yet the forces that wrought that atrocity - undead as they are - have enough writhe in them yet to have reached into Farnaz' own life, and stung. Not yours, nor mine. Yes, we are all hurt by the Shoah, but the spectre of that event is not stalking you or I.

So why close your heart because she rages. Put yourself in her shoes. How would your temperament fare if someone stomped on the reasons why you had fled murder?

Farnaz supplies citations, excerpts, links, and references aplenty to back her position on antisemitism. Yet she gets no real credit from the likes of you. I have history enough to know that she knows her stuff, which is why you find me attempting to support her when I am able.

(As I write I hear the word *subaltern* tolling like a bell. If you are reading, Farnaz, desolee for all the third-personing.)

There is no chorus of voices supporting Farnaz at the hard edge of this debate. If there were, as she has said, she might not feel she must scream.

Timmy,

You:
"Before you said that you did not think that I was one. But lately you have eluded to it. Will you confirm your inference? Am I an antisemite? Bigot? Racist?"

I think that you post like a cyclops. I do not know what you *are* in your heart of hearts. Your posts here and on earlier threads, insofar as they insist on the self-racialisation of Jews and the abolition of antisemitism as a term, are antisemite soundalikes. My critique of them has been along those lines, giving you the benefit of the doubt, hoping that you might choose to turn your ire against actual anti-Jewish insinuations and statements on these boards. That you haven't done so with anything like your usual point-for-point alacrity makes me wonder about your earlier claims, made quite clearly, that you are resolutely opposed to ALL racism. It's as if, in your desire to git Farnaz, that you've waived your commitments to the higher cause you espouse, and pursue a vendetta instead.

"Am I an antisemite? Bigot? Racist?"

Whatever I say will be deployed as artillery by you, yea or nay, so I recommend that you put those questions not to me, but to yourself.

To Onofrio from Daniel. I read your post and I see what you mean. I too am troubled--which is to say I too do not think the human race can responsibly deal with the progress of genetics.

But it seems the sciences of such is going forward. I think far from the human race putting discussions of eugenics, etc. aside,--no matter that a major war occurred (WW2) with much of that in mind--the human race will struggle with it again and again until it gets it right--which is to say manages to genetically improve the human race without trampling on human rights. But I too agree today things are difficult--that in fact it may be the most sensitive topic out there. I really should try to be more careful when discussing it--but often my science fiction imagination runs ahead of me. I will try to be more careful in the future.

To Timmy from Daniel--I sure hope this gets to you before the new Jacoby thread on wednesday.--But I will ask you on next thread. What I want to say is I think I understand what you meant about culture being more dependent on geography, environment etc. than genetics.

I of course said cultures have a genetic base--and of course that they differ because of different genetic bases of peoples. You countered by saying the differences between people culturally are due to different locations in place and time--geographical, environmental differences.

At first I thought you made an error and actually reinforced my position in the sense that according to Darwin/Wallace's theory of natural selection a species has variants for its individuals which come out in different environments--so that if say, a species of finch splits in two and these two groups occupy two separate islands they will begin to genetically differ.

But then I thought further--and I believe this is what you meant: a species, say the human, can split into various groups which occupy different geographical locations--but these locations will not be enough to cause significant genetic changes. Instead there will be "surface" differences only brought about by the various resources and disadvantages of the environments.

So we could have ancient Greeks with their mediterranean diet, beautiful marble acropolis, superior hygiene due to proximity to water, etc. and these Greeks would look down on say a Gaelic tribe in pre-france which is stinky, has a different diet, no architecture and sculpture to speak about etc. and the differences between the two would not be so much genetic as "surface" differences.

Is that what you meant? What I would like to know today is how much the differences between various peoples is "surface" and how much genetic. But we might never know because all peoples are becoming familiar with all cultures and mixing genetically (interbreeding) as well.

See you on next Jacoby thread! I will repeat this post there if you miss this one.

Farnaz,

"What troubles me is the unselfconscious bigotry of bloggers like Justil."

Once more, this is not bigotry but boredom, annoyance, irritation. Bigotry is: "1. stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own..." I am not intolerant of the religion or beliefs of jews. I am tired of hearing ABOUT THEM to the virtual exclusion of other contrary voices. And disinterested in the emotional strings that are embedded in the messages.

Farnaz, you are telling ME "hands off, mouths shut"? I do not go about singing my own praises.

"I cannot imagine him saying the same things about African Americans...."

There is just too much to be said, but I will have to wait for a wee bit later. Unfortunately, Farnaz. I appologize for having to run just when we are starting to have so much fun.

You should hear the virulent,bigoted and racist rant I could go on about rich elitist blueblood white men...

For the moment I wish you greater peace.

Farnaz, Farnaz, Farnaz, (and Observer12)

Now that you are a Christian and an ex-employee of the JDL :

"We absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

For your penance?????

Farnaz2,

"Tell you what. Why don't you and your fellow Christians stop your endless talk about Jews, return the Tanakh, which you thieved from us..."

I am not a Christian, Farnaz. I said I was raised Catholic. Have not been a practicing Catholic for decades. For your better understanding and pleasure, and if I had to label myself some one thing in particular, it would have to be buddhist. I would have no success convincing Christians to stop any type of talk.

Since you bring it up, I would love to get them to shut up as well. Far more insulting and offensive than being labeled antisemite by quickdraw IDF boosters is to be preached to by idiot fundamentalists that think they have the key to my soulular salvation. They cannot take no thank you for an answer as they have a moral and god given responsibility to save my sorry tail.

Well meaning but utterly irritating entities.

"Keep your hands off us, and you won't have to listen to us. Get it? Hands off. Mouths shut. Out of your print."

My problem is that my mouth usually is shut. The messages in media and in community seeking alignment to a pro-jewish agenda, (along with pro christian/evangelical one! like uncomfortable lovers that pretend they are going the same way in life but are not), is pervasive. And one sided.

And Farnaz used to be a.... Get ready for it..... A CHRISTIAN!

Yes. At one time, Farnaz was stealing her book from her people.
And yes, for quite some time, Onofrio too was stealing the book of Farnaz's people. But he and Farnaz have given all of that up now. Now Onofrio shares poems with Farnaz, and helps her to bash the Christians who have stolen the book of Farnaz's people and are antisemites by birth.

And Onofrio, since you always speak on farnaz's behalf, perhaps you could tell us to whom she refers to as "us". Why was the Tanakh stolen from her? Does she see all people of her ethnicity as one group and "her people"? It seems that she does. She also speaks for Orthodox Jews, this Atheist of Jewish heritage. All Jews it seems are her people. She claims that a book written more than 3000 years ago was stolen from "us" (her). Why? Because she and the people who wrote that book share a bloodline? Isn't that racism?

Onofrio,

YOU: "Why refer to Farnaz as "she", as if you address an audience?"

I am addressing an audience. You and Farnaz mainly,
But also, anyone who hasn't noticed the hypocrisy.

YOU: Do you agree with Justillthen, then?

I speak for myself. I do not think that Justilthen is a bigot, racist or an antisemite. I think that you and Farnaz throw those highly emotional and loaded accusations around more loosely than the Boy Who Cried Wolf. They really mean nothing anymore on this thread. Anyone who criticizes Judaism, Israel, or the ethnocentric tendencies of the Jewish culture, it seems, is a bigot, racist or an antisemite. Anyone who misspells "anti-Semite" it seems, is an antisemite.

Before you said that you did not think that I was one. But lately you have eluded to it. Will you confirm your inference? Am I an antisemite? Bigot? Racist?

Timmy,

Despite all the so-bored-of-the-Jews Trojan-horsery below, you still open fire only on Farnaz?

Do you agree with Justillthen, then?

Timmy,

Why refer to Farnaz as "she", as if you address an audience?

Why not address her in the second person?

You wouldn't be trying any *demagoguery* there, would you? Trying to win over the courtroom?

Hark, a galumph...

Farnaz said:

"Tell you what. Why don't you and your fellow Christians stop your endless talk about Jews, return the Tanakh, which you thieved from us"

Thieved from "us"?
Who is "us"?
The Jews?
Farnaz's people?

Is she the representative of a distinct group of people whom others supposedly lot as a group against their will, and yet here is Farnaz claiming to speak for her "people".

Did Farnaz write the Tanakh?
How could it have been stolen from her. Or are all Jews one people. And if they are. Why all the hullabaloo over others referring to them as a group.

It is so very hypocritical.
When Farnaz, THE ATHEIST, says that the Tanakh was stolen from "us", she is racializing Jews. Unless of course she was a contributing writer.

Good for the goose, but not for the gander.

Onofrio,

To be honest with you, Christmas isn't a problem for me although when it gets to murder at Wal-mart's, I draw the line. If it didn't come with its inevitable antisemitic component each year, it could be fun.

What troubles me is the unselfconscious bigotry of bloggers like Justil. I cannot imagine him saying the same things about African Americans. Yet, for reasons that escape me, Catholics, Christians like Justil think it completely acceptable to say what they like about us, and if we protest, to attribute a problem to us.

Switching the object of the gaze shocks them. They probably have never heard or read anything on the order of what I post. If they lived where I do, they might hear more, as more and more we are refusing to be the particular of their universal.

I could say that they aren't responsible, that there has never been a healthy critique, an indoctrination effort to rid this country of anti-Jewish racism as there was to rid it of anti-Black racism. However, the fact is that there are Christians and Catholics, atheists of Christian dissent who are without a trace of prejudice. If some can resist the intellectual surrender of bigotry, all can--at least, here.

Quasi-Durga

Farnaz,

"The credit is yours to give. I give none."

And yours to withhold, certes. Mine was for the retraction alone, not the rest. My *rest of* remains against Justill's *rest-of*.

"If anyone were to be sick of anything in this country, it would be of the endless Christ talk, Christian talk, Catholic talk. Borns, unborns, born agains. These folks trying to legislate for all of us. Papal visits costing hundreds of millions. Christmas for months on the streets, on TV, the movies, stores. Trees all over. Lights costing a fortune to taxpayers. Easter parades."

Many nails well-hit there, sister. It must be hard to bear. We have it a bit less intense in Austral climes. The evangelical right does not have the same stridency or numbers as in the US. But we are beginning to suffer the endless Christmas: that insidious retail conspiracy, with all its compulsory snowbound northernness, absurd in a season of bushfires and the beach.

CCNL,

Look down. You're a member, no pun intended. Happy Hanukkah. Now you can light candles (at no cost to taxpayers), and leave the rest of the country in peace.
________________________
On another note, per your inquiry:

If you wish to know more about the diversity of Jewish opinion on the Tanakh, i.e., its facticity, see Maimonides, "Guide for the Perplexed." It's on the web. It's one genius's view, Aristotelian, quite elegant. The Babylonian Talmud is also on the web, but I fear it might be rough going for you. Ditto, the Mishnah.

You could also take a look at Emanuel Levinas, "Nine Talmudic Essays." The essays aren't literally Talmudic. His explanation of the Messiah as a concept is quite accessible and lucid.

Farnaz, Farnaz, Farnaz,

"We baptize you in the name of the father, son and holy spirit!!!!

Now that you are a Christian, you can finally enjoy Christmas!!!

Onofrio,

The credit is yours to give. I give none. His remarks were racist by any standard of decency. That is to say, they appeared racist because they were. And if you were to scroll down you would see that they continued on that way.

If anyone were to be sick of anything in this country, it would be of the endless Christ talk, Christian talk, Catholic talk. Borns, unborns, born agains. These folks trying to legislate for all of us. Papal visits costing hundreds of millions. Christmas for months on the streets, on TV, the movies, stores. Trees all over. Lights costing a fortune to taxpayers. Easter parades.

All we ask is what I posted in my re-pasted memo to Justil. Leave us alone.

Farnaz,

"Are all of us living on the same planet during roughly the same year?"

Bien sur! We are all of us Venusians together! It does get rather hot though, ne c'est pas? I wonder what it's like on Terra? I hear they have oceans...

Justillthen,

Credit where credit's due. I respect your admission/retraction, Justillthen. Thank you for owning it.

Always scroll down before you leap.

Onofrio,

Are all of us living on the same planet during roughly the same year?

Onofrio,

"And doing acid?"

Distrust such as they? Never! Why some of my best friends, relatives....

JUSTILTHEN:

"Too much emotional manipulation around the jewish message over time, and I dislike feeling manipulated"

EVIDENTLY, YOU MISSED MY POST. SO HERE IT IS AGAIN FROM ME AND "MOSHE" (TRANSLITERATED HEBREW FOR MOSES). READ SLOWLY WHAT FOLLOWS. I WROTE IN CAPS AND LEFT A LOT OF WHITE SPACE, JESU.

READ CAREFULLY, JESU. IF THIS COUNTRY ISN'T CATHOCENTRIC ENOUGH FOR YOU CALL POPE BENNY AND SEE IF YOU CAN GET A ROOM IN HIS MANSION. DO IT NOW, AND REPORT BACK IN A MONTH.
__________________________
justillthen:

Tell you what. Why don't you and your fellow Christians stop your endless talk about Jews, return the Tanakh, which you thieved from us and misinterpreted, purge your New (sic) Testament of its inaccuracies and vilification, stop harassing us. That would be all of you--here, in Europe where we are now being told how to defend ourselves, etc.

Just keep it shut, as it were, and out of print from now on, and you won't have to listen to yourselves. Keep your hands off us, and you won't have to listen to us. Get it? Hands off. Mouths shut. Out of your print.

Hi Farnaz,

Thou:
"Hello! I hope I'm not being read as suspicious. My intent was to be accusatory. I've always distrusted Greeks throwing acid."

Touche. Distrust away...and duck!

"I've always distrusted Greeks throwing acid."

And doing acid?

Onofrio,

On taking a stroll down this thread's memory lane I must retract part of my last statement. It DOES appear that this is on antisemitism!
What a surprise.

And a busy one, looking at it. Seems I jumped in at just the right time to add a few notes to the chorus.

Timing is crucial, even if it sours the enjoyment for some.

Though you disagree, I restate. I am not antisemitic. I am just past caring as much as I used to. Too much emotional manipulation around the jewish message over time, and I dislike feeling manipulated. Would rather talk with real people without guilt being a standard tool of communication.

So call me a racist.

Justillthen,

You:
"This does not exclude me from interest or caring for current day issues. Every day I am tuned in to critical world events that the jewish people are deeply entwined in."

O Doubly Unashamed, who exactly are "the jewish people" that are so "deeply entwined" in these "critical world events"?

Would those events be taking place in Darfur? Congo? Zimbabwe? Please do tell about how "the jewish people" are involved. Or are these not "critical world events"? After all they are only happening in Africa.

And could you explain to me the role of "the jewish people" in the issue of climate change? Surely a "critical world event". Or is it all just stuff and nonsense? Or perhaps even an utter crock?

And what about the continuing degradation of old growth forests in places like the Amazon, Papua, Borneo, and my home country, Oz? Jewish involvement? Or perhaps just small beer in the greater scheme...

The tensions between India and Pakistan?

The AIDS epidemic in Africa?

I saved Afghanistan for last...more deep jewish entwinement?

Onofrio,

PS. I've also always distrusted Greeks complaining that the scarred accused the scarrers of scarring, ditto that discussions of scarring are tiresome. All this may appear immoderate to some.

Durga

Onofrio,

Hello! I hope I'm not being read as suspicious. My intent was to be accusatory. I've always distrusted Greeks throwing acid.

Farnaz

TheModerate,

You:
"I must say that I think the air is a bit foul with accusations and counter accusations."

As soon as the highly charged subjects of Shoah and antisemitism are raised, out of the woodwork come equivocating requests for perspective, balance, why-just-Jews?, but-what-about-Israel?, and even, latterly, so-bored-of-Jews. Jewish posters have a well-founded suspicion of such statements - are these opiners genuinely concerned for justice and boredom relief, or are they just Trojan-horsing around?

It doesn't take long to realise that the latter often obtains - a scabbard rattle here, a muffled curse there. So Cassandra wails, and Laoccoon warns, but the populace are in no mood for such hysterics - all so OTT. After all, that war is over. So they castigate the frantic naysayers, call them bad as Greeks, and choose instead to play wait-and-see with the wooden beast.

So, why are people so unkind, Moderate? You've seen the heat generated about mere ideas on some of these threads, so why are you taken aback at the acrimony that surges when it's a matter of bodies and blood, and the truth about them?

It seems that you prefer to reject the contents of a package because the wrapping is torn.

Justilthen-

"Antisemitism just insinuated it's evil way into the conversation..."

You, among others, "insinuated it." Scroll down. Follow instructions, and you should be fine.

justillthen:

Tell you what. Why don't you and your fellow Christians stop your endless talk about Jews, return the Tanakh, which you thieved from us and misinterpreted, purge your New (sic) Testament of its inaccuracies and vilification, stop harassing us. That would be all of you--here, in Europe where we are now being told how to defend ourselves, etc.

Just keep it shut, as it were, and out of print from now on, and you won't have to listen to yourselves. Keep your hands off us, and you won't have to listen to us. Get it? Hands off. Mouths shut. Out of your print.

Onofrio,

To the other bit.

"Three out of three! You betcha, all of 'em.

"Do you have any idea how it comes across, in the context of a very fraught series of threads about the Shoah and antisemitism, for you to toss about flippant remarks on being "bored" with Jews and the "favoritism" that's supposedly "poured out" on them."

I am not the least bit ashamed or uncertain in my declaration that I am bored with this ongoing regurgitation of all things jewish. I have loved many of the stories, history, tragedies, melodramas that are retold time and again. I am done with it, and have been, for awhile. I have no shame saying it. If you take that personally then I am sorry but grow up. I am not the only one, I guarantee you.

This does not exclude me from interest or caring for current day issues. Every day I am tuned in to critical world events that the jewish people are deeply entwined in.

Being accused of antisemitism means little to me now. Especially when it is thrown around so carelessly as it is by you and farnaz, in particular.

"As for the "guilt" thing,..." ...it is common knowledge...
I was raised Catholic. Next to jewish mothers catholic mothers were the most labeled as guilters. For good reason. I still laugh about it with my mother.

"I mean, why haunt a thread about antisemtitism if you're simply fed up with all talk about Jews. Are you a masochist?"

News alert! This is NOT a thread about antisemitism! You cannot claim that like it was yours to name, onofrio. Antisemitism is discussed, but this topic is whether a new way forward toward peace is possible in the middle east, and can Obama do that. The jump off point.

Though I have to say that much time is devoted to why it is solely the fault of muslims. Some great poetry. Some silliness on Nobel Prize winners.

Antisemitism just insinuated it's evil way into the conversation...

The Moderate:

Re: Your post

Interesting that you didn't see fit to comment until after I'd finally had it with CCNL and answered him in kind.

In one case, I left a sick, antisemitic screed alone, finding that no one posted after. The threa was dark, so I shed a bit of unattractive light on it.

Do not expect racial targets like Jews to quietly sit back and let themselves be vilified. Do not expect Jews, after two thousand years of being designated "the Jews" to be silenced or to attempt to explain that the sweeping stereotypes introduced to The Christians in their New (sic) Testament is neither accurate nor civil. We have explained.

Verbal and physical violence stalks us. If bloggers like you were to proceed as Onofrio does, to actively question, if necessary condemn racists then victims such as I might be able to respond differently. At this point, I take my lesson from The Christians. You cannot fight fire with a cup of water. We Jews have been there, done that.

Your move. I will wait a bit the next time an anti-Jewish racist or bigot posts to read your reply.

Hello Onofrio,

A bit late, no?, to preempt strikes. More likely verbal aikido, redirection to maintain cover of vulnerabilities. I understand.

You to me, in response to my being "bored" with pervasive fixation on all things jewish in my culture:
"Why not go and martyr yourself for all those millions of other worthy sufferers for whom you profess to ache. That will cure your ohnotjewsagain ennui, certes."

With all due respect, christian references to martyrdom are out of vogue, you know. Rarely gets used, commonly, these days. Very common current usage, (daily, look in any paper, listen to any newscast), for the term is to describe MUSLIM suicide bombers or jihadists that have died, (only dead ones become martyrs!), railing against the infidel. Say "martyr" to any Joe or Sally on the street, (or Moshe!), and they will know exactly what you are saying.

So do I. You suggested that I go "martyr myself" as a cure for my boredom with jewish-centrism. Nice. That would do it, yup. No more worries about having to listen to all that jewish jibber-jabber. Peace at last!

And who is it that you say is the offensive racist, onofrio?

I must say that I think the air is a bit foul with accusations and counter accusations.

Categorical statements about "The Jew" and "The Christian", as if these were monolithic clones who are all subject to the exact same judgment, wear the same fashions, and march in lock-step.
Accusations of being a JDL agitator. Accusations of being Catholic league agitator, of Whites for Christ.
Accusations of being racists, anti-Semites, and obsessed with Jews.
Discussions of genetic superiority based on the old discredited IQ game.

So little of meeting people where they are.
So little of regarding each other as fully human.
So little discussion of really important things the world faces.

There must be a better way.

Daniel12,

You:
"I am not worshiping the Jews, I am not indulging in some sort of reverse racism--as if I hate myself and I am raising a people different to myself to high heaven. I am merely stating a fact. Jews--particularly eastern european, ashkenazi--score higher on I.Q. tests than any group of people with the possible exception of the citizens of Hong Kong or Korea. Furthermore it is a fact that if you are a Jew you are more likely to win a Nobel prize than if you are an individual of any other race or ethnic group. Not bad for a people that was decimated in WW2."

It's the use to which such *facts* may be bent that concerns me, Daniel. And I'm also uneasy about the mindset that produces them - genetic olympicism, I would call it. I don't think we humans are sufficiently disentangled from our racial prejudices to handle such *facts* responsibly, if indeed they correspond to actuality at all. Mere slivers and shards.

Science and the quest for *facts* are not ideologically neutral, Daniel. I can imagine a world where just the sort of *facts* you discuss might be found to exalt the capacities of one *genetic pool* at the expense of others, and so permit the oppression of those others. It all reeks of master races and eugenics. Given our all-too-human track record, part of which has been raised on this very thread, I think such abuse is all-too-possible.

Why are we measuring peoples like this?

Onofrio to Justillthen, on the meaning of *martyr*:

"or in the original Christian sense of one who accepts death rather than compromise their faith."

No, I'm not claiming that Christians have a monopoly on dying for their faith. I merely refer to the Christians' own earliest understanding of the term *martyr*, which has passed into English.

Just pre-empting any strikes...

Justillthen,

YOU to Chris, Farnaz, and myself:

Tell me what of my post FEBRUARY 2, 2009 3:42 PM to daniel12 so rattled your delicate sensibilities?

Was it my "Honestly I get bored with how much favoritism is poured on Jews."?

Or my "One thing that could be generalized about Jewish success is how effective they are affecting guilt in others and securing special treatment or status."?

When I said: "No. We have to debate the sad treatment of the Jew, the very people that you are saying are genetically superior. Let's watch one more movie or TV drama of these persecuted superhumans."?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Three out of three! You betcha, all of 'em.

Do you have any idea how it comes across, in the context of a very fraught series of threads about the Shoah and antisemitism, for you to toss about flippant remarks on being "bored" with Jews and the "favoritism" that's supposedly "poured out" on them.

All that favoritism! Sheesh, if only we (the pourers that is) had all favoritised them a little more there's be none left!

As for the "guilt" thing, I find a constructive way for a non-Jew to deal with that is to lend a hand when Shoah-pruners start up their disingenuous equivocations in forums like this. Or if you really couldn't be bothered, if it really is just a matter of "boredom" for you, then there are plenty of other non-Jewish diversions on the Web you can unbore yourself with. I mean, why haunt a thread about antisemtitism if you're simply fed up with all talk about Jews. Are you a masochist?

Justillthen,

You to me:
" "Martyr yourself"? Nice. Enter stage two phraseology, tying the vile and evil antisemite Justillthen with the true enemy of your racist leanings: muslims. Did I say you were a racist? Hey, I would not know for sure, but I could venture a guess based on your response to me."

Justillthen, it's you who makes the connection between martyr and muslim, not I, and so you display your ignorance. In my post to you, I used the word *martyr* in its commonplace derisive sense, referring to any ostentatious self-inflicted suffering for attention's sake. I do not regard suicide-bombers, of whatever religion, as *martyrs*, either ironically - according to the derisive sense I've just mentioned - or in the original Christian sense of one who accepts death rather than compromise their faith.

And Justillthen, Muslims are not a *race*, though I acknowledge that many folk use an anti-Islamic rhetorical *high ground* as a cloak for racism against various peoples of the *Middle East*.

To people offended by my posts about Jews winning Nobel prizes disproportionately, and that I believe it has a genetic foundation apart from some cultural foundation that is supposed to be divorced from some genetic foundation, I still do not see your points.

I am not worshiping the Jews, I am not indulging in some sort of reverse racism--as if I hate myself and I am raising a people different to myself to high heaven. I am merely stating a fact. Jews--particularly eastern european, ashkenazi--score higher on I.Q. tests than any group of people with the possible exception of the citizens of Hong Kong or Korea. Furthermore it is a fact that if you are a Jew you are more likely to win a Nobel prize than if you are an individual of any other race or ethnic group. Not bad for a people that was decimated in WW2.

About culture being something that has no genetic foundation, I do not follow that reasoning. I have been told that culture depends on geography and has nothing to do with genetics. Geography? This is like saying a bird species is what it is because of the ecological niche that it is in and that the bird had no genetic possibility within it itself to adapt to this niche. In fact it is more absurd than that because humans are capable of exploiting a variety of geographical places--we are one of the most adaptable creatures ever. So place does not make our culture as much as genetics.

I get really tired when people counter the assertion that culture depends on genetics by trotting in some outside influence such as geography, or more commonly never give a foundation for culture at all and just leave any clear definition of such blank.

Furthermore, I get tired when people say that a person can just take this culture upon himself and that--as if cultures are easily exchanged between people. Only the northern peoples have demonstrated a true flexibility in that direction--particularly white people (white people are the most adventurous, travelled people ever).

If cultures were easily exchangable we would not be having all the culture clashes we have had for centuries and are still having now.

To everybody: I too have been having problems getting posts to go through. I found out that it is the length of the post that seems to make a difference--but then again sometimes long posts go through. I also understand your frustration as it is extremely annoying to lose a post after typing for 45 minutes or so--and it does seem that if a post gets lost it really never appears--it is lost. I have no idea why lost though, because whenever I have lost one it goes to a page which says "Jacoby will look over the post to see if it meets standards", or it goes to a page which says "too many comments have been sent by you in too short of a time". So try not to feel you are being picked on. I was suspicious at first too because it seemed so many other posts were getting by although they were long, but it seems more than one person is having this problem.

Ender,

One other bit to add on to the post from Danielinthelionsden. If you copy your post before submitting you will save a potential loss of that work. Further if you have a longer post you could cut in in half and send both parts individually. Goes thru easier and more certainly.

Ender :

First of all, the Washington Post basically does not monitor or censor this forum much at all.

I think they have some automatic filters that kick in sometimes, and do not seem to work well. They filter out all types of so-called "4-letter-word" type stuff. They will let slip by a passing clinical reference, such as the word "sex" but if it appears too many times in one post, then, oops, it may get held for review, which means, "rejected."

Also, if there are not many posts on a thread, then the length of a post seems to be unlimited. The more and more posts there are, then the more likely that you will be rejected for being too long.

Also, on particular threads which reach a very high degree of acrimony, there does seem to be some sort of arousal of the Washington Post to monitor things.

I think that, for the most part, there is no intelligent person monitoring this, just clunky software filters. Why would the Washington Post pay someone to monitor this forum? Wouldn't it be a complete waste of their money? And to do a realy good job, wouldn't they have to pay several very bright people to do it?

I do not think there is anyone there at all. It is just people's imagination, ruinning away with them, to suppose than anyone would want to censor this thing.

CHRISR3 :
"Farnaz,Onofrio:

Farnaz was right about WaPo's misguided sense of "propriety." I reported Justilthen's February 2, 2009 3:42 PM comments as offensive, and they are still here. I'll be reporting his additional comments when I finish this email. Bigots offend. People who fight them don't."

I should hope that they are still here. I would think it to be misguided to delete what I wrote.

Several of you have gotten all red in the face from what I wrote, and posted back some far more critical and offensive remarks to me. No one has yet illuminated what it was that was so "offensive" about it. Because there was little that was, except perhaps to some over sensitive to any timber of disaffection with what they love.

Then be less critical of others, yourselves. If my comments were offensive to the point of censure, then half the posts on these strings must be deleted.

Tell me what of my post FEBRUARY 2, 2009 3:42 PM to daniel12 so rattled your delicate sensibilities? What about it was more insulting than Farnaz's "Justtilthen's virulently racist rant, reminiscent of Die Sturmer", or onofrio's "your post exudes, reeks of, baldly yammers, vomits, projects, wallows in, glories in, and supurates antisemitism" and "Why not go and martyr yourself..."?

Was it my "Honestly I get bored with how much favoritism is poured on Jews."?

Or my "One thing that could be generalized about Jewish success is how effective they are affecting guilt in others and securing special treatment or status."?

When I said:"No. We have to debate the sad treatment of the Jew, the very people that you are saying are genetically superior. Let's watch one more movie or TV drama of these persecuted superhumans."?

As I said, I am not anti-semetic, regardless of the assumptive leaps that you all have taken. How passe and common, perhaps akin to accusations of witchcraft to smear someone. Here it would be boring if it wasn't irritating.

The focus and fixity on jewish persecution and ill treatment has has been unfortunately and painfully valid, in history. It does not tread water anymore, in my view of it, and I am bored by the endless repetition of the story, retold on billion ways, as a background musak in my culture. Let us move on. Israel is now the occupier. That is the metaphor that tweeks the mind. With the background drone that I should give greater emotional caring to them as a people, pity them, understand their pains.
And, as daniel alludes, I should have 'intellectual and genetic envy' for their greatness.
I applaude their successes and greatness. I am bored hearing about them and their stories to the exclusion of many others.

So you all label me a racist. Like I said, it may serve to open the mind, and then grow up a bit.

Farnaz,Onofrio:

Farnaz was right about WaPo's misguided sense of "propriety." I reported Justilthen's February 2, 2009 3:42 PM comments as offensive, and they are still here. I'll be reporting his additional comments when I finish this email. Bigots offend. People who fight them don't.

Farnaz-thanks for the Wiesenthal Center link. I learned a lot about the Roma. Can you recommend a book.

Chrisr3

I'm logged in but my attempt at posting all report they will be held for review by the blog owner, and I have yet to see one post. This is an experiment of whether my profile is under some increased scrutiny, or if the length of the post is causing the problem. Have other posters experienced this problem?

"I was in there having a beer one night, and I saw "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" scrawled in soap, I suppose, on this mirror. When I started to write the play it cropped up in my mind again. And of course, who's afraid of Virginia Woolf means who's afraid of the big bad wolf . . . who's afraid of living life without false illusions. And it did strike me as being a rather typical, university intellectual joke."

— Edward Albee

onofrio,

Justillthen,

Re your post of February 2, 2009 3:42 PM

Your response:
"...but a fair slab of your post exudes, reeks of, baldly yammers, vomits, projects, wallows in, glories in, and supurates antisemitism. Yessir/ma'am."

Hogwash, onofrio. That would be pig slop. You must have read a different post than the one that I put up. You read the post in your head that came up in knee jerk reaction to some of what I said, perhaps. But it was not from my mouth. "Vomits?" "Glories in?" "Supurates?" You just want to hear yourself be reactive? To what?

I am bored with the very thing that you exemplified. Knee jerk accusations of racism and antisemitism, (in this case), that have no real basis in truth but are essentially intended to slander. Get real.

My points were valid and were not offensive. Except perhaps to someone that is offended at any suggestion of distaste for the centrality of jewish culture in my multi-cultural country. You clearly got offended, but at nothing. Reread it, if an open mind is something that you could whip up.

"Why not go and martyr yourself for all those millions of other worthy sufferers for whom you profess to ache. That will cure your ohnotjewsagain ennui, certes."

"Martyr yourself"? Nice. Enter stage two phraseology, tying the vile and evil antisemite Justillthen with the true enemy of your racist leanings: muslims. Did I say you were a racist? Hey, I would not know for sure, but I could venture a guess based on your response to me.

Which brings me back to one of my points. There are lots of peoples that are regularly prejudiced against and hated, and lots that deserve some attention. America at least often has a jewcentric, islamophobic bent that, to me, gets BORING. My other point.

I am bored with it. And bored with reactionists like you that throw antisemetic accusations around as a matter of course.

Indeed anyone that hints at disillusionment at jewishness is immediately branded with this slander. Mature up. Jews have it great, and are a great and diverse people. This kind of reactionary drivel does not lift them higher, in my view.

Farnaz, Farnaz, Farnaz,

You noted:

"There are many different kinds of Orthodox Jews. None of them are literalists in the sense that some Catholics and Christians are, as I have explained to you again and again and again."

Odd conclusion from an atheist "Jew". References please to support your contention that orthodox Jews don't beleive in the literal words of the OT/Jewish scripture.

And what is driving your defense of a religion that runs deep in massacre blood, fiction and embellishments!!

And have you ever denied working for the JDL??

Farnaz2,

"Here is "Justtilthen's virulently racist rant, reminiscent of Die Sturmer. Is this acceptable to you? Does this meet the Oxford criteria for "debate"? Is there a "debate""

This is laughable if I did not think that you took it seriously, or perhaps more to the point personally. "Virulent racist rant"? Are you kidding me? Reminds you of Die Sturmer?

Your retort may be another example of melodramatic and overblown prosemitism thinking, attacking to defend.... nothing.

What is unacceptable in debate, or just in a friggin' conversation, about what I said? Though you obviously took it personally, (far overboard IMO), what constitutes racism and antisemitism?

I am bored with so much focus culturally, from media to these boards, on the plight of the jews. The jews do all right, if you ask me. Daniel is suggesting that we "common" non-jews have 'intellect envy' for the "gifted" jews.

No. Me, I am bored with this fixation and need for attention.

That is racism?

Grow up please. We are all here together. You, me, Albert and Jallaluddin. We all have our perspectives and prejudices, judgements and loves. You freely express yours here, and some of your comments could far easier be rated as racist. Save your antisemetic accusations for when it means something.

daniel12,

"Furthermore divorcing culture from genetics--as if culture is something without a genetic foundation--as if you can have a culture without it being based on the genetics of a people, well that is just absurd. A culture erupts out the genetics of a people"
I am not divorcing culture from genetics, but I do not assign culture as a product of "genetics". 'Genetics' are individually assigned and do not a culture make. All 10th generation sicilians may have an inate comprehension of the sicilian dialect, and an innate tendency to be 'culturally' sicilian, but that does not create the sicilian culture, or either control or limit it's expression. Culture is a living thing that can evolve and change quickly. Genetics are a map that we start with and we draw from, but it is not so sensitive to transient changes.

Your fixation on Nobel Prizes as proof of genetic superiority is narrow for obvious reasons. The assumption that #'s of Nobels / racial profile = genetic aptitude is a leap of simplemindedness that should need no explaination. There are so many variables on the road to who wins a Nobel Prize. Again, by this simple equation we must deduce that white men are far more adept at leading democracies and so are genetically superior as democratic leaders...

"But of course no one converts to Judaism to try to succeed as the Jews--.... and we will fail because their great achievements depend on genetics...."

You are a worshiper. Convert to Judaism to win Nobels? Does immersing in jewish culture do that, daniel? Really?! Wow, let me become new!

One need not convert to Judaism to benefit from their culture. Indeed, their culture is everywhere around. We can hardly get away from it's influence.

CCNL:

Why not simply recommend everyone simply "Google" anti-semitism. We all realize there are "red-neck" Catholics/Christians like Mel Gibson who take the literal word of the bible. Are they any different than the orthodox Jews who believe in all the promised-land mumbo jumbo of the OT ???
____________________________

There are many different kinds of Orthodox Jews. None of them are literalists in the sense that some Catholics and Christians are, as I have explained to you again and again and again.

It is inconceivable to me that in this day and age, two thousand years into your religion, that C's still do not understand that Judaism was founded within interpretive traditions. The Tanakh itself is internally interpretive. It isn't read alone, but in conjunction with Mishnah and Talmud.

Some Orthodox Jews believe that Messiah is a human being. For the most literal, a descendant of the Davidic king. For others, a human being, without said creds. For others, a concept.

The return to the land from which they were exiled is, for many Orthodox Jews, a historical event that will occur when it occurs. When the world is repaired, healed Tikkun Olam, the Messiah will come. But Tikkun Olam, healing the world, making it just is our responsibility.

But the task of Tikkun Olam is foundational, our responsibility. You are in some gaga land with respect to your understanding of what Jews think. We are not, as Onofrio so succinctly put it, founded on a huge faith/belief commitment. Other religions do not make us insecure. Not only is their room for dispute in Judaism, dispute is essential to it.

READ MAIMONIDES, THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED. IT

IS ONLINE. MAIMONIDES, TWELFTH CENTURY, BELIEVED

LESS IN THE LITERAL TRUTH OF THE TANAKH THAN

TWENTIETH CENTURY BIBLICAL SCHOLARS.

IS ANYTHING SINKING IN CCNL?

Durga?

Onofrio,

Yes, I see what you mean. The Oedipus thing, you see it as gimmicky, cheapening. Needs must reconsider.

Farnaz

Farnaz,

Re Brodsky,
It's not pro or con of the complex that I cavil at, just the word Oedipal itself in this setting. Seems too interpretive, terminological in tone. But I carp.

The ibis is about to depart in search of repast.

Rest ye, Durga :)

Daniel12,

YOU: Furthermore divorcing culture from genetics--as if culture is something without a genetic foundation--as if you can have a culture without it being based on the genetics of a people, well that is just absurd"

Sorry Daniel, genetics has nothing whatsoever to do with culture.

YOU: To say there is such a thing as culture without it being based on genetics begs the question: "then where did culture come from?"

Geography mostly. What you eat and what you wear are all about geographical availabilities as per your necessities. Language it tribal. Religion is tribal. The only genetic link to culture is the hereditary nature to mimic. Mimicry is a survival instinct and mimicry creates culture.

Geographical separations cause cultures to develop in isolation, unaware of the culture of the tribes on the other side of the ocean, or mountains, and so they develop along different lines.

It's all geography, Daniel. No genetics involved, except the mimicry gene.

YOU: And also if culture is not based on genetics then we would expect cultures to be easily exchanged between peoples--that this person can take that culture upon himself, that that person can this culture upon himself. But as we obviously know, things are not that simple"

Daniel, I don't know about you but I have taken on aspects of the many cultures of the world by interacting with them in my multicultural country. All of my favorite foods are ethnic foods, I love african music, and spanish music, I wear garments inspired by Indian culture, and native North American culture, and African culture, the english language is filled with words and phrases from other languages because their word says it best, I meditate and do yoga, I sing french songs, I eat with chop sticks, I surf, I enjoy Cirque Du soleil....

And that's just me in my own country. Some people move to foreign lands and completely adopt a new culture. Culture exchange between peoples is exceptionally easy, Daniel.

And intellect has nothing to do with culture. Some cultures may respect and take more pride in academic education than others, which may result in high academic achievement numbers for that culture, but intellect is separate from this. Intellect plus education = academic achievement. Intellect without education has no chance of winning a nobel prize.

You really need to get off of this culture coming from genetics and relating to academic achievement kick you are on. It's just not true.

Onofrio,

I dunno, I kind of think Brodsky's poem is anti the Oedipus complex. He and his boy, you know, and some queen or other. Whatever. I see him writing it at the kitchen table with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, pausing to read, his wife standing over him drying a dish.

Hi Onofrio,

Inspired friend of the Austral Fundament, I needs must adjourn for awhile. Brodsky is always surprising. Am fond of him, very.
Cook, too, a talented fellow, as are you.

Time for Thoth, I propose.

Onofrio,

CCNL has arrived everywhere--Shoulda known. He's pasted the same stuff on Kula's and Arroyo's threads. Waste not, want not, he always says.

I think you could surely publish, easily. Your verse is very violet sweet.

Farnaz,

"Perhaps you are he, perhaps not."

Wish I were, but no. Am that idle king. Nothing published/able. These ex temps are all.

That Tennyson is one of the first poems I ever committed to memory - part of the *canon*. I no longer thrill to its gist, but its music is still sweet.

The Brodsky casts a wonderful spell, broken though at the penultimate line with “Oedipal passions”. Like the sound, but the idea jars, with its psychoanalytic knell. Cook's spare Delos, with its fire and light, appeals more.

And the meowness of Yezzi - yes!

Thoth my mythos? Aye, certes :)

Ah, but I see CCNL has arrived...

Part II:

CCNL,

We also go through the same things again and again. Why would anyone care about this man enough to want to kill him? It makes no sense. NOne. The Pharisees were ushering in the Rabbinic Age. Geniuses like Akiva were in mortal peril.

He, actually, was murdered by the Romans. That is a fact. Again, Jesus, if he existed, and I'm willing to take it "on faith" that he did, could not have interested many. They knew what was meant by Messiah. Human sacrifice was anathema to them by that point. The notion of Hashem as a murderer was unthinkable.

The Talmud is on line. Take what is attractive to you in the Christian Testament, what is ethical, but don't make it up. Our understanding of the Tanakh does not, did not, could not authorize typology, the hideous things that you say the stolen, half-literalized, half-typologized "OT" did.

We are willing to live and let live. Leave our text, our history outside of your narratives, CCNL, please.

CCNL,

Could we take a poetry break.

Farnaz (x3)

PS. Do you know who the Tanaim were? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannaim)

PPS. I still don't understand why you would write that Judaism need revitalizing, as you did on R. Kula's thread, but don't tell me, please.

PPS. Just tell me if you know who the Tannaim were. Akiva. Or, if you would be willing to find out.

Farnaz, Farnaz, Farnaz,

Why not simply recommend everyone simply "Google" anti-semitism. We all realize there are "red-neck" Catholics/Christians like Mel Gibson who take the literal word of the bible. Are they any different than the orthodox Jews who believe in all the promised-land mumbo jumbo of the OT ???

And it is obvious to most Catholics that priests and popes must believe in the literal word of the NT. Without it, their lives have no meaning and their jobs would go extinct.

The root of the problem is the trial of Jesus. Historically it did not happen. Jesus got a bit carried away at the Jewish temple. The Roman soldiers reacted in their normal fashion in dealing with agitators, they summarily crucified him. No questions asked and definitely no trial.

The ex-priest but still Catholic Professor JD Crossan's conclusion about said fictional trial:

From his book, Who is Jesus????

“My best historical reconstruction would be something like this. Jesus was arrested during the Passover festival, most likely in response to his action in the Temple. Those who were closest to him ran away for their own safety. I do not presume that there were any high-level confrontations between Caiaphas and Pilate and Herod Antipas either about Jesus or with Jesus. No doubt they would have agreed before the festival that fast action was to be taken against any disturbance and that a few examples by crucifixion might be especially useful at the outset. And I doubt very much if Jewish police or Roman soldiers needed to go too far up the chain of command in handling a Galilean peasant like Jesus. It is hard for us to imagine the casual brutality with which Jesus was probably taken and executed. All those "last week" details in our gospels, as distinct from the brute facts just mentioned, are prophecy turned into history, rather than history remembered."

And please read the comments about anti-semitism by the contemporary NT and historical Jesus exegetes in their many books about the historical Jesus. There is a great list posted at:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html

Penelope

In the pathway of the sun,
In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
He shall ride the silver seas,
He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
They will call him brave.

Dorothy Parker

Louise Gluck - Penelope's Song
Little soul, little perpetually undressed one,
Do now as I bid you, climb
The shelf-like branches of the spruce tree;
Wait at the top, attentive, like
A sentry or look-out. He will be home soon;
It behooves you to be
Generous. You have not been completely
Perfect either; with your troublesome body
You have done things you shouldn't
Discuss in poems. Therefore
Call out to him over the open water, over the bright
Water
With your dark song, with your grasping,
Unnatural song--passionate,
Like Maria Callas. Who
Wouldn't want you? Whose most demonic appetite
Could you possibly fail to answer? Soon
He will return from wherever he goes in the
Meantime,
Suntanned from his time away, wanting
His grilled chicken. Ah, you must greet him,
You must shake the boughs of the tree
To get his attention,
But carefully, carefully, lest
His beautiful face be marred
By too many falling needles.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

continues below...

Farnaz,

One good freeflow deserves anuther. As for the rabbinic age: to hear it would let it compete with the hallowed Great Complete, with its felled city - reverse predicted, ex eventu, a full stop on sageliness. Akiva's laughter in the ruins is not heard, is incomprehensible, for it is of the earth. The Christ-cult would out-soar Mithraic ascents, out-emote Isiac laments, and out-invictus Sol, burst ouranic shells. Akiva haunts it with this earth.

continued....

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

continued....

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

Onofrio,

Swiftly I venture:

Wow. You are a poet, surely you are. Everything you write singeth, and you have surely heard this before. You remind me of an Australian poet who doesn't seem to have published much in the way of poetry in the last ten years or so. 'Tis a male of the species, that Austral tunester, much blessed by the muses, et al.

Perhaps you are he, perhaps not. Either way, your verse gives matter to form. Could Thoth, at one of "his" stages, be a mythic figure for you?

ODYSSEUS ON DELOS

The quick flames eat.
The white ash feathers to the sky.
The light pours down, as light
On Ida and on Samothrace descended,
Lucidities of light to make more pitiless
All deeds of daylight.

-Hugh Cook

Odysseus to Telemachus

My dear Telemachus,
The Trojan War
is over now; I don't recall who won it.
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland.
But still, my homeward way has proved too long.
While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,
it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this place
can be. It would appear some filthy island,
with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.
A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.
Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son!
To a wanderer the faces of all islands
resemble one another. And the mind
trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons,
run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears.
I can't remember how the war came out;
even how old you are--I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong.
Only the gods know if we'll see each other
again. You've long since ceased to be that babe
before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.
Had it not been for Palamedes' trick
we two would still be living in one household.
But maybe he was right; away from me
you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions,
and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

-Joseph Brodsky

Farnaz,

Swiftly I venture:

Bullydom perpetuum,
would crush the ibis’ eggs,
yet yolk of meter, white of rime,
survives the cracking, juices boots,
makes them slip, and raises
hard earth to cruel faces.

Onofrio,

Sorry, I'm free associating. I like Yezzi very much, but he is who he is, and she is who she is, which is much more acknowledged, accomplished than he is. There's a bit of the meeeoowwww, in his poem, thinketh moi.

Onofrio,

Yezzi is right and wrong, I think, about Gluck. A lot of the issue with her is form. She sees it everywhere and speculates on whether that which inhabits it can be freed. A would-be monist, maybe.

Pseudo,

Ah too true, I say yea to it all. Thank you for your ex tempore, O transcender of gritty industrialism.

Onofrio,

On a non-Auden, non-Thoth-related note, I went through some run-ins with bullies, too, none so wretched as my daughter's, but in my case, it was all complicated by the constant racism. There were, then, among the child psychopaths of my generation, both racialists and your ordinary, garden-variety jerks.

What always surprises me, but shouldn't, is how many who have been bullied, grow up to be bullies themselves.

I still wonder how it is possible that you are the only blogger on this site who knows that while Jesus, if he existed, was up and about in the promised land, he was virtually nonexistent in the larger Jewish community, that not only was he unnecessary to Judaism, but would have been a distraction. This was the Rabbinic Age, perhaps, the dawn of the most creative period in the religion--the age of Akiva, et al.

Yet, you have an entire culture deluding itself for two thousand years, bigots like CCNL (who isn't really a bigot, but does his best), writing on another thread how Jesus was necessary for the revitalization of Judaism!!!! See it and weep. He wrote that!

This was the age of the TANAIM!!! Ah, but the Jew(ess) cannot speak.

Thoth?

Onofrio,

"Been a while." Work is demanding.

And yes, I grew up in a hard and gritty industrial city with its share of thugs.

I do believe, that as you say, just being different in any way can get you slugged.

It seemed there was some kind of herd instinct that I never got the memo on or did not care.

Still, I would not trade a single minute of my life for any one of theirs.

And I hope you feel the same about a life you are living well.

And doing so you fill your days with peace until you bid their kind farewell.

Onofrio,

Well, the poetry took root. Here are you, and where, one wonders, are they?

'Tis curious to me that folks still think of Auden as near-great.

Thoth--so complicated. Always evolving, no?

Will you tell about "him" some time?

Pseudo,

It's been a while. Thank you for your kind words, poet, thank you. So you too have known the attentions of the thugs of this world? Glad you survived, glad. I salute. They tried too, a quart-century ago, to thump the poetry from me, not because of race, but just difference. The same type that hit sis took exception to me, and to you too, no doubt. You're so right about the danger of jaundice, bitterness. My hate is cold now.

Hi Farnaz,

Ah, I was wondering when that dread shield of Auden’s might appear! Zesta! No one writes 'em like that...

As for Thoth, there’s three of him (truly trismegistic) - ibis that is - treading the turf in the park behind my house. He keeps an eye on me through these his heralds: to the suburbane, despised pickers-at-refuse; signs of blessing to this glyphist.

The system of signification that was glyphs, all those icons of every piece of world = the words of the god. All as text - and Thoth was its master.

And that Yezzi reflection on Gluck - ouch, so sharp!

Onofrio:

I am sorry to read what happened to your sister. Fools, especially drunken rowdy fools who think that they are being patriotic by cleaving to past prejudices, will do such things.

Decades ago people did that kind of thing to me on several occasions. I learned to avoid certain areas of town where I was likely to encounter them, and fear for my safety did spawn a certain prejudice for a while. The important thing is to avoid letting legitimate feelings from this jaundice your views of your fellow man over the long term.

But you, and especially your sister, still have to take practical steps to avoid these people for now, as I did then.

Onofrio,

Let them say what they will about WH. Jazzed around too much, &c. Well, then, you try to write'em like that, says me!

Yezzi wrote this after meditating on Gluck's Achilles poem.

After Achilles

Love worth dying for, she thinks
Of it often, reading through recent
Updates from the embattled
Interior: once again
Senseless slaughter
Erupts in the outlying villages.

Gone are the innocent attractions
Lately praised by the poets. Instead, the poor
Überglücklich throng
Cleaves dearly to its own,
Kills for the simple love of it.

-- David Yezzi

The Shield Of Achilles
W. H. Auden

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who’d never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

Hi Onofrio,

Too much krieg, IMHO. I've been wondering what blogging is like in less verbally combative cultures. I qualify with "verbally" since such cultures aren't necessarily less violent.

Perhaps, when the tempest subsides, Persiflage will return to edify. I've been thinking about Thoth....

Farnaz,

At risk of putting yet more wee verse-averse borelings to sleep, or prodding them to ire...

You read my mind. All this recent krieg had me thinking Homeric, and of Patroclus in particular. Betimes I've sallied forth in borrowed panoply. But Hec ain't got me yet.

Gluck’s Odysseus I take as terse rejoinder to Tennyson’s Ulysses. The former has the longing right.

Retreating Wind

When I made you, I loved you.
Now I pity you.

I gave you all you needed:
bed of earth, blanket of blue air--

As I get further away from you
I see you more clearly.
Your souls should have been immense by now,
not what they are,
small talking things--

I gave you every gift,
blue of the spring morning,
time you didn't know how to use--
you wanted more, the one gift
reserved for another creation.

Whatever you hoped,
you will not find yourselves in the garden,
among the growing plants.
Your lives are not circular like theirs:

your lives are the bird's flight
which begins and ends in stillness--
which begins and ends, in form echoing
this arc from the white birch
to the apple tree.

-Louise Gluck

Justillthen,

Re your post of February 2, 2009 3:42 PM

You:
"I am not anti-semetic, but I am bored with the focus on these peoples to the exclusion of others more deserving of a bit of attention."

Don't want to get into an are-too-am-not with ya, Justill, but a fair slab of your post exudes, reeks of, baldly yammers, vomits, projects, wallows in, glories in, and supurates antisemitism. Yessir/ma'am.

Why not go and martyr yourself for all those millions of other worthy sufferers for whom you profess to ache. That will cure your ohnotjewsagain ennui, certes.

Smart

My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is mroe than one!

And then i took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes-i guess he don't know
that three is mroe than two!

Just them, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And i took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!

And then i went and showed my dad,
and he go red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head-
Too proud of me to speak!

-Shel Silverstein

To those offended by my statements about the Jews--namely that if you are a Jew you are more likely to win a Nobel prize than an individual of any other racial or ethnic group, and that the Jews success depends more on genetics than some sort of "culture" separate from genetics this is all I have to say: It is a fact about the Jews success in winning Noble prizes.

Furthermore divorcing culture from genetics--as if culture is something without a genetic foundation--as if you can have a culture without it being based on the genetics of a people, well that is just absurd. A culture erupts out the genetics of a people--and at best advances by the most gifted (read superior genetic specimens)--of a people.

To say there is such a thing as culture without it being based on genetics begs the question: "then where did culture come from?". And also if culture is not based on genetics then we would expect cultures to be easily exchanged between peoples--that this person can take that culture upon himself, that that person can this culture upon himself. But as we obviously know, things are not that simple.

If the Jews success is due to some culture apart from genetics then it only makes sense that we all convert to Judaism--in fact imitate as much as we can about the Jews--so we can increase our Nobel prize ratio to be comparable to the Jews.

But of course no one converts to Judaism to try to succeed as the Jews--and the reason why is basic common sense: that we will fail to be as them and win Nobel prizes--and we will fail because their great achievements depend on genetics which has created their culture, not some sort of culture which is separate from genetics.

The Triumph Of Achilles

In the story of Patroclus
no one survives, not even Achilles
who was nearly a god.
Patroclus resembled him; they wore
the same armor.

Always in these friendships
one serves the other, one is less than the other:
the hierarchy
is always apparant, though the legends
cannot be trusted--
their source is the survivor,
the one who has been abandoned.

What were the Greek ships on fire
compared to this loss?

In his tent, Achilles
grieved with his whole being
and the gods saw
he was a man already dead, a victim
of the part that loved,
the part that was mortal.

-Louise Gluck

Odysseus's Decision

The great man turns his back on the island.
Now he will not die in paradise
nor hear again
the lutes of paradise among the olive trees,
by the clear pools under the cypresses. Time

begins now, in which he hears again
that pulse which is the narrative
sea, ar dawn when its pull is strongest.
What has brought us here
will lead us away; our ship
sways in the tined harbor water.

Now the spell is ended.
Giove him back his life,
sea that can only move forward.

-Louise Gluck

CCNL, Bun-Bun, Catholic League Agitator, Whites for Christ,

Please bring up this proposal with the Catholic League and Whites for Christ. Think how much more you'll have to give Mubarrak to pay off terrorists, et al, spread anti-semitic propaganda....

CCNL, Bun-Bun, Catholic League Agitator,

As I have said, I heartily pray for the day when Israel will alter its relations with this nation. At present, a discussion is underway about appealing to many of those Jewish run Philanthropies who give generously on a nonsectarian basis to see how they might assist in this.

Guess where most of the problems are coming from? Now, Bun-Bun, check with the Catholic League and find out why they want to continue to foster Israeli economic dependency on us, when it may not be necessary.

You and your fellow League members can then go ahead funding the antisemitic press and curricula throughout the Middle East.

Hope you enjoyed yesterday's mass. Was that after the League Meeting? Before Whites for Christ To-Do?

Farnaz, JDL's favorite agitator, continues to agitate and be agitated.

And one assumes she includes Jewish congregations in her tax-all policy. And maybe we should have the Jewish State of Israel repay the four billion dollars/year we have been providing to them for the last 20 years.

And we are still waiting for her to apologize for her Jewish ancestors and the before mentioned massacres as so vividly described in the OT. Hmmm, we wonder if that is when anti-semitism/anti-Jewish religion all began??

Daniel12:

Evidently, you are unaware that there are some not-so-bright Jews among us. It does no good to think of one group as "genetically" superior, another as "inferior." As well, both over- and under-achievement can be explained in other ways.

Farnaz

SusanJacoby:

Here is "Justtilthen's virulently racist rant, reminiscent of Die Sturmer. Is this acceptable to you? Does this meet the Oxford criteria for "debate"? Is there a "debate"

If it is acceptable, what does that say?

daniel12,

"I think it sad that so many people are antisemitic. Jews disproportionately win Nobel prizes and it could very well be the future of the human race depends on a handful of Jews.

I think behind much antisemitism is the envy and mistrust of the common man for the gifted."

There is so much here that I have issue with. Not the least is this on and on of claims and accusations of anti-semitism. Honestly I get bored with how much favoritism is poured on Jews. One thing that could be generalized about Jewish success is how effective they are affecting guilt in others and securing special treatment or status.

Lets talk of anti arabian sentiment, eh? Anti latino sentiment, hate for all things islamic, or sino-phobia.

No. We have to debate the sad treatment of the Jew, the very people that you are saying are genetically superior. Let's watch one more movie or TV drama of these persecuted superhumans.

I am not anti-semetic, but I am bored with the focus on these peoples to the exclusion of others more deserving of a bit of attention.

Second. The assumption of jewish genetic superiority is appalling. To make that assumption based on the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to jews does not take into account the degree of priviledge and security that jews have had that allows for higher education, for instance, or does it consider the possible prejudices of the Nobel judges against other cultures or religions. Or many other influences that support ascendency to the Nobel pantheon.

That same thinking could be applied to American Presidency and used to 'prove' that older WASPy white men are genetically superior to any other race. Rubbish.

Numbers of Nobel Prizes alone is not proof for superior genetics.

Further. You discount culture as an influence to genetics, and here you are clearly wrong. Culture IS one of the main components to genetics. It is a large part of what formed the intellectual and emotional makeup of ancestors and that innate wisdom and skills are passed on to descendants.

Perhaps just a good work ethic is enough to make an average thinker become successful beyond his intellectual gifts.

ChrisR3:

Simon Wiesenthal worked until the day he died to get greater recognition of Porajamos, the nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti. He wanted compensation as well. The struggle on behalf of the Roma (as they are now called) continues at the Center, and includes protests against continuing racism.

One of the greatest imaginable horrors took place at Auschwitz, under the direction of the (Catholic) nazi, Josef Mengele, who gassed 25,000 in a single night. The incident is described by a number of Jewish survivors, unspeakable.

You can find information on a number of sites, including the USHMM.

Perhaps, it would be best for you to start with the Simon Wiesenthal Center's web site.

http://www.simon-wiesenthal-archiv.at/01_wiesenthal/05_stellungnahmen/e01_prosecutingnazi.html

Is there something wrong with this site?

Farnaz,

Can you tell me where I can get information about Simon Wiesenthal's efforts on behalf of the Gypsies?

Frederic2:

The link you posted is to a video of Rev. Parsley, McCain's former advisor. Yesterday's news. The issue on this thread is anti-Semitism.

That is what you can expect from modern US Christian GOP genocide backers.

Mouth foaming hatred on the basis of institutionalized superstition, that is all.

Bad for mankind.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4908453

I can see there has been some editorial excision. Fair enough. I'm puzzled as to why two of my recent posts were removed. One included a fairly tame expletive that was vowel-dashed, as I've seen pass several times on other OnFaith threads. Besides that, I'm at a loss to understand the losses. I would gladly remove/revise any offending terms, if indicated to me.

Daniel12,

So you're saying that Jews are *genetically* superior. OK, it's better than casting them as untermensch, and appears to be nobly self-effacing, since you are not Jewish. But it's a bizarre inverse racism. The correlate, of course, is that those without Jewish *genetics* are inferior. The question arising: do you further arrange non-Jewish peoples into a sort of racial hierarchy? If so, I'm concerned about whom you place on the bottom of the scale.

I can see that you mean well, but I think you're close to racialist thinking here, Daniel.

Pookie? POOKIE? That's it. I'm outa here. I won't continue to subject myself to these racist attacks.

Onfrio,
I'm sad to hear about the incident with your sister. I've lived in Sydney all my life but I've seen very little racism here myself. You read about the occasional outbreak of racist violence.

When I was in high school, there were a lot of Lebanese immigrants at my school, and there was tension between the Lebanese and the Anglos, but the Lebanese were tough enough to take the abuse and eventually earned the respect of the local Anglos. Now that they're all grown up, the kids who used to fight each other are all good mates.

I generally consider Australia a successful experiment in multi-culturalism. I hope it continues that way.

Regards,
AThagoras

I think it sad that so many people are antisemitic. Jews disproportionately win Nobel prizes and it could very well be the future of the human race depends on a handful of Jews.

I think behind much antisemitism is the envy and mistrust of the common man for the gifted. Furthermore I do believe there is a genetic basis for the Jews achievements--which is to say no matter their genetic legacy they now just wildly succeed. And some have said their success now is due to so many of them having been killed off by repeated persecution--which is to say that only the more intelligent of them survived to pass on genes.

I can well understand that. What I definitely disagree with is the Jews success being due to their culture rather than their genetics, as if culture can somehow be divorced from a genetic foundation. To those who believe in some sort of Jewish culture apart from genetics which is responsible for their success, then why is it more people do not convert to Judaism to win Nobel prizes as them? You would think if there is some sort of Jewish culture apart from genetics which is so valuable, that all the Muslims would convert to Judaism--not to mention all those parents in the U.S. hovering over their children and micromanaging every aspect of their education.

But no one will convert to Judaism in an attempt to gain an edge in winning a Nobel prize. The Jews success is due to some sort of fortunate genetic legacy--and everyone hates them regardless of how they became so successful.

This is a lesson for the world. We can expect so many human problems to at best be solved only after a dreary and painful time. If the human race cannot be honest about honoring a people that so obviously succeeds, we can hardly expect gifted individuals to be recognized any more than they have been over previous periods of history.

Let us hope I am wrong about the last few sentences.

Strange that JDL agitators resort to poetry to distract from topics. Or is it??

Hi Chrisr3,

Thanks for the kind words, and thanks very much for the link.

Farnaz

Hi Onofrio,

Thanks so much for thinking about Australian verse.
An Erymanthian Boar? Ah, me. I'm no Hercules, so I hope he's not headed Brooklyn.

Spivack's essay appears in "Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture." Eds. Cary Nelson, Lawrence Grossberg.

It's an anthology with works by some heavy hitters. I think I read something about her having revised the original essay. I'll have to check on that, though.

Hi Farnaz,

I think you want to engage every fool who posts here, and I applaud you. Sometimes, you get them to show their human side. Other times, you dance rings around them, and I admit it's fun to watch. The problem is they don't know they've been defeated, and the sillier among them keep at it. Maybe if you and Onofrio stop engaging them, other intelligent people will post again, or new ones will come.

In the meantime, having read through this entire disgusting thread, I must agree with you about Susan Jacoby. I read one of her books, and I wasn't overly impressed. It was okay, nothing more, but what she wrote on this thread is much less, sub-par. Have you read any of her books?
Look, forget bigoted bloggers, and forget her. I'm concerned that even someone as courageous as you will get fed up and stop blogging. Don't let that happen.

Don't wait for Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris to post here. Not going to happen. I read and follow Dawkins. Maybe, you'd like to see what he's got on anti-Semitism: http://richarddawkins.net/newsearch,#anti%20semitism

This man investigates. There are more bigoted crazies in the Vatican than most of us know. On that note, I like "If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem" very much. Maybe, you could send it to the Pope.

Keepwastingmoney,

Thou:
"It's late and I'm bored. Good Night."

Nightnight pookie. Don't forget to turn off the light...

Farnaz,

With regard to the Spivak essay, no I have not read it, though I've marked well your allusions to it - and yourself as that *subaltern* - in previous threads. Could you recommend an anthology where I might find it? Who knows, maybe even bored onlookers like Keepwasting and other verse-aversionists will also follow up the reference, and be edified.

A pig just flew past my window, a whopping great Erymanthian Boar, with wings of a condor!

I will revisit my anthologies of Austral poetry for further recommendations (apologies, O all ye verse-averse).

Roses are red
Violets are purple
Most poems rhyme
But this one don't

It's late and I'm bored. Good Night.

Keepwasting,

Do you like poetry? Do you have a favorite poem or poet?

Keepwastingmoney,

What, still up reading, Keepwasting? Sorry none of your preferred posters are still posting. Perhaps you'd like to add something constructive, dazzle us with new directions, shining paths, potent anecdotes...Or you could just switch channels. Perhaps the usual crew severally died of boredom, or took umbrage at the broken porcelain, or even choked on their own bile. Look out, you could be next.

Farnaz,

Re your post of February 1, 2009 8:45 PM

I really appreciate your kind words about my sister. Gladly, she'll be leaving behind the Austral yobs in a fortnight, and returning to London to live.

The increasing pluralism of Australia has of course led to a backlash, which was exploited politically by our previous rightist PM (Dubya's staunch little buddy) to keep himself in power. The dark side of the current upsurge in *patriotic* flag-waving fervour has a lot to do with that prime ministerial racist *dog-whistling*, as it's called down here.

The biggest cities here, Sydney and Melbourne, are pretty cosmopolitan. I can go down to a commercial centre near where I live, sit in a cafe, and watch people from every continent pass by - all the faces of humanity.

The older anglo-Australian culture contains an odd mix of traditional white racism and a genuinely egalitarian *fair go* respect for those who are struggling against the odds. So more recent non-anglo arrivals will be reviled by some, and enthusiastically welcomed by others. Since the 1960s the latter type have been in the ascendant, with some setbacks in the last decade. Among anglo-Australians, I've often seen a sort of reflexive racialism dissolve quickly in response to signs of goodwill from the Other, i.e. the racism is often fairly superficial, more simple xenophobia than the full-blown disease. The main challenge is to keep the latter in check, on the margins, outside the consensus.

Just when you thought it would be difficult to find less intelligence on this thread, hier ist keepwastingmoney, sucking up what little remains. A new monniker, maybe. But not a new voice. How about creeping out of the Primordial Ooze long enough to state the name you usually comment on. I like to know the names of the various Swamp Things.

Ho hum....AAAGGrrhhh..

The Onofrio Farnaz Mutual Admiration and Poetry Society is really getting old. (yawn)

Onofrio,

Of the Austrailian poets you mention, I know only Slessor and Wright. I'll look for Voss. On Jerusalem--a Pakistani friend of mine went there for the second time recently.

He'd been dispatched thither both times on business. Both times he reported back in the same breathless, awestruck way. It seems to be the city full of promise, but, alas.

I wish I had something wiser to say about your sister, your country. There's something about evil. Sometimes, it helps to call it by its name. Sometimes, not.

Farnaz,

Sorry, my previous post was not yet aware of your newer posts, which I now read. I've caught up with the three Amichais now, each painful and arresting in its own way. I remember you quoting *If I forget thee Jerusalem* on an earlier thread. There's something about the word *Jerusalem* that's so highly charged and uncanny in effect, even for this distetragrammatised fool. I've probably been conditioned by hymns, particularly the one that uses Blake's *Jerusalem* - dark satanic mills and all that - still has visceral force.

You know, I've never been to Jerusalem. I have a book at home full of vivid beautiful photos - is all. About ten years ago I looked toward it, from Mt Nebo in Jordan, but it was obscured by dust and smog. It has not been revealed to me. As idea, it means far more than I can comprehend, though in Amichai, even translated, I can grope toward some understanding.

With regard to Austral poets, you probably know far more than I. I'm sure there's nothing new I could say. Francis Webb, in whom you're already steeped, is great. I enjoy some of Kenneth Slessor very much, also Les Murray. Judith Wright of course. Nancy Cato. David Malouf writes wonderfully poetic prose.

If you want mythic insight into Australia, I would recommend Patrick White's Voss as the key. A novel, not a poem, yet very poetic. Not one word out of place, IMHO.

Onofrio,

Have you read, Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak"? It's a short, world-famous essay, widely anthologized, but, alas, unavailable on the web.

"I wish more would see, hear, that girl who saw murder, was smitten speechless."

Onofrio,

Since you started blogging, I've tried to broaden my very limited knowledge of Australian poetry. There is such beautiful verse in your country. Could you tell us about Australian poets you are particularly fond of?

Farnaz

Onofrio, This is one of the few Amichai poems that translates well. He writes here of the Jerusalem of his childhood, when Muslims and Jews lived in peace. If he forgets Jerusalem, he will forget who he is.

If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Then let my right be forgotten.
Let my right be forgotten, and my left remember.
Let my left remember, and your right close
And your mouth open near the gate.

I shall remember Jerusalem
And forget the forest -- my love will remember,
Will open her hair, will close my window,
will forget my right,
Will forget my left.

If the west wind does not come
I'll never forgive the walls,
Or the sea, or myself.
Should my right forget
My left shall forgive,
I shall forget all water,
I shall forget my mother.

If I forget thee, Jerusalem,
Let my blood be forgotten.
I shall touch your forehead,
Forget my own,
My voice change
For the second and last time
To the most terrible of voices --
Or silence.

-Yehuda Amichai

Hello, Onofrio,

I don't know why--perhaps, it's "possibly"--but in the Pinsky's baseball poem, I love-

Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.

I have a friend, who tells me she was certain that Lauren Bacall, who is Jewish, was the quintessential WASP. Only, WASP's, she'd thought could look and speak like that!

God Full Of Mercy
Yehuda Amichai

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead.
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
I, who plucked flowers in the hills
And looked down into all the valleys,
I, who brought corpses down from the hills,
Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.
I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without a decision at my window,
Who counted the steps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In the horrible contests.

I, who use only a small part
Of the words in the dictionary.

I, who must decipher riddles
I don't want to decipher,
Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy
There would be mercy in the world,
Not just in Him.

The Diameter of the Bomb

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective
range - about seven meters.
And in it four dead and eleven wounded.
And around them in a greater circle
of pain and time are scattered
two hospitals and one cemetery.
But the young woman who was
buried where she came from
over a hundred kilometres away
enlarges the circle greatly.
And the lone man who weeps over her death
in a far corner of a distant country
includes the whole world in the circle.
And I won’t speak at all about the crying of orphans
that reaches to the seat of God
and from there onward, making
the circle without end and without God.

-Yehuda Amichai
(Translated from the Hebrew by Yehuda Amichai and Ted Hughes.)

God Full of Mercy

God-Full-of-Mercy, the prayer for the dead.
If God was not full of mercy,
Mercy would have been in the world,
Not just in Him.
I, who plucked flowers in the hills
And looked down into all the valleys,
I, who brought corpses down from the hills,
Can tell you that the world is empty of mercy.

I, who was King of Salt at the seashore,
Who stood without a decision at my window,
Who counted the steps of angels,
Whose heart lifted weights of anguish
In the horrible contests.

I, who use only a small part
Of the words in the dictionary.

I, who must decipher riddles
I don't want to decipher,
Know that if not for the God-full-of-mercy
There would be mercy in the world,
Not just in Him.

-Yehuda Amichai

Hello Farnaz,

O Durga, I appreciate your turning for a moment from the besetting strife, to remark on verse, and offer a rueful smile. I relished t'other Pinsky as well, though I am not au fait with the cult of baseball.

"A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn."

Zesta! What I would give to word like that!

On bigots and mirrors - ol' blunderbuss knows a thing or two, certes. Clearly speaketh from experience. Shoots hisself, and his what-a-hide don't even feel it.

On that Endless Night you've kicked against: yes, the night that thinks itself the light is the darkest. You know it from terrible experience, you say it, and porcelain breaks. I wish more would see, hear, that girl who saw murder, was smitten speechless.

Uqba,

I agree with you about the poverty of the West's grand narrative. I still have difficulty believing that goodness is at a premium, but again and again, events chip away at my resistance.

Farnaz

SusanJacoby:

Here is a post that could easily demonstrate where thinking such as yours falters. It doesn't use the naughty words you mention. Is it, therefore, acceptable speech? By your criteria and you are not alone, sad to say, it is.

Compare this with the original documents gathered by George Mosse, original REAL NAZI documents. Nazis had very finely developed sensibilities. The majority at the Wannsee conference held Ph.D.s
Mengele had a Ph.D. Loved classical music, philosophy, understood both quite well....Finely developed sensibilities. An aversion to "foul language," much like the fellow who posts below.

The men who murdered Ismael, my father's closest friend, never used the words "pig," "nazi," etc.
______________
Polite racism:

"Since you like most Jews owe your allegiance first and foremost to Israel you personally should be grateful. Furthermore you should be grateful for the USA for giving you an asylum instead of bouncing you back into your native Iran. You could have easily emigrated into Israel simply for being a Jew, but instead you chose to come here. You show your gratitude by insulting the people of this country and their values and institutions. You are welcome to leave anytime but you would not, because you feel you are God’s gift to us, and besides you cannot earn near as much there."

___________

SusanJacoby:

Quite honestly, and I mean no disrespect, I, for one, would greatly appreciate it if you did not comment. As you know, there are other panelists who do respond to bloggers. Sometimes, as in your case, one often wishes they wouldn't.

Unfortunately, you are the only atheist (of sorts) whose column appears regularly. About that, nothing can be done. I find it difficult to believe that a Dawkins, or a Harris, or a Dennett, would write of Jewish identity as somehow being more "complex," quite as ahistorically as you did. I also cannot imagine any of them writing in their columns of things appearing on threads that did not appear.

These three men are are not intellectually equal. Their politics differ. But they do have certain things in common, among them the knowledge that their are different kinds of people in the world. The extent to which they know this differs, of course, but their knowledge exceeds yours, I regret to say.

Every great once in awhile, I do see some excellent thought in your essays, excellent writing. I suggest you let your essays speak for themselves. Rather than waste time commenting, why not use the time to reflect on the posts of those whose perspectives may differ from yours.

Susan Jacoby,

Your comments in your own blog are one of the main reasons I read it, and I'm sure others agree. We have come to a sad state indeed if the bigots and mud-slingers have torpedoed those of us who strive to be civil. It would be a victory for the internet terrorists.

Susan Jacoby

Here's my final comment about this week's thread. I'm one of the few "On Faith" panelists who actually read comments, and occasionally interject my own, but the hate-filled posts this week have made me reconsider this use of my time. Know this: I am not ever going to respond to any comments that use words like "pig," "Nazi," or "moron" to characterize people with whom they disagree (including me). I can't program the Washington Post software to eliminate these insults (after all, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to use the word "pig" if you are talking about real porcine creatures, and "Nazi" if you are talking about real Nazis). So those of you who enjoy my occasional responses should know that if you continue to use that kind of crude language and analysis (if it can even be called analysis), you're not going to elicit any response from me. How about looking up the Oxford rules for debate before you post your next comment?

Farnaz,

I understand where your'e coming from. But also remember that for every bad person you meet there is always a good person too but somehow it takes us longer to do the right thing. This dichotomy of being good and evil is part of our human nature. That’s why I am not for the utopian view of humanity progressing toward peace and prosperity if only we use our reason. Be as it may I am a person who sees the good in people too; maybe it is a naïve view but it works for me.

keepwastingmoney:

Isn't there somewhere else you can waste it? Like the Antarctic?

Uqba,

It is difficult, but I will do my best to explain to you. For me, this business on this thread isn't "coffee talk."

When I was a girl, our family friend, Ismael, was taken in front of me, into custody, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and murdered. His blood got on my clothes. I've never mentioned this part since it shouldn't be necessary, but Ismael was Muslim.

It was then, that we, my family, fled in the night like so many others. It was because of this man, my father's closest friend, and because, after that, I spoke normally for the next few weeks, but then stopped speaking at all, for eleven months.

My daughter's teeth were knocked out by American Catholic girl thugs. A close, Palestinian friend drove me to the hospital. I have posted on him before. He said to me, "Remember, Farnaz. Remember who the real enemy is."

A friend of my family, Dror, who is married to a Palistinian woman, btw., was in Sbarro's when it was blown up.

This isn't idle chatter, for me. Did you know that Muslims were in Sbarro's, Uqba?

Racist language, finger pointing is dangerous. Have you studied the Rwandan genocide?

Farnaz

SusanJacoby:

Even Pope John Paul, he who opined that any who didn't believe in the divinity of Christ (that would be all nonChristians) used the words "Hebrew Scripture."

I don't know if he shared your view of Jewish "complexity," but I suspect, am certain, that Pacelli (Pius XII) did, at least to an extent. Unfortunately, your view is consistent with that of the nazis, indeed, with that of all antisemite. If, during the Shoah, you had lived within the Reich, you would have been placed in a camp, or executed. "Half Jew," as Rick described you, was one half too much, for the Germans. (And they were German, as Primo Levi, among many others noted.)

You know, I expected to see antisemitism on this blog, on Quinn's blog, simply because it is a fact of American life. I expected antiIslamic sentiments for much the same reason. But never did I anticipate the filth I've seen here. Never did I anticipate that some otherwise well-meaning people could be so blind to their own prejudices that when others, not necessarily yours truly, pointed them out, they retired to sulk.

I fear that with respect to the failed "multicultural critique," this is a microcosm.
For you, notwithstanding your living in New York City, it simply doesn't exist. For others, who knows....

All things considered, I fear for my nine-year-old, and for every child living in this country. Racism benefits no one. Never has, never did. I thank Whatever that we now have the verbal and physical resources to defend ourselves at least in this country. But I'd be much happier if no defense were necessary.

Calm down cousin. Having a rough day aren’t we. You don’t have to shout at me; I read you loud and clear. Anyway,why don’t you goggle the name uqba; it will even tell you about the town where I grew up.

UKBA,

Civil and descent societies should not be based on ethnicity or religion but on respect of basic human rights, dignity and justice for all where everyone can partake in responsibilities and benefits and everyone is equal under the law. Israel should abandon its apartheid policies and treat its indigenous Palestinian population with respect and dignity.
__________________
Good. Tell that to the Islamics. I, like MANY OTHER OF THE THREE MILLION JEWS FORCED OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST WOULD LIKE TO RETURN.

READ THE REUTERS ARTICLE AS AN ASIDE.

WHEN YOU FINISH YOUR DISCUSSION WITH THE ISLAMICS ON OUR RETURN, LET ME KNOW HOW FAR YOU GET WITH HAMAS, AL QUAEDA, ETC.
_______________________

BTW., I have never met a Tunisian who didn't speak French.

Susan Jacoby,

Thank you. I read your essays with respect if not always with agreement.

Trouble with this thread is that I am afraid I am going to explode and lower myself to the same gutter level as other posters here. Some of these posts have gone far beyond the bounds of decency, and I am surprised that they have not been reported as offensive. I'm not abandoning On Faith, but I need to step back, take a deep breath or ten, and calm down.

SusanJacoby:

Good to see you here. Perhaps, you will explain how being a Jewish atheist is possible, but being a Catholic atheist is not. Why is being Jewish more "complex" (sic)?

I would be sorry, indeed, if you haven't taken the time to rethink what you originally posted. And I suspect I will be sorry. Almost everthing from your post to your comments suggests as much.

The days of white Christian hegemony are over; you must have noticed this. And, as Rick pointed out, you are "half Jew." Do you get it?

NOw, Arminius, well, he cannot believe that there the percentage of Jews in New York is as small as I mentioned (still large, btw.), since the country depends so much on Wall Street!!!!!!

Comments?
_______________________
Am fond of Arminius, but, in some ways, you're very much like him, notwithstanding your being "half Jew." Do you, too, see the OT (sic--your words) as "myth," but the NT as fact?!
______________________

When, oh when, can we see you at lest registering the antiSemitism you see, and not reading on threads that which is not there?

Just wondering....

“Like many others, I think the solution, if a solution were possible, would be for two states.”

In my opinion the two state solution is not tenable anymore. If you don’t agree please take a look at the present map of the area of conflict.

http://www.ccmep.org/delegations/maps/palestine.html

There is no more land left for the Palestinians to have a viable state. Maybe that was an unintended consequence of the Zionist leaders and their zeal of confiscating land from the Palestinians and building settlements for Russian and the eastern European Jews. The Israeli government subsidizes the building of these settlements and gives financial incentives to certain Israeli citizens to move to them. Israel's Law of Return allows Jews anywhere in the world to receive instant Israeli citizenship with all its privileges, simply by setting foot on Israeli soil.

I think the Zionists should abandon their eighteenth century ideologies and join the twenty first century. Civil and descent societies should not be based on ethnicity or religion but on respect of basic human rights, dignity and justice for all where everyone can partake in responsibilities and benefits and everyone is equal under the law. Israel should abandon its apartheid policies and treat its indigenous Palestinian population with respect and dignity.

The African community here in the United States suffered a lot under slavery and then under the Jim Crow Laws. The Caucasians were scared that once the blacks have their rights they will rape white women, pillage and behave like animals. They were of course wrong and their apprehensions were unfounded.

Recently I was listening to an interview with an old wjite lady who did not want to vote for Obama simply because she believes that once a black president is installed black people would come out of the woods to demand to be compensated for all their sufferings since they were forced to come here to this country. Her fears were of course laughable but old prejudices die hard.

White South Africans did not want to let go of their status as masters and exclusive rulers of South Africa. They also feared they would be killed once they gave up their hold on power. But they came around after pressure from all over the world and gave up their notion of superiority and now live in peace with their black neighbors. Their fears and apprehensions were also unfounded.

Somehow when the right thing is done things fall into place. There may be a rough start but usually things fall into place. And the situation in the Middle East is no different. The Israelis might not want to give up their total control of the country but I think it is better in the long for everyone involved.

This reminds me of the West Bank city of Ramallah and its mayor. The city was founded by eight Arab Christian clans in the sixteenth century. Despite the minority status of the Christians in the city, the mayor’s job in Ramallah is still reserved for a Christian. “It is not exactly a law. It’s a custom,” says Janet Michael who is a Greek Orthodox Christian descendent from a founding clan. Stories like that make me optimist about the future of that ravaged area of the world.

Susan Jacoby

Daniel in the Lion's Den and Arminius--

I would be very sorry if you abandon this thread to the haters and semi-literates who cannot express disagreement without crude, childish epithets. I don't always agree with either of you, but you both make your points with civility and sanity. I always look forward to seeing what you have to say, whether positive or negative.

Onofrio,

Funnier even is that I was going to suggest to Ahbab that he get with the racist timmy2, but thought better of it. Didn't want Abhab to sink any deeper into the Primordial Ooze...to which timmy2 will hopefully return. Soon. For good.

Onofrio,

Despite my last post to you(!), I read this, quite by accident. Thought I'd paste and post it to you. Who says racists can't be funny?! Albeit, unintentionally. :))

"Some bigots have no mirrors it seems."

Hello, Onofrio,

Thank you for your comments on the Pinsky poem. I, too, like the trickster metaphor. What did you think of the other one, if I may ask?
-------------------------
I don't like to say this, but Farnaz is a'weary to the bones of Endless Night, hypocrisy, racism, bigotry, infantilism, militant ignorance. It grows so very, very old.
------------------------

Friend, Poet, Scholar, Humanist of the Austral Fundament, I shall look for your posts, and reply to them when I see them. Right now, reading much more than that would be too discouraging. (Perhaps, things will change, temporarily, of course. I have finally understood that racism will not end in my lifetime.)

Farnaz

Farnaz is a raving lunatic. Right off the deep end. Look at her accusing Ahab of raping children because she thinks he is a mouslelim and that's what mouselims do. Some bigots have no mirrors it seems.

Abhab,

Scroll down. Hier ist an article from Reuters, always anti-Israel in its reporting, often antisemitic. Even they were forced to say something of the truth.

How do you sleep at night? Does your oil(y) money, blood money keep you company?

EU aid chief in Gaza condemns Israel and Hamas
Mon Jan 26, 2009 9:55am EST

GAZA, Jan 26 (REUTERS) - The EU's foreign aid chief visited Gaza on Monday and condemned its Islamist rulers Hamas for acting like "a terrorist movement", while criticising Israel's offensive and appealing to the Jewish state to let in more aid.

Louis Michel was among the most senior foreign officials to visit the enclave since Hamas seized control in 2007 and, though Hamas is officially classed a terrorist group by the EU and other Western powers, his comments were especially pointed, days after an Israeli offensive that killed some 1,300 Palestinians.

"Hamas has an enormous responsibility for what happened here in Gaza," said Michel, the humanitarian aid commissioner, as he stood in a U.N. aid compound damaged by Israeli shelling.

He echoed Israeli criticisms that Hamas used civilians as "human shields" by fighting in populated areas and, describing Hamas rocket fire on Israel as a "provocation", he said in English: "Hamas is acting in the way of a terrorist movement."

Hamas said it was "shocked" at his comments.

Michel, a former Belgian foreign minister, said that, in line with EU policy, he did not meet Hamas officials, most of whom have remained out of sight since fighting ended a week ago.

The European Union is the biggest donor to the Palestinians and Michel announced a further 58 million euros in humanitarian aid for 2009, of which 32 million euros would go to Gaza.

Speaking of the Israeli bombardment, he criticised the destruction of factories and other economic infrastructure: "What I saw was abominable. It was unjustified," Michel said.

He called on Israel to open its crossing points with the Gaza Strip "massively", to let in not only food and medicines but materials required for reconstruction.

Israel denies entry to supplies such as cement and steel piping, saying that these can be used by Hamas for military ends. Israel has also defended its military tactics in Gaza, saying they were appropriate for warfare in congested areas. A Hamas official, Mushir al-Masri, criticised Michel.

"It was shocking to see a European official giving cover to massacres and terrorism committed by the Zionist enemy against the Palestinian people," he said.

"Palestinian resistance is as legitimate as the resistance of European countries that fought against foreign occupiers."

Michel, who said both sides should be held accountable for breaches of international law, said: "When you kill innocents, it is not resistance. It is terrorism."

(Reporting by Alastair Macdo)

Ahbab,

Like all racists, you are a coward. Cowardice takes different forms. In your case, you post and then run. You have no self-respect, a lack for which I don't blame you. If I were you, I wouldn't respect myself either.

Funny, I hear so few of those with delicate sensibilities commenting on Susan's Jewish "complexity"--once a Jew always a Jew, regardless of what she believes--in contrast to Catholic...simplicity?

I'm surprised, DTLD, that you weren't offended. With whom, in your silence, and with what are you making historic community?

And, Arminius,
Odd that any "Christian," any atheist, any one, would find himself at ease in such surroundings.
______________________

NO comments from either on Abhab's vicious attack?

Odd. Well, there are Christians and then there are Christians. There are atheists and then there are atheists.

Hamas using children, women, the elderly as human shields.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTu-AUE9ycs

Abhab writes:

I maybe many things but Muslim is not one of them. If you read any of my posts you would know that. I do not know what made you lump me with Ahmadinjad?
Your ingratitude to the people who gave you and your family a refuge is no different than that of the moron in the clip cited below. You and your like have your first allegiance to your pockets and then to the Zionist entity, and that is where you should be.
_______________

Well, mouselim, I never said you were Muslim. In fact, I said you weren't.

What is "my ilk"?

What do you mean by "my pockets"?

You are not Muslim, you say. What are you, then?
Have some courage and pride in yourself. Have some self-respect.

Civility begins where racism, bigotry, self-serving chauvinism and insensitivity end.

Where it exists, it will be seen and remarked upon. It is always better for those within the cultural, religious group from which it issues to comment. Had they done so historically, there would
have been fewer genocides.

As for now, the empire is blogging back. It is not only on this thread where this is happening but throughout this blog. It's high time.

I recall an interview on TV with Sally Quinn, who bemoaned all the antisemitism on this blog, for which she took no responsibility. It was rampant and, at least, to me, reminiscent of Die Sturmer.

It's still here, of course, but there is a heck of a lot less of it. As well, there are many more Jews blogging, more Christians commenting on it.

This is no place for bigots. If there is a God, there will be no place for them at all. A

Farnaz:
I maybe many things but Muslim is not one of them. If you read any of my posts you would know that. I do not know what made you lump me with Ahmadinjad?
Your ingratitude to the people who gave you and your family a refuge is no different than that of the moron in the clip cited below. You and your like have your first allegiance to your pockets and then to the Zionist entity, and that is where you should be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSAvaYY-y7Q

I agree with Arminius. I have not looked in here since Friday. Trying to skim over the comments since then, to catch up is practically impossible. It reminds me of married couples throwing dishes at each other. All the little greivances are so nit-pickinly intertwined, that it is a lot to suppose than anyone not in on the fight would take the trouble to sort through each person's meaning. So....

Maybe we can start over in the next question...

I don't know about this blog, but Farnaz has surely descended into darkness.

This blog has descended into madness, and there is no place here for a Christian, even a liberal one. I'm taking a long sabbatical.

Farnaz wishes to know why she should be grateful for Britain and the USA. Firstly without Britain there would not have been that massive immigration by European Jews into Palestine. Secondly if it were not for the political and financial aid of the USA for Israel for the past 60 years Israel would have ceased to be a long time ago. Since you like most Jews owe your allegiance first and foremost to Israel you personally should be grateful. Furthermore you should be grateful for the USA for giving you an asylum instead of bouncing you back into your native Iran. You could have easily emigrated into Israel simply for being a Jew, but instead you chose to come here. You show your gratitude by insulting the people of this country and their values and institutions. You are welcome to leave anytime but you would not, because you feel you are God’s gift to us, and besides you cannot earn near as much there.

Farnaz2: I meant Catholic bashing in an OCD epidemic.

Farnaz2: Catholic bashers are oh so predictable and boring. It has become an obsessive compulsive disorder of epic proportions.

I was only trying to help.

Farnaz2: Catholic bashers are toxic to themselves. I was only trying to help with detox.

Onofrio,

YOU: "Farnaz, both on this thread, recently, and elsewhere, has posted details showing that Jews did not coin the term anti-Semitism, for they never saw themselves as *Semites* "

Then she should reject it as I do. She should be down on it as a term as well.

Onofrio,

YOU: " And antisemitism is a *special form of* racism that is directed at people of Jewish identity and/or ancestry. No privilege implied.

I didn't say it implied privilege. I said it's redundant, and needlessly divisive.

YOU: "Given that ethnicity means nothing - as you have asserted in several previous posts..."

I said it ought to mean nothing, because it really does mean nothing, but to most people, it still means something. Mostly due to societal brain washing.

YOU: why should we keep perpetuating it by recourse to this term *racism*?

Because racism still exists. And there is no other word for it. Except antisemitism which only applies to one particular ethnic group. So we still need the word racism, but not antisemitism.

Good news is that it will not be needed forever this term "racism" We will all be one race one day. Inevitable. Just a matter of time. It's knowing that this is our destiny that should allow us to train our minds to go there now. And by now I mean over several generations. But it's got to start somewhere. It's be a nice thing to do for our kids given what we've done with global warming.

YOU: The term antisemitism (it wasn't coined by Jews, btw) has come to refer to a distinct cultural, religious, social, and political phenomenon that emerged most prominently within European Christendom. That phenomenon is a form of both racism and hatred, and to understand it better - as is necessary to overcome any inimical force - we use a term to isolate it. To name the evil is part of defeating it.

The racism and hatred towards black people in the US is a distinct cultural, religious, social, and political phenomenon. And to understand it better - as is necessary to overcome any inimical force - we use a term to isolate it.

Oh wait, but we don't use a term to isolate it. It is just called racism. Maybe that's why racism towards blacks still exists in the US. Because we haven't isolated it with a special term so as to identify and understand it better.


YOU: Antisemitism is like a particularly virulent, contagious strain of the virus *racism*.

ME: Antiblackism is like a particularly virulent, contagious strain of the virus *racism*. But we don't call it antiblackism.

YOU: To identify is not necessarily to privilege.

Like I said. I never said it was privilege. I said it was redundant, and needlessly divisive.

Farnaz,

How nail-hitting of Pinsky to see TV as Hermetic. Spiritus Mundi offers up the trickster winking from under his petasos, as we cut live to the red carpet. And cut to interpretatio aegyptiaca - it is fitting, TV-wise, that Hermes = Thoth, for there is something in the everscreen of both ibis and baboon. From the pedantic former: time-grinding tally and annal; from the yammering latter: the routine whooping at commonplace.

Farnaz,

Re BishWilly's 9/11 *Inside Job*,

Looks like the bishop has been visiting the same lunardexter websites as some of those who posted on the previous Shoah thread. All this abusive mass pulpiteering and he's still mitred and croziered...Jesus wept (I hope). I very nearly did.

One thing the BadBish said was entirely accurate. After a litany of conspiracy nutteries he exclaimed "Lies, lies, lies!" What an apt self-exegesis, methought.

And if the Pentagon really was breached by a pre-arranged guided missile, and if the Twin Towers really were felled by pre-conspired controlled explosions, then all I can say to the Bishop is:

Pax, flockfleecer. Didn't Jesus say "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand" (Mark 3:24) and "if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end." (Mark 3:26).

There's a bit of pilfered paganpesher for His Whole-lie-ness...

Farnaz, JDL's favorite agitator, continues to agitate and be agitated.

And one assumes she includes Jewish congregations in her tax-all policy. And maybe we should have the Jewish State of Israel repay the four billion dollars/year we have been providing to them for the last 20 years.

And we are still waiting for her to apologize for her Jewish ancestors and the before mentioned massacres as so vividly described in the OT.

To Television
By Robert Pinsky

Not a "window on the world"
But as we call you,
A box a tube

Terrarium of dreams and wonders.
Coffer of shades, ordained
Cotillion of phosphors
Or liquid crystal

Homey miracle, tub
Of acquiescence, vein of defiance.
Your patron in the pantheon would be Hermes

Raster dance,
Quick one, little thief, escort
Of the dying and comfort of the sick,

In a blue glow my father and little sister sat
Snuggled in one chair watching you
Their wife and mother was sick in the head
I scorned you and them as I scorned so much

Now I like you best in a hotel room,
Maybe minutes
Before I have to face an audience: behind
The doors of the armoire, box
Within a box—Tom & Jerry, or also brilliant
And reassuring, Oprah Winfrey.

Thank you, for I watched, I watched
Sid Caesar speaking French and Japanese not
Through knowledge but imagination,
His quickness, and Thank You, I watched live
Jackie Robinson stealing

Home, the image—O strung shell—enduring
Fleeter than light like these words we
Remember in, they too winged
At the helmet and ankles.

The Night Game

ome of us believe
We would have conceived romantic
Love out of our own passions
With no precedents,
Without songs and poetry--
Or have invented poetry and music
As a comb of cells for the honey.

Shaped by ignorance,
A succession of new worlds,
Congruities improvised by
Immigrants or children.

I once thought most people were Italian,
Jewish or Colored.
To be white and called
Something like Ed Ford
Seemed aristocratic,
A rare distinction.

Possibly I believed only gentiles
And blonds could be left-handed.

Already famous
After one year in the majors,
Whitey Ford was drafted by the Army
To play ball in the flannels
Of the Signal Corps, stationed
In Long Branch, New Jersey.

A night game, the silver potion
Of the lights, his pink skin
Shining like a burn.

Never a player
I liked or hated: a Yankee,
A mere success.

But white the chalked-off lines
In the grass, white and green
The immaculate uniform,
And white the unpigmented
Halo of his hair
When he shifted his cap:

So ordinary and distinct,
So close up, that I felt
As if I could have made him up,
Imagined him as I imagined

The ball, a scintilla
High in the black backdrop
Of the sky. Tight red stitches.
Rawlings. The bleached

Horsehide white: the color
Of nothing. Color of the past
And of the future, of the movie screen
At rest and of blank paper.

"I could have." The mind. The black
Backdrop, the white
Fly picked out by the towering
Lights. A few years later

On a blanket in the grass
By the same river
A girl and I came into
Being together
To the faint muttering
Of unthinkable
Troubadours and radios.

The emerald
Theater, the night.
Another time,
I devised a left-hander
Even more gifted
Than Whitey Ford: A Dodger.
People were amazed by him.
Once, when he was young,
He refused to pitch on Yom Kippur.

-Robert Pinsky

CLICK TO HEAR BISHOP WILLIAMSON EXPLAIN THAT 9/11 WAS AN "INSIDE JOB."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7fjGxfNsKk

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

You're being ridiculous. Call the National Catholic Reporter, and tell them they're "Catholic bashing." Blaming the victim is not only old; it's boring.

I don't know what you're getting out of this, either. YOu appear to be an intelligent person of good will.

Farnaz2: If company in your Catholic bashing is all you want, there is plenty of it here on this very forum. It seems that to be politically correct and be accepted in the corridors of power one has to be a Catholic basher. Some of us however are ordinary mortals who have no such high aspirations, either to be politically correct or to be accepted in the corridors of power.

Timmy,

I appreciate your time constraints. Not a problem.

My *racism = just hatred* spiel was not intended to suggest that all hatreds are actually the same. Quite the opposite. I was hoping its patent absurdity would shed some light on the absurdity of excising a commonly understood term - antisemitism - from all discourse, as you would prefer.

You:
"Racism is a special form of hatred that is based purely on a person's race or ethnicity."

Of course. And antisemitism is a *special form of* racism that is directed at people of Jewish identity and/or ancestry. No privilege implied.

I reluctantly repeat part of my earlier post, not because I think you haven't read it, but just to reiterate how I qualified my *racism = just hatred* spiel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Onofrio: January 31, 2009 10:12 AM

"A simile from diagnostics:
Antisemitism is like a particularly virulent, contagious strain of the virus *racism*.

If you study the history of anti-Jewish racism, you will find that it has distinctive origins and an enduring severity and persistence. Not *worse* in terms of effect on individuals - extreme racism of all sorts produces exiles, trauma, and corpses - nor *special*, as if it somehow trumps all other horrors.

To identify is not necessarily to privilege."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Farnaz, both on this thread, recently, and elsewhere, has posted details showing that Jews did not coin the term anti-Semitism, for they never saw themselves as *Semites* in the first place. It's a construction of the oppressor. Farnaz has also indicated often the significance of the switch to *antisemitism*. The term is not lovely, nor beloved, but it is generally understood.

I am not saying (and nor has Farnaz) that anti-Arab racism, anti-African racism, anti-Native American racism, et alii are somehow less serious than antisemitism. But, to my knowledge, none of the racialising oppressors of those groups have themselves coined a term that clearly identifies and positivises their own prejudice, as in the case of the original *anti-Semitism*.

If you really object to *antisemitism* as affording privilege to Jewish suffering, why not just use *anti-Jewish racism*, and be done with it. And then perhaps you could direct some of your cannonades against those who actually perpetuate it - they are, after all, still practicing vicious racism, are they not?

Farnaz2: Keeping up such anti-Catholicism must require a lot of energy - of the wrong kind. Some people just would like to do something more productive with their energies. I hope you have no objection to that.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

Scroll down, and say hello to your fellow victims.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

I've noticed that you aren't questioning the evidence. You've read Cabeza de Vaca, then, Casas, Cortez, etc., the secondary sources?

Btw., I know that the Catholics are the victims. The Jews persecuted them. They murdered the Catholics during the first crusade, deported them from country to country, settled them in the Pale, authored the Syrian Blood Libel, coordianted the Inquisition against the Catholics,
Dr. Mengele was really Jewish as was Stengel.

The South American Indians and North American Indians, the Carib, the Taino, genocided and raped themselves.

Bishop Williamson is Jewish as is Pope Benedict.

Some people are obsessed about soccer. Some get the same pleasure with Catholic bashing and are just as dedicated to it.

Notsogreatscot January 31, 2009 2:31 PM:

Like most Americans, I am a mutt. My Scottish grandmother gave up her Presbyterianism when she married my German grandfather and became a devout Catholic. There was more Scottish blood on the other side, so genetically "Scot" is as appropriate as anything. However the religious culture in my house was clearly German-Catholic.

Does that mean I should accept Farnaz's assertion - once a Catholic always a Catholic?

_____________________________________

OK. Now I understand. You are a "not so great Scott" and not so great a German-Catholic either.

If the bloggers on this forum are anything to go by, the truth is more like, "once an ex-Catholic, most likely an anti-Catholic." Farnaz hasn't noticed that. Her assertion that Catholicism was spread by rape is the most original of Catholic bashing to surface on this forum.

Part I

NB: BISHOP WILLIAMSON LIKE THE PRIEST DISCUSSED BELOW IS ALSO ANTI-MUSLIM.
---------------------

Published on National Catholic Reporter

(http://ncronline3.org/drupal)
Italian Lefebvrite priest questions Holocaust

By JOHN L. ALLEN JR., NCR Staff
Published:
Jan. 29, 2009

Fr. Floriano AbrahamowiczFr. Floriano AbrahamowiczIn the wake of a global furor triggered by Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to lift the excommunication of four traditionalist Catholic bishops, including one who cast doubt on the Holocaust, another leader in the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X has questioned whether the Nazis used gas chambers for anything other than “disinfection,” and said that people who hold revisionist views on the Holocaust are not anti-Semites.

Fr. Floriano Abrahamowicz, a pastor and spokesperson for the Society of St. Pius X in northeastern Italy, also referred to Jews as “a people of deicide,” referring to the death of Christ, and suggested that the Jewish Holocaust has been “exalted” over what he called “other genocides,” such as the Allied bombing of German cities and the Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip.

On the other hand, Abrahamowicz insisted that the traditionalist movement founded by the late French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre is not “anti-Semitic.” Among other things, Abrahamowicz said, he himself has Jewish roots on his father’s side.

The comments came in a Jan. 29 interview with the Italian newspaper La Tribuna di Treviso. (An NCR translation of the full text of the interview appears below.)

Related story: Pope Benedict's reconciliation efforts continue to fall short
[1]
Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the Society of St. Pius X, has apologized for the remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson, who in a recent interview with Swedish television claimed that the Nazis had not used gas chambers and estimated the number of Jewish deaths during World War II at no more than 300,000. Fellay has also barred Williamson from further comment. However, the Abrahamowicz interview suggests at least some degree of sympathy for Williamson’s views within the traditionalist group.

continues....

Part II? From National Catholic Reporter

Reacting to protest in Italy over the Abrahamowicz interview, the Italian superior of the Society of St. Pius X, Fr. Davide Pagliarani, issued a press release saying that the society confirms Fellay’s earlier statement on Williamson and “reproves every single word inconsistent with it.”

Abrahamowicz is himself a well-known figure in Italy. In 2006, he gave a television interview in which he said that Erich Priebke, a German SS officer convicted of war crimes for a 1944 massacre in Rome, in which 335 Italian civilians were killed in reprisal for the deaths of 33 German soldiers, should not be seen as an “executioner” but rather a soldier who acted “with regret and a heavy heart.” In 2007, Abrahamowicz celebrated a Latin Mass for Italian politician Umberto Bossi, leader of the far-right Northern League party. Bossi and his party have sometimes been accused of xenophobia, particularly towards Muslim immigrants.

In 2008, after Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan had expressed support for Muslims seeking to open new mosques in Italy, Abrahamowicz said on Italian radio that Tettamanzi was an example of “infiltrators” attempting to “subvert the church from within.”

Moderate,

Like many others, I think the solution, if a solution were possible, would be for two states. However, I don't think a solution is possible, and not because there aren't well-intentioned Palestinians and Israelis--there are. However, there are no "Semites." Never were.

Peace, friend Farnaz. Know that I like you. You are a woman on a mission that is by no means easy.

The Middle East is a mess right now, and as an American, I am sorry to say that America did not help much in the last eight years.

Still, I deeply believe that we have to find a way forward that gives all parties a break and a way to live decent and productive lives. In this way we might find a way to peace. In the age of WMDs there is no other way. That basic principle applies in many other places than the Middle East, too.

Scrolling down...

MOderate:

Scroll down. There are no "Semites." Please, it's not your fault, but I'm tired of repeating and reposting and repasting links.

Asking me what?

Moderate;

I'm asking you.

abhab:

What should I, FARNAZ, be grateful for? And, what in my post about the British, Cypress, etc.,is not true?

These are facts. Please, spare me. Have some self-respect.

Farnaz is fuming at the British and American people for imagined grievances when in reality there would have been no Israel without them. I know that the Arabs are the ones who blame the West for the loss of parts of Palestine. They are convinced, and rightly so, that without the continued political and military support of those two countries there was no way on earth that a Zionist entity would be carved from the heart of the Arab world or sustained there. Here is gratitude for you.

Farnaz,

"Can blacks be anti-Black?"

Ask Dave Chappelle.

"I'm assuming you watched the video of "re-communicated" (Williamson's term) Williamson's interview on the Shoah,..."

No. Not at all. I don't much care what the Bishop of Rome does.

It was a question of semantics. Can one Semitic people, by oppressing another Semitic people, be considered anti-Semitic? For example, many Semitic Arabs are virulently anti-Israeli. Does that make them anti-Semitic? Many Semitic Israelis are anti-Palestinian. Does that make them anti-Semitic?

So is the term meaningful or New Speak?

Moderate,

I'm assuming you watched the video of "re-communicated" (Williamson's term) Williamson's interview on the Shoah, heard hims question whether antismitism was a bad thing, etc. What did you think of it? What did you think of his knowing the consequences of what he was saying with respect, for instance, of his making that statement in Germany? Btw, under Germany and Austrian law, he could still be arrested if he set foot on their soil. It is more likely that he'd be arrested in Germany than in Austria, notwithstanding Germany's ongoing "race" issues regarding Jews, Turks, Pakistanis, etc.

Awaiting your opining.

themoderate Author Profile Page:

Farnaz,

Can Jews be anti-Semites?
_______________

Can blacks be anti-Black?

Farnaz,

Can Jews be anti-Semites?

Hi Timmy,

"The only justice can be seeing to it that these kind of atrocities never happen again. That is the very best we can do to honor the victims."

Very good point. I doubt that we are up to it, though. It seems that such things are going on as we write, and every ethnic group seems to have been both victim and perpetrator over the course of history. But at least we can try.

"And not dividing ourselves into ethnic and religious groups is the best way to avoid such a thing."

Well, my friend, I think the division is already well and truly done. I think we have to work on respecting each other as human beings and recognize that life is sacred.

Sadly, if you participate on a blog of this kind you will take some shots from people. Don't let it get you down, though. Try a bit of humor now and again. See if people get it. :^))

Onofrio,

YOU: You agree then? Just stumped? Or are your questions merely rhetorical?

lol. I was getting to it. I have another life you know. Very little time right now but here's half of it answered, I'll get to the rest late tonight.

And stumped? lol. You can't stump someone who is asking for opinions. You can just give your opinion which is all they asked for.

YOU: One could just as well apply this reasoning to the term *racism* itself.

Sure if one wanted to change the topic completely to distract from the actual point. But it wouldn't be a proper analogy. The term "racism" applies to all human beings. Antisemitism means exactly the same thing, but only towards one particular ethnicity. There is no such word for racism towards any other ethnicity.

YOU: Just watch...rhetoric Timmy's:
"Is there a need for the term *racism*?
Is *racism* a special form of *hatred* or is it equal to all other forms of *hatred*?"

No, it is a special form of hatred. All other forms of hatred towards other humans is based on personality judgments. Real actual personal traits. Racism is a special form of hatred that is based purely on a person's race or ethnicity. This is a much worse form of hatred than hatred based on judging a person's personality because one is personal judgement based on evidence, and the other is a non personal judgement based on falsity.

Susan Jacoby writes:
"If you look in the index of almost any book, you will find "anti-Semitism." Not anti-semitism, or antisemitism. For those who entertain all sorts of political or psychological conspiracies about these stylistic conventions, talk to the dead men who started them. If I wasted my energy arguing with every editor about style rules, I'd never get anything written. As for decrying conventional usage that offends your particular ideology (whether linguistic or political), I can only say that changing any style rule offends someone else's ideology. Of course, common usage in speech, as well as rules for writing, do change over time if enough people reach a consensus that the old usage is wrong. Neither anti-Semitism nor God, however, fall into that category at the moment. And recent conventions can be just as arbitrary as old ones. For example, it was common 50 years ago for magazines to describe grown women with the denigrating "girls." Now it is considered insulting to call teenagers "girls" instead of women. In fact, "girl" or "boy" is a much more accurate social and psychological characterization of most 15-year-olds than "woman" or "man," because the latter imply a certain state of emotional maturity rather a purely biological description of male and female."
______________

At the risk of sounding irate, I will say that there are none so blind....

Let us get to a valid and sound analogy to be distinguished from what you may read above. Antisemitism or antiJewish racism or racism is to black what anti-Semitism almost is to Negro, except that anti-Semitism is much, much worse.

Today, we are in the year of our Whatever, 2009.

The German Wilhelm Marr coined the term anti-Semite, following the reification of semite by renan. anti-Semitism, was for Marr, a good thing, much as it is for Bishop Williamson, as you know if you watched the video. Numerous self-declared Catholics, the Jesuits of nineteenth century France, famous writers, et al, proudly proclaimed themselves anti-Semites. In recent years, for at least twenty, the proper spelling is antisemitism, since there are not now, nor have their ever been an entity "Semite" anywhere but in the Christian imaginary.

For the nazis, under the nuremberg laws, as they evolved, anyone with one grandparent who was "born" to Jewish parents, whether or not the grandparent was baptized, was considered a Jew. Many of these "Jews" were practicing Lutherans and/or Catholics who literally knew nothing about Judaism.

But, the nazis are, for the most part, not the racializing standardizers. There was always a material base to christian antiJewish bigotry; call it proto-racism if you wish. So, for Rick, for eg., Jacoby is "half Jew." Hitler had a two thousand year history with which to work. He used John Crysostum, the "NT" (sic), Martin Luther, "The Jews and Their Lies," etc.

German Jews weren't anywhere near fully emancipated until the Treaty of Versailles. Even then, there were restrictions placed on their mobility in Germany. The sickness of Catholic antiJewish racism in Poland, Ukraine, is in the category of stranger than fiction. A temporary hold was on overt pogromming in Russia.

Timmy,

Re your question:

Timmy,

You:
"I keep asking this question but no one wants to answer it.

Is there a need for the word antisemitism?
Is antisemitism a special form of racism or is it equal to all other forms of racism? Aren't they all equally bad?"

I have answered this question below, January 31, 2009 10:12 AM.

Scroll down.

You agree then? Just stumped? Or are your questions merely rhetorical?

My questions to you, in this case, are not.

Again, applying your own semantic revisionism:

Is there a need for the term *racism*?
Is *racism* a special form of *hatred* or is it equal to all other forms of *hatred*? Aren't they all equally bad?

Susan Jacoby

To NotSoGreat Scot:

Actually, "persecution against Judaism" wouldn't be right, because Judaism IS a religion--and anti-Semitism, as we well know, is much broader. If hostility to Judaism, the religion, had animated Hitler, why, every Jew who converted to Christianity would have been left out of his extermination plan. In any case, I see you took my point about arbitrary style rules. In the world of print (now more than ever), editors never let you get away with using three words where one will suffice (even a hyphenated one). And for the most part, they're right. Whatever the shortcomings of anti-Semitism, "persecution against Judaism" is much less accurate.

Susan - thanks for the clarification. At risk of drawing further ire from Farnaz, Merriam-Webster offers the following definition of anti-Semitism:

": hostility toward or discrimination against Jews as a religious, ethnic, or racial group"

Hence the term casts a wider net than, for example "anti-Catholic" which most readers would interpret in purely religious terms.

It might be more precise to use the phrases (as perhaps Farnaz suggested), "persecution against Judaism" and "anti-Jewish racism", to distinguish between the religious and ethnic/racial aspects of anti-Semitism.

Susan Jacoby

What many bloggers don't realize (since a great many people who blog do not write professionally for magazines and newspapers and are not authors of books) is that professional writers are subject to style rules set by publishers. I capitalize God, for example, not because I believe that God is the particular name of a historical being but because the style rules of every English-language publisher mandate capitalization. Anti-Semitism (capital S) is the standard form, again mandated by nearly all English-language publishers, for the specifically Christian, European historical hatred, persecution of, and discrimination against Jews. If you look in the index of almost any book, you will find "anti-Semitism." Not anti-semitism, or antisemitism. For those who entertain all sorts of political or psychological conspiracies about these stylistic conventions, talk to the dead men who started them. If I wasted my energy arguing with every editor about style rules, I'd never get anything written. As for decrying conventional usage that offends your particular ideology (whether linguistic or political), I can only say that changing any style rule offends someone else's ideology. Of course, common usage in speech, as well as rules for writing, do change over time if enough people reach a consensus that the old usage is wrong. Neither anti-Semitism nor God, however, fall into that category at the moment. And recent conventions can be just as arbitrary as old ones. For example, it was common 50 years ago for magazines to describe grown women with the denigrating "girls." Now it is considered insulting to call teenagers "girls" instead of women. In fact, "girl" or "boy" is a much more accurate social and psychological characterization of most 15-year-olds than "woman" or "man," because the latter imply a certain state of emotional maturity rather a purely biological description of male and female.

Not so Great Scott,

Don't worry about being called a "bigot" by Farnaz.
It's her "little boy who cries wolf" syndrome.
She calls so many people bigots it doesn't mean anything anymore.

Dan in the Den,

YOU: "How do we control the words people use? Words appear to fill a need; they persist out of their own utility. "Anti-semetic" and "anti-Jewish" are actually compound words that people have spontaneously created from English's word-building capacity. Neither you, nor anybody will ever be able to control what people do with that."

Come on Dan, don't be silly, we control words by committee. Try using the N word and see how that goes over? There's no law against it but give it a whirl and see how that goes for you. We as a society decide what is and is not acceptable to say.

It should make people shutter when the words "my people" or "our people" are uttered. These are racist terms. We just don't realize it yet.

Also, ask yourself why there is no word for anti-black? Not even in the US, where blacks have it much worse off than Jews and are far and away the special case of the most extreme and exceptional racism. But the word for anti-Black is "racist".

YOU: And also, you said that we should make sure that these things never happen again, referring, I suppose to the Holocaust. But how do we do that?

By no longer dividing into "our people" and "their people"
I'm there already, everyone else needs to catch up. I do not identify with or consider aryans, whites, wasps, or even Canadians, to be "my people". All of the worlds people are "my people". The victims of the holocaust are "my people". So are the victims of Darfur. We are all members of the human race. All other groupings are false divisions and hang-ups from our tribal past.

YOU: There is no moral authority that rules over the earth, only a mean-spiried haranging "home owners association" of the United Nations.

Yeah, I'm not much for this kind of misanthropy. The moral authority is humanity. We'll work it out. I have hope. No time for you negative nellies.

Timmy2 wrote: "Actually the root cause is the false groups we separate into in the first place."

Possibly - but mother nature/evolution did a lot of the work for us. Either way, I agree that the solution is to focus on the ways we are the same, and all in the same small planetary lifeboat together.

Farnaz wrote: "YOU OWN YOUR OWN BIGOTRY."

What bigotry - show me a specific example of a bigoted statement I have posted.

Notsogreatscott,

YOU WROTE: "The capacity of humans to find a reason to place themselves above some other group of humans, and use that as an excuse to enslave and/or kill them, is the real root of the problem"

Actually the root cause is the false groups we separate into in the first place. The capacity to find reason to place one group above another can not manifest if there are no groups separated by false divisions like religion, ethnicity, race, countries, etc.

We are all people. The human race. The sooner we start acting like it the better.

Looks like Farnaz, JDL's favorite agitator, was quite agitated last night, this morning and continues to be so into this afternoon.

And one assumes she includes Jewish congregations in her tax-all policy. And maybe we should have the Jewish State of Israel repay the four billion dollars/year we have been providing to them for the last 20 years.

And we are still waiting for her to apologize for her Jewish ancestors and the before mentioned massacres as so vividly described in the OT.

Notsogreatscot:

January 31, 2009 3:07 PM post is meant for you. Good luck.

"Don't try to pin this on me."

Not only did I not "pin this" on you, but I tried to help you unpin what you had pinned on yourself. But you refused. YOU OWN YOUR OWN BIGOTRY. I hope that some day you will have the moral courage to stop blaming the victims and understand why they may wonder at Jacoby's notion of "Jewish complexity." Whether YOU WILL BE ABLE TO ACQUIRE THIS ABILITY IS UP TO YOU. Either way, YOU own it.

ALLES:

Click here to see the video of Bishop Williamson's take on the Holocaust. ALSO, NOTE: He asks whether anitsemitism is "a bad thing."

http://www.kathtube.com/player.php?id=7989

Notsogreatscot?

"Does that mean I should accept Farnaz's assertion - once a Catholic always a Catholic?"
__________________

So, it is true then that you have your own agenda and wish not to "understand." I'm sorry for you, but I did try. Perhaps, some day you will develop the moral courage not to blame the victims, and understand why they may wonder about Jewish "complexity."

Farnaz wrote: "So, it is true then that you have your own agenda and wish not to "understand." I'm sorry for you, but I did try. Perhaps, some day you will develop the moral courage not to blame the victims, and understand why they may wonder about Jewish "complexity."

Farnaz - YOU own all of this - there is nothing in my posts to suggest that I blame the victims. Don't try to pin this on me.

ALLES:

Click here to see the video of Bishop Williamson's take on the Holocaust. ALSO, NOTE: He asks whether anitsemitism is "a bad thing."

http://www.kathtube.com/player.php?id=7989

Notsogreatscot?

"Does that mean I should accept Farnaz's assertion - once a Catholic always a Catholic?"
__________________

So, it is true then that you have your own agenda and wish not to "understand." I'm sorry for you, but I did try. Perhaps, some day you will develop the moral courage not to blame the victims, and understand why they may wonder about Jewish "complexity."

Politically... wrote: "Shouldn't you be writing NotSoGreatGerman, since as you mentioned you are German in origin?"

Like most Americans, I am a mutt. My Scottish grandmother gave up her Presbyterianism when she married my German grandfather and became a devout Catholic. There was more Scottish blood on the other side, so genetically "Scot" is as appropriate as anything. However the religious culture in my house was clearly German-Catholic.

Does that mean I should accept Farnaz's assertion - once a Catholic always a Catholic?

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

I think we can all learn from one another! However, the link will connect you to a short reading that concerns antiJewish racism, not Judaism. If you wish to corroborate it using other sources, you might want to try googling the "Damascus Affair." Other possible key words will suggest themselves if you read the brief essay. The Damascus Affair, concerning the Syrian Catholic clergy has been studied for a century and a half so there are many nonsectarian sources, including books, scholarly essays, etc.

NotSoGreatScot:

Shouldn't you be writing NotSoGreatGerman, since as you mentioned you are German in origin? Or did you mean "not so great Scotch?"

Farnaz2: Thanks for the info. I will read what I can. I do think one can learn much from Judaism.

Notsogreat:

Here is the last relevant post. PoliticallyIncorrect's discourse changes after this, but at this point, I'm afraid you'll have to do your own scrolling. If you still don't "understand," I'll assume you have your own agenda and leave it at that.
_________________________________

Part V: PoliticallyIncorrect's comment on the matter of Jewish "complexity"

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1 Author Profile Page:

The term Catholic atheist and Protestant atheist is silly although one says Muslim atheist and Jewish atheist without batting an eyelid.

What is meant (except in the case of Jewishness which is a genetic affiliation rather than merely religious one) is that one is shaped by the values of the said religion either due to having been raised in it or living in the culture shaped by it. One could have learned the Ten Commandments and Sermon on the Mount in religion class or in Sunday school or Catechism. One may later in life give up Christianity and become an atheist. But the ethics imparted through the religious teachings remain and shape the conscience. Conscience IS shaped by what one learns is right and wrong.

January 31, 2009 11:37 AM |

Notsogreat:

Part IV: My reply to Jacoby's second "reply"
___________________
SusanJacoby:

"Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron."

Your "reply" avoids the question of the exceptional status you have assigned to Jews. See above.

January 31, 2009 10:29 AM

continues....

Notsogreat:

Part III: Jacoby's second "reply"

Susan Jacoby

Of course being an atheist doesn't rid you of your past cultural, religious, familial, or regional influences. But it does mean that you are no longer a member of the religious community in which you were raised, and no longer an adherent to a faith in which you no longer believe. This insistence on the notion of "Catholic atheists" or "Protestant atheists" or any other form of religious atheism is, in fact, an attempt to deny the validity of atheism itself. It's been my experience that atheists from all over the world have a great deal in common intellectually, regardless of whether they were raised on sushi in Japan or cheeseburgers in the United States.

It makes about as much sense to say that an atheist is a member of a religion as it does to say that because someone was raised in a small town, he or she is still a resident of a small town in spite of having spent an adult lifetime in New York or London. Of course, anyone raised in one environment absorbs the influence of that environment. But what we do with that past, what we absorb and what we reject, is what defines our lives. Unless, that is, you're a believer in predestination--and there are many of them, not only in the old-fashioned Calvinist form but in new forms such as Freudianism. But that's another discussion.

January 31, 2009 10:26 AM |

continues...

Notsogreat:

Part II: My reply to and question for Jacoby

Farnaz2:

Susan Jacoby:

"Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron.

The family into which one is born is not a choice. The color of one's skin is not a choice. Religion, however, is a choice--except for those who reflexively believe everything they were taught as small children."
___________________________
Kindly edify me on the ways in which "being a Jew is a more complex matter." How is it that a man or woman who says s/he's an atheist will always be asked what his/her parents were, that if s/he says "Jewish," that atheist who may not identify as "Jewish," who says s/he's unaffiliated is to the inquirer "Jewish"? This is particularly the case if that inquirer is Christian. I wonder if you have any clue as to whom, in your comment, you are making historical community with.

To some on this thread, btw., you, by the way are "half-Jew" (sic). And no way, are you anything but Catholic to anyone who's been out of the house. Your move; your petard.

January 31, 2009 9:57 AM | Report Offensive Comments

continues...

NotSoGreat:

I asked you if you could raise a question with specific reference to the posts. You haven't. I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and, although I don't have time to waste with pasting and repetition, I'll paste and repeat.

Here are the posts in question. If you can raise a question with reference to them or if you can see my point fine. If not, I'll just assume you have your own agenda and leave it at that.

Jacoby's post:
"Farnazz's notion that one remains a Catholic if one was "born" a Catholic is one of the more peculiar comments to appear on this blog. It's pretty much like saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim because his father (who apparently was an atheist) was "born" a Muslim. One is not "born" a Catholic; one is baptized a Catholic. Since I am an atheist, I can hardly remain a Catholic because a priest once sprinkled so-called holy water on me. Catholicism (like most of the world's religions) is neither an ethnicity nor
a race(assuming that one accepts the scientifically dubious concept of race).

Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron.

The family into which one is born is not a choice. The color of one's skin is not a choice. Religion, however, is a choice--except for those who reflexively believe everything they were taught as small children."

continues...

PoliticallyIncorrect:

I can only tell you that we share in common persecution that was variously created, spread, and/or fomented by the Christians, whether in Europe, Asia, Ethiopia, or Uganda. The ultimate source has always been the Christians, always.
There are differences in observance as syncretism is a fact for us just as it is for Christians.

I could start anywhere, but here is as good a place as any. This can be checked, double checked, triple checked.

http://www.myjewishlearning.com/history_community/Modern/ModernIntergroup/ModernAntisemitism/DamascusBloodLibel.htm
_____________________________

Farnaz wrote: "If you do understand, please let me know. I'd appreciate knowing that very much."

If I thought you had made a clear point, I wouldn't have asked. It seems to me that you are mostly trying to corner Susan into admitting that she is culturally Catholic even though she is now an atheist.

I said earlier that making a choice to become atheist doesn't automatically rid a person of all of the religious cultural baggage in their personal history. However - I do think that through self examination people can learn to discard that baggage. However you seem to be saying once a Catholic, always a Catholic.

Between the lines - you also seem to be trying to make sure that the Catholic church (as an institution) and European Christians shoulder their share of the blame for the current state of the middle east, and the Shoah. Fair enough.

In the interest of self disclosure - I too am culturally Catholic, and German Catholic at that, but have left the church for a more rational (IMO) set of practices. However - since I was born in the US in 1958, I do draw the line at accepting any personal responsibility for the Shoah.

Farnaz2: The person from ME did not tell me the whole history of Israel, just that Middle Eastern Jews and Arab Muslims had lived in peace for centuries before European Jews arrived. Nothing else. I happen to know a Jew from Haifa of Polish origin, who lost his grandparents in WW II. I have never asked him if Middle Eastern Jews lived in peace before his parents arrived from Poland in the aftermath of WW II. All I know from him is that people of different ethnic origins worship in different synagogues in Israel, the centuries of having lived in different cultures makes the Jews so very different from each other.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1 Author Profile Page:

Farnaz2: O come on now! The AmeriChristian and Euro/BritishChristian did no more than give the Jews a homeland they dreamed of. What became of the Palestinian Muslims is what makes the valley of tears now, isn't it? Two state solution. Two state solution. Two state solution. As quickly as possible. Before any more life is lost on either side.
__________________
What your ME friend told you is correct. The AmeriChristians did nothing, gave the returning Jews nothing. The conflict was fomented by the AngloChristians, who saw some inroads being made by the Grand Mufti. He wished to make the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount, the third holiest site in Islam, and at the time it was all but ignored. He had made some progress, in the decades when more Jews started arriving.

Balfour was a fundamentalist Christian, who believed that all Jews must be gathered at Jerusalem in order for the Christians' Apocalypse to occur. After Dreyfus, and subsequent events in Russia, elsewhere in Europe, European Jews would have aligned themselves with the devil, itself, if necessary. They made a huge mistake. There were prominent Muslims, including "royalty," who had no problem with Jews coming back.

Gradually, Hitler, the Mufti, et al, progressed apace with Egypt, etc., the Emerates, the "House of Saud." Hitler, of course, wanted all Jews everywhere dead. He also, like the AngloChristians had his eye on oil. Egypt had/has no oil as far as we know, but for many reasons has prestige in the region.

Balfour notwithstanding, the AngloChristians not only reneged on the deal (they wanted the Saudi oil, the Emirate oil, the acceptance of the Egyptians), but began a campaign of terror. They hanged Jews in the streets, flogged them. They fired on ships carrying Holocaust survivors killing them. They imprisoned thousands and thousands in Cypress.

Things got so bad that the cesspool UN considered Cypress a scandal (it was) and demanded action by the Brits. The Jews declared themselves a nation.
The AngloChristians turned and ran. Russia was one the second nation, I believe, but check this, to acknowledge the state of Israel.

IN the meantime, the US had its own eye on the oil. What to do. There was no way to get in, at the time, with some of the newly radicalized elements in Syria and elsewhere. The French Catholics had it made in Lebanon and elsewhere. The AmeriChristians needed a plan. How to gather intelligence, make friends, and influence dictators, whose stability the AmeriChristians could not count on.

Use Israeli intelligence capabilities. Pay off "Muslim" dictators, etc. Big mistake for Jews. Very, very big.

Farnaz2: O come on now! The AmeriChristian and Euro/BritishChristian did no more than give the Jews a homeland they dreamed of. What became of the Palestinian Muslims is what makes the valley of tears now, isn't it? Two state solution. Two state solution. Two state solution. As quickly as possible. Before any more life is lost on either side.

Notsogreat:

"So Farnaz... What is your point? ... or are you just ranting?"

Scroll down. Repeating oneself is tiring. Please read or reread Jacoby's original "reply" to me, my comment, her "second reply," PoliticallyIncorrect's comment, my reply, etc. If you still don't understand, please frame your question with reference to the posts, stating what, precisely, is unclear, and I shall do my best to elaborate.

If you do understand, please let me know. I'd appreciate knowing that very much.

PoliticallyIncorrect:

Look, for instance, at the history of this country, South America, the Carribbean. Do you know what "mestizo" means? The huge majority of South Americns are Mestizo. How did they get that way?

Look at the Carribbean, Casas, Cabeza de Vaca, etc., etc. You can't get away from this information.

Farnaz wrote: "Catholics, whether atheists or not, are what they are Catholics."

There are people who are culturally Catholic, and there are people who practice Catholicism as a religion, and some who are both. There are people who are culturally Jewish, and some who practice Judaism as a religion. There are even some people who are culturally Jewish who have converted to Catholicism, and vice versa. There are people of many cultures who now choose to be atheist. I don't think anyone here disagrees.

So Farnaz... What is your point? ... or are you just ranting?

Farnaz2: And I thought you were a solid intellectual ! Catholics related all over the world through rape? Now that is some kind of relationship. And some kind of knowledge you have about Catholicism. So what is your conditioning, btw? I mean what shaped your conscience and values? To get such a distorted view of Catholicism. OK, Catholic bashing is necessary to prove one's credentials of respectability. But still it is good to know where each one gets this obsessive compulsion for Catholic bashing.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1 Author Profile Page:

Farnaz2: I heard this from someone in ME. I have no idea if it is true. Middle Eastern Jews lived with Arab Muslims in peace in Israel before European Jews arrived. They interpret the conflict not as Jewish-Muslim but as European-Arabic.
_____________________________
My understanding is that under the AngloChristians (the English) who occupied the area following World War I, things deteriorated. European Jews had been drifting back into the area for centuries, but began returning en masse in the nineteenth century. For the most part, the Turkish occupiers let them alone.

It was under the AngloChristians (racist all the way around that hell started to break loose.)

IMHO, if some way could have been found to get around the nazi (literally speaking) Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and to unite with Muslims in the region, many of whom did not object to the return of the Jews, many more people would be alive. The terrible error, which must still be rectified, was trusting the EuroChristians and AmeriChristians. There are many good people among them, but ideologically, they are a mess. Sorry.

politicallyincorrectworldcitizen1:

Farnaz2: I don't have to market myself as an intellectual and be well connected to exercise free speech. This is the US, remember?
__________________________

I didn't say you had to market yourself in this way. My point was/is that your original comment was absurd, worse, actually, but let's not go there, and that Jacoby avoided the intellectual disgrace that it explicitly represents. However, she made the point implicitly, which is obvious. It is she, not you, who markets herself as a "public intellectual," which she is free to do, just as others are free to expose her as, in some ways, a sham.

As for the matter at hand, the Catholics are far more related genetically than are Jews, through massive rape and intermarriage throughout the world. As well, they are ideologically interrelated as is evident from your earlier post and Jacoby's. This is probably "genetic."

As for "Scripture," the "Scriptures" are, minimally, the Tanakh and Talmud. Ruth was the first convert to Judaism.

Farnaz2: I heard this from someone in ME. I have no idea if it is true. Middle Eastern Jews lived with Arab Muslims in peace in Israel before European Jews arrived. They interpret the conflict not as Jewish-Muslim but as European-Arabic.

Farnaz2: I don't have to market myself as an intellectual and be well connected to exercise free speech. This is the US, remember?

Farnaz2:

You should read your Scripture, yes the Old Testament, to know why Judaism is supposed to be genetic. Intermarriage with non-Jews was not allowed. At least the OT says so. But obviously most Jews did intermarry after they spread out around the globe, hence we have not just the original Middle Eastern Jews (not many of them around anyway) , but Jews from all over the world, from different races.

Polticallycorrectworldcitizen1:

"What is meant (except in the case of Jewishness which is a genetic affiliation rather than merely religious one)"

Are you insane? You just hoist yourself on Jacoby's petard. Why do you think the catholic atheist didn't respond? Too late, of course, she already made your ridiculous point. What is the "genetic" connection between this brown Mizrahi Jew, and a white Jew from, say England. Or a black Jew from Ethiopia or Uganda?

Catholics, whether atheists or not, are what they are Catholics. Ignorance like yours and Jacoby's is probably genetic.

The difference is that she markets herself as a public intellectual and is well connected enough to get away with it, or at least she has been.

The term Catholic atheist and Protestant atheist is silly although one says Muslim atheist and Jewish atheist without batting an eyelid.

What is meant (except in the case of Jewishness which is a genetic affiliation rather than merely religious one) is that one is shaped by the values of the said religion either due to having been raised in it or living in the culture shaped by it. One could have learned the Ten Commandments and Sermon on the Mount in religion class or in Sunday school or Catechism. One may later in life give up Christianity and become an atheist. But the ethics imparted through the religious teachings remain and shape the conscience. Conscience IS shaped by what one learns is right and wrong.

The teetering war-gleaned litanies
have knelled their proofs

that those untetragrammatised
thwarted no blood-blame.

Ah, for sweetsakes, are we choosing
deafness now?

Susan_Jacoby:

"It's been my experience that atheists from all over the world have a great deal in common intellectually, regardless of whether they were raised on sushi in Japan or cheeseburgers in the United States."

What about the nearly one billion atheists in China and quite a few million in the former Soviet Union?

What is being compared in not atheism, but educational levels. There are quite a few million atheists in China or Russia who would not have the sort of things one expects highly educated Americans and Japanese to have in common.

SusanJacoby:

"Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron."

Your "reply" avoids the question of the exceptional status you have assigned to Jews. See above.

Susan Jacoby

Of course being an atheist doesn't rid you of your past cultural, religious, familial, or regional influences. But it does mean that you are no longer a member of the religious community in which you were raised, and no longer an adherent to a faith in which you no longer believe. This insistence on the notion of "Catholic atheists" or "Protestant atheists" or any other form of religious atheism is, in fact, an attempt to deny the validity of atheism itself. It's been my experience that atheists from all over the world have a great deal in common intellectually, regardless of whether they were raised on sushi in Japan or cheeseburgers in the United States.

It makes about as much sense to say that an atheist is a member of a religion as it does to say that because someone was raised in a small town, he or she is still a resident of a small town in spite of having spent an adult lifetime in New York or London. Of course, anyone raised in one environment absorbs the influence of that environment. But what we do with that past, what we absorb and what we reject, is what defines our lives. Unless, that is, you're a believer in predestination--and there are many of them, not only in the old-fashioned Calvinist form but in new forms such as Freudianism. But that's another discussion.

Timmy,

Re your question:

"I keep asking this question but no one wants to answer it.

Is there a need for the word antisemitism?
Is antisemitism a special form of racism or is it equal to all other forms of racism? Aren't they all equally bad?"

One could just as well apply this reasoning to the term *racism* itself.

Just watch...rhetoric Timmy's:

Is there a need for the term *racism*?
Is *racism* a special form of *hatred* or is it equal to all other forms of *hatred*? Aren't they all equally bad?

So, Timmy, is there a *need* for the term *racism*?

Given that ethnicity means nothing - as you have asserted in several previous posts - and feeds discord between humans, why should we keep perpetuating it by recourse to this term *racism*? Doesn't identifying certain behaviour or persons as *racist* just reinforce the (to you) illusory differences between human groups that are the cause of *hatred*, and so actually feed that *hatred*? Are those who deploy the term *racism* actually implicating themselves in *hatred*?

The term antisemitism (it wasn't coined by Jews, btw) has come to refer to a distinct cultural, religious, social, and political phenomenon that emerged most prominently within European Christendom. That phenomenon is a form of both racism and hatred, and to understand it better - as is necessary to overcome any inimical force - we use a term to isolate it. To name the evil is part of defeating it.

A simile from diagnostics:
Antisemitism is like a particularly virulent, contagious strain of the virus *racism*.

If you study the history of anti-Jewish racism, you will find that it has distinctive origins and an enduring severity and persistence. Not *worse* in terms of effect on individuals - extreme racism of all sorts produces exiles, trauma, and corpses - nor *special*, as if it somehow trumps all other horrors.

To identify is not necessarily to privilege.

Click here to see the video of Williamson's take on the Holocaust.

http://www.kathtube.com/player.php?id=7989

Susan said:
"But the people on both sides who have always blocked, and will undoubtedly continue to block, any real peace in the Middle East are fanatical and vicious."

Just how so may be seen in the clip cited below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSAvaYY-y7Q

Susan Jacoby:

"Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron.

The family into which one is born is not a choice. The color of one's skin is not a choice. Religion, however, is a choice--except for those who reflexively believe everything they were taught as small children."
___________________________
Kindly edify me on the ways in which "being a Jew is a more complex matter." How is it that a man or woman who says s/he's an atheist will always be asked what his/her parents were, that if s/he says "Jewish," that atheist who may not identify as "Jewish," who says s/he's unaffiliated is to the inquirer "Jewish"? This is particularly the case if that inquirer is Christian. I wonder if you have any clue as to whom, in your comment, you are making historical community with.

To some on this thread, btw., you, by the way are "half-Jew" (sic). And no way, are you anything but Catholic to anyone who's been out of the house. Your move; your petard.

Politicallyincorrect... wrote: "Atheists don't grow in a vacuum"

Agreed - making a rational choice to reject the notion of God doesn't automatically rid a person of all of the religious cultural baggage in their personal history.

Clearthinking1 wrote: "Think about it. Whenever there is conflict and violence due to religion, Muslims and Christians are always one of the parties. This is because of the idea of superiority that is inherent in these two religions."

This is simply a reflection of the dominance of these two religions on the political landscape over the last ~15 centuries. Clearly there were religiously motivated atrocities carried out by the Aryans, Babylonians and Romans that pre-dated the founding of either Christianity or Islam.

The capacity of humans to find a reason to place themselves above some other group of humans, and use that as an excuse to enslave and/or kill them, is the real root of the problem. Attributing the problem to any particular ethnicity or religion simply makes the problem more persistent.

Atheists don't grow in a vacuum. They are in the minority except in communist countries. They are raised in cultures that have a certain religious tradition which shaped the rules of the society at one time. An atheist from China or Japan is different to an atheist from the US or Europe.

Susan Jacoby

"The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality," to which one blogger refers, with all of its silly talk about "Christian atheists" et al., is another one of the many pitiful attempts by nervous atheists to prove to religious believers that atheists, too, are moral beings connected to various traditions. It's all of a piece with the "I'm spiritual, but not religious" line--an utterly meaningless sentence. Every human being has a spiritual dimension, if by spiritual we mean the part of ourselves that thinks about and responds to more than the immediate material circumstances of our lives. The only unusual thing aobut "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality" is that it was written by a Frenchman. Its platitudes belong more to the "I'm OK, You're OK" genre of the American 1970s.

Timmy

How do we control the words people use? Words appear to fill a need; they persist out of their own utility. "Anti-semetic" and "anti-Jewish" are actually compound words that people have spontaneously created from English's word-building capacity. Neither you, nor anybody will ever be able to control what people do with that.

And also, you said that we should make sure that these things never happen again, referring, I suppose to the Holocaust. But how do we do that?

There is no moral authority that rules over the earth, only a mean-spiried haranging "home owners association" of the United Nations.

Again:

The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other:

Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries
1 55 million Second World War 20C
2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine)20C
3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13 15 million First World War 20C
14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
16 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
17 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
18 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C
19 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
20 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C

For the complete listing to include supporting references and a listing of the atrocities committed by the Jews against Jews and non-Jews, see http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

Bottom line: All of our ancestors to include those of Farnaz's had blood on their hands directly or indirectly.

The moderate,

YOU SAID: "This has been going on for a long time, really, and yes, the Jews have been especially singled out.

And creating a special word to single them out even more is a good idea?
Wouldn't the idea be to go in the opposite direction and move away from singling out any group especially the Jews? It seems counterintuitive to me. The only justice can be seeing to it that these kind of atrocities never happen again. That is the very best we can do to honor the victims. And not dividing ourselves into ethnic and religious groups is the best way to avoid such a thing. Racism is not just saying "their people". It is also saying "our people" or "my people". All people are my people. I associate with no ethnicity, no religion, and no country, but all culture, and all people.

“forgiveness is abandoning all hope of a better past”

We need to let it all go. All of our false divisions and affiliations.

Clearthinking1, the modern Hindu fascist never lets on that the real reason behind preventing conversions from Hinduism is to maintain the exploitative Hindu caste system which has been the source of much evil for millennia.

Clearthinking1 it must be noted is a modern Hindu fascist. He doesn't let on that he is. He never mentions that he is pushing Hinduism as the most superior religion.

Susan Jacoby,

I mean this with all seriousness. Your pessimism in this article gives me hope. I only wish your pessimism could be transferred to people like Eboo Patel. Let me explain.

The problem is that there is a dark side to religious affiliation. The attachment to one belief system causes people to become emotional and irrational, to the point of becoming violent and destructive.

This is most true for Islam and Christianity only. Think about it. Whenever there is conflict and violence due to religion, Muslims and Christians are always one of the parties. This is because of the idea of superiority that is inherent in these two religions.

All religions say nice and good things. But that is not enough. Islam and Christianity have this bizarre core belief that they must force their beliefs onto everyone else. So, under the guise of charity and goodness, action is taken with an ulterior motive (proselytizing). This leads to conflict.

People like Eboo Patel (well intentioned muslims and christians) are the biggest problem. Instead of confronting the problem of righteousness and subsequent conflict caused by their religions, they cover up the problem. Good words and deeds will not fix the inherent flaws of Chritianity and Islam. Eboo Patel types know this in their heart, but they are too attached to their muslim identity to simply walk away and demand meaningful reform.

You cannot make Islam and Christianity peaceful by simply saying it. As long as a true believing muslim thinks that his god or his way is superior, we are all in trouble. This attitude is offensive to the majority of humanity which is not Muslim or Christian. The sad fact is that Eboo Patel is probably not even a true believer in Islam. He is just an immigrant struggling with identity issues and embarassed by his muslim identity. But what seems innocuous, is actually the heart of the problem. The Eboos of the world provide cover for and are in effect apologist for the extremists.

BE HONEST; BE PESSIMISTIC; BE REALISTIC; AND THEN ADDRESS THE REAL ROOT CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT AND VIOLENCE DUE TO ISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Click here to see the williamson interview.

http://www.kathtube.com/player.php?id=7989

PART I

Pope readmits Holocaust-denying priest to the church

By Philip Willan in Rome
Sunday, 25 January 2009

The Vatican stirred a diplomatic maelstrom yesterday when it announced that it had lifted the excommunication of four rebel bishops, including the British Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.

The decree repealing the 20-year-old Vatican punishment, imposed after the traditionalist French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre consecrated the four as bishops in defiance of the Pope's authority, was signed on Wednesday by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the Prefect for the Congregation of Bishops. This coincided with the broadcast on Swedish state television of an interview with Mr Williamson in which the breakaway bishop denied the Holocaust.

"I believe there were no gas chambers... I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps but none of them by gas chambers," he told SVT television in an interview that was recorded in Germany last November. "There was not one Jew killed by the gas chambers. It was all lies, lies, lies!"

Mr Williamson, 68, who is the rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina, is no stranger to controversy. He has endorsed "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", a notorious anti-Semitic forgery, and claimed that Jews are bent on world domination. He supports conspiracy theories on the assassination of President Kennedy and the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, and has accused the Vatican of being under the power of Satan.

The Vatican's decision comes at a time of heightened sensitivity in its dealings with Israel following the bloodshed in Gaza. Pope Benedict XVI recently ruffled feathers in Israel by expressing the hope that regional elections would produce a new generation of leaders in the Middle East capable of making peace, as did Cardinal Renato Martino, the President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, when he likened Gaza to a concentration camp. Jewish leaders, including Rome's chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, had urged Pope Benedict not to lift the ban and to reiterate the Vatican's condemnation of Holocaust denial.

PART II

The head of the Vatican press office, Father Federico Lombardi, said that there was no connection between Mr Williamson's views and the decision to lift his excommunication. "The Vatican has acted in relation to the excommunication and its removal for the four bishops, an action that has nothing to do with the highly criticisable statements of an individual," Fr Lombardi told reporters.

Vatican Radio also pointed out that Mr Williamson's statements had been severely condemned by other members of the Priestly Fraternity of St Pius X, the breakaway organisation founded by Archbishop Lefebvre in Switzerland.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, the head of the fraternity and another of the rebel bishops readmitted into communion with the Catholic church, said the TV interview was an attempt to defame the organisation.

Archbishop Lefebvre broke with the Vatican over his opposition to the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council and, in particular, his refusal to give up the traditional Latin mass. He was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988 after illegally consecrating the four bishops.

For Pope Benedict, the lifting of the excommunication heals a wound that had festered for 20 years and readmits a thriving community that has 150,000 followers in more than 20 countries. But what should have been a joyous occasion, ending what the Vatican called "the scandal of division", will be overshadowed by the Williamson interview.

PART I

From The Times
January 26, 2009

Dismay as Pope welcomes back Holocaust bishop Richard Williamson
Pope Benedict XVI

Richard Owen in Rome

Pope Benedict XVI’s rehabilitatation of a British bishop who denies that millions of Jews died in Nazi gas chambers has alarmed Catholics who fear it risks dealing a fatal blow to the inter-faith dialogue promoted by his predecessor.

Over the weekend the Pope issued a decree welcoming back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson, 68, and three other breakaway bishops excommunicated by John Paul II in 1988. The bishops had been ordained without Vatican permission by the renegade French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who rejected the reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

The Vatican decree referred to the need to overcome the “scandal of divisiveness” and seek reconciliation and “full communion” with Lefebvre’s order, the ultra-conservative Society or Fraternity of St Pius X. It lifted the excommunication not only of Bishop Williamson, rector of the Seminary of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix in La Reja, Argentina, but also of Bernard Fellay, the leader of the order, Alfonso de Gallareta, and Tissier de Mallerais.

Renzo Gattegna, head of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy, said the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson was “terrible not only for Jewish people but for the whole of humanity”. He said that Italian Jews would refuse to take part in joint prayers with Christians on Tuesday marking Holocaust Day, known in Italy as “The Day of Memory”.

Some Vatican officials are also saying privately that although the Pope’s stated aim was to unite the Church by bringing the rebels back into the fold, his move would have the opposite effect. “The Church will pay a price for this” one Vatican prelate said. “The Pope is undermining the legacy of John Paul II.”

Benedict’s actions are also reviving his old nickname when he was Cardinal Ratzinger — that of the “Panzerkardinal”, known for his hardline conservatism as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“This is not so much an act of grace as a surrender,” the veteran Vatican watcher Marco Politi said. Benedict wanted a new era of reconciliation, “but the new era has begun with a lie. The Pope has made a openly declared and unshakeable anti-Semite a legitimate Bishop”.

Lefebvre, who died in 1991, had set up “a fanatical and reactionary counter-Church which openly contested, repudiated and defamed all the crucial points of Vatican II, from respect for the Jews to modernisation of the liturgy”. There are an estimated 500 Lefebvrist bishops and 600,000 followers worldwide.

Gianni Gennari, a theologian and contributor to the Italian Catholic daily Avvenire, said it was “shameful that the lifting of the excommunications was not accompanied by any repentance whatever on the part of the Lefebvrists”.

PART II

Bishop Williamson, who has said that the Vatican is controlled by Satan and that the Jews are bent on world domination, reiterated in a broadcast last week on Swedish television that the historical evidence was “hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler. I believe there were no gas chambers”.

He added: “I think that 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps, but none of them by gas chambers.”

Prosecutors in Regensburg in Germany, where the interview took place — and where the Pope once studied and taught — have opened an inquiry. Holocaust denial is an offence under German law.

Father Federico Lombardi, the papal spokesman, insisted the lifting of the excommunications had “absolutely nothing to do” with Williamson’s views on the Holocaust. “One is not connected to the other,” he said. Vatican Radio said Williamson’s statements had been condemned by other members of the St Pius X fraternity.

This month Elia Enrico Richetti, the chief rabbi of Venice, said Jews had been deeply offended by the reintroduction by the Pope in March of a Good Friday Latin prayer for the conversion of the Jews as part of the revived Tridentine Mass. “We are moving toward the cancellation of 50 years of Church history” the rabbi said.

Other Catholic-Jewish tensions include plans by the Pope to beatify Pius XII, the wartime pontiff accused by critics of failing to speak out in defence of Jews. The Vatican insists that Pius helped the Jews while avoiding public statements that would have made matters worse, and has demanded the removal of a plaque attacking him at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The Pope has twice visited synagogues, in the US and his native Germany, and sought to make amends with the Islamic world after a speech at Regensburg two years ago in which he appeared to suggest that Islam was inherently violent and irrational. However, he recently declared that inter-religious dialogue “in the strict sense of the word” between Christians, Jews and Muslims was “not possible”.

Timmy,

As to the need for a term like antisemitism, did you get the verse that goes:

"Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews."

This has been going on for a long time, really, and yes, the Jews have been especially singled out; though no one else has ever really been immune.

Timmy,

Being as how they seem to like poetry on this blog, and I don't know if you ever heard the the great lyric poet Tom Lerher's witty work from 1967 called National Brotherhood Week:

Oh, the white folks hate the black folks,
And the black folks hate the white folks.
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
Cassius Clay and Mrs. Wallace are dancing cheek to cheek.
It's fun to eulogize
The people you despise,
As long as you don't let 'em in your school.

Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks,
And the rich folks hate the poor folks.
All of my folks hate all of your folks,
It's American as apple pie.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans 'cause it's very chic.
Step up and shake the hand
Of someone you can't stand.
You can tolerate him if you try.

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews.

But during National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week,
It's National Everyone-smile-at-one-another-hood Week.
Be nice to people who
Are inferior to you.
It's only for a week, so have no fear.
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!

Dear Susan:

"There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron."

I must say I am reminded of Garrison Keillor's episode of the Prarie Home Companion wherein he explained that even the Atheists in Lake Woebegone are Lutherans, because the God in which they did not believe is the Lutheran God.

Thus may an Atheist be a Catholic. Just goes to show you that the God in whom you do not believe is important too. :^))

Excuse my typos below, but I will just correct the title of the book: "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality"

Just a note to Miss Jacoby's comment on Catholic atheists:

There is such a thing as Christian atheists as suggested by Andre Comte-Sponville in his Litte Book of Atheist Spirituality. If I interpret this concept correctly, there could also be Catholic atheists, Calvinist atheist, even Evangelical atheists, etc.
Interesting small book, quick read.

The expression "Christian atheist" might seem self-contradictory because Christians believe in God and atheists do not.
But the concept relates not only to the self but to the person's history, tradition and community.
In essence, if you were brought up in Christian tradition, in a Christian community and you feel attached to those values, you can claim to be an atheistic Christian just like our Jewish friends described themselves as atheistic Jews, despite obvious differences in both religions' history.

Timmy2, good question. Is there a need for the word antisemitism?

Without digging deep into definitions and wording, I agree with what you are implying, all forms of racism or prejudice are equally bad, of course.

Maybe more terms will come up for new targets of racism as humanity continues its path.

Concerning the second paragraph, I agree with the last sentence. The kinds of views expressed were really extreme. All of a sudden there was a sharp polarization and users gone amok. Even against each other.
I'm still shocked, I don't see the need. When you feel you are losing it, do not engage. Take a break, come back later.

I also agree with the third paragraph. Good move from BO but tribal passions die hard. However, I think reason in the end will prevail. But you have to get in touch w/people to overcome the not-so-obvious-but-deep fear among them. Become familiar, sit down and talk. Then reason will sink in.

Concerning the fourth paragraph, if the four-year study is reasonably accurate, then Hitchens is on the money and there should be more research on how religion poisons so many things.
I think strong religious values might very well allow for intolerance, spiritual obsession, complete shutdown of other beliefs and behaviours and all that comes thereafter. I don't know if this is at the root of the problem in the Middle East, though.

SusanJacoby:

Since you know all about what rabbis and Jews, in general, think, kindly tell us also about what imams and Muslims think, Protestants and ministers, etc.

Susan Jacoby:

"Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron.

The family into which one is born is not a choice. The color of one's skin is not a choice. Religion, however, is a choice--except for those who reflexively believe everything they were taught as small children."
___________________________
Kindly edify me on the ways in which "being a Jew is a more complex matter." How is it that a man or woman who says s/he's an atheist will always be asked what his/her parents were, that if s/he says "Jewish," that atheist who may not identify as "Jewish," who says s/he's unaffiliated is to the inquirer "Jewish"? This is particularly the case if that inquirer is Christian. I wonder if you have any clue as to whom, in your comment, you are making historical community with.

To some on this thread, btw., you, by the way are "half-Jew" (sic). And no way, are you anything but Catholic to anyone who's been out of the house. Your move; your petard.

I keep asking this question but no one wants to answer it.

Is there a need for the word antisemitism?
Is antisemitism a special form of racism or is it equal to all other forms of racism? Aren't they all equally bad?

Don't worry, it doesn't make you an antisemite to think that there is nothing different between racism towards blacks and Jews and that no special word is required for racism towards Jews. Farnaz will call you one. But she uses that term like the little boy who cries wolf. It's become quite meaningless coming out of her mouth.

Well, Susan, if the posts to your column you didn't like outnumbered the posts you did like -- well, there's democracy for you.

And so, you indicate you feel "tribalism" might have some evil in it. You mention "Indians," in a context which finds no evil.

Well, which is it?

You are a pretty good basher, in your own right. You don't see that, though, do you?

You are simply agenda filled. Not the prettiest picture -- of human acceptance, or understanding, or any forgiveness, whatsoever.

From your writings one can know only that you would fit right in, with any side of the Jews, or any side of the Palestinians -- depending upon how you felt on any particular morning.

Susan Jacoby

Farnazz's notion that one remains a Catholic if one was "born" a Catholic is one of the more peculiar comments to appear on this blog. It's pretty much like saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim because his father (who apparently was an atheist) was "born" a Muslim. One is not "born" a Catholic; one is baptized a Catholic. Since I am an atheist, I can hardly remain a Catholic because a priest once sprinkled so-called holy water on me. Catholicism (like most of the world's religions) is neither an ethnicity nor
a race(assuming that one accepts the scientifically dubious concept of race).

Being a Jew is a more complex matter. There are many Jews who do not practice or believe in Judaism as a religion. (This makes rabbis angry, but it's a fact.) There are secular Jews, but there is no such thing as a secular Catholic. There are Jews who are atheists, but there is no such thing as a Catholic atheist. It's an oxymoron.

The family into which one is born is not a choice. The color of one's skin is not a choice. Religion, however, is a choice--except for those who reflexively believe everything they were taught as small children.

Farnaz wrote: "IF your co-religionists (as long as I have to be Jewish whether I wish it or not, so long will you be Catholic) come at me with racist garbage, referring to "the Jews" and what we have done, your inheritance from your NT (sic), we will come back at you as "the Christians/Catholics," responding in kind."

Is it your intention to lump all Christians and former Christians together and blame them all equally for racism?

DMZ1

The Genealogy of Morals, etc. First quotation is from Walter Benjamin. All the rage for about thirty years.

More later. Must run.

Farnaz:

I don't understand your hostility to Susan Jacoby. Please explain.

Also, I didn't understand your odd reference to Nietzsche. I know a great deal about Nietzsche but I can't figure out your context.

Susan Wrote:

"But the people on both sides who have always blocked, and will undoubtedly continue to block, any real peace in the Middle East are fanatical and vicious."

As are the Mexican gangs, which is a problem closer to home...don't you think? I'm sure there's got to be some religious motive for that violence, but maybe it's just good old-fashioned greed.

Did you finally read Samuel Huntington's book or did the light finally come on for you?

In the end, one side must win and the other lose...it's the nature of the beast unfortunately.

Whereas you see representatives of most religions on the On Faith panel and commentators from most ethnic groups, you never see Chinese representatives in either group. Apparently, the Chinese government bans participation in discussion blogs. How very dangerous and disturbing to have almost 20 % of the world's citizens denied freedom of speech. Maybe the fact that five out of the six top human atrocities in the last 60,000 years has involved Chinese leaders has something to do with it.

SusanJacoby:

To continue my thinking from previous posts. The world, regarding antisemites (note spelling), has changed. We Jews no longer explain to the racists why they should not be racist. We have learned from the Civil Rights Movement. You can do the Catholic whining thing from now until forever, but we will no longer be the particular to your universal. You will even find some of this attitude on the Upper West Side.

We do not fight fire with cups of water anymore. IF your co-religionists (as long as I have to be Jewish whether I wish it or not, so long will you be Catholic) come at me with racist garbage, referring to "the Jews" and what we have done, your inheritance from your NT (sic), we will come back at you as "the Christians/Catholics," responding in kind. We have, after two thousand years, studied to speak as stupidly as some of your co-religionists, and we learned quickly.

That is what you read on your blog coming from us, and in gentler ways, from some Christians and Catholics, who just don't like racism. Don't like it? Tell the antisemites. Btw., stop pontificating like a white lady. It's passe, and you're not.

CCNL:

Include your blogging, and make it the twenty-two or so worst things.

CCNL:

On the twenty or so worst things, you forgot the "OT."

The Twenty (or so) Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other:

Rank Death Toll Cause Centuries
1 55 million Second World War 20C
2 40 million Mao Zedong (mostly famine)20C
3 40 million Mongol Conquests 13C
4 36 million An Lushan Revolt 8C
5 25 million Fall of the Ming Dynasty 17C
6 20 million Taiping Rebellion 19C
7 20 million Annihilation of the American Indians 15C-19C
8 20 million Iosif Stalin 20C
9 19 million Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C
10 18 million Atlantic Slave Trade 15C-19C
11 17 million Timur Lenk 14C-15C
12 17 million British India (mostly famine) 19C
13 15 million First World War 20C
14 9 million Russian Civil War 20C
15 8 million Fall of Rome 3C-5C
16 8 million Congo Free State 19C-20C
17 7 million Thirty Years War 17C
18 5 million Russia's Time of Troubles 16C-17C
19 4 million Napoleonic Wars 19C
20 3 million Chinese Civil War 20C

For the complete listing to include supporting references see http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat0.htm

Bottom line: All of our ancestors had blood on their hands directly or indirectly.

Farnaz and anyone else interested:

The link below shows what Conservatives and Dominionist Christianist types think of Obama, and this is why I think he is in danger:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Barak_obama

Dear Arminius

The swirling clouds of doom and hatred are no more now than they have every been. I believe this. It just seems so, because of the rapid transfer of information. We get to know every little thing so fast.

In WWII, six million Jews were exterminated in the death camps and no one on the outside knew about it. Today, we know evey single person in Gaza and in Israel who is injured and killed in the fighting, on the very day that it happens, even in the hour that it happens.

It is just our consciousness of these things which makes it all seem worse than ever.

And then, lucky us, it is not enough that we have our relatives, and inlaws, and neighbors, and coworkers to fight with; we also have all of these strangely remote bodyless souls on this blog, to fight with, too. People can be alot meaner when they are anonymous on these blogs, but then at the same time, they are not as real, either, as your own loved ones, or your own enemies.

So, don't let all this stuff get you down.

I personally, feel an exhilerated buzz, that shows no sign of going away, that Obama is now President Obama. He is such a contrast to Bush. He really is, literally, a breath of fresh air, to relieve us from the suffucating and obnoxious "old regime."

My only fear is some violence being done against him. I have a feeling that he is in a dangerously precarious position. But, there is nothing to do but hope for best and pray for the best, and see what happens next.

DTLD:

"I have a feeling that he is in a dangerously precarious position"

I've felt this too, as have a lot of folks I know. What is it?

Dear Arminius

The swirling clouds of doom and hatred are no more now than they have every been. I believe this. It just seems so, because of the rapid transfer of information. We get to know every little thing so fast.

In WWII, six million Jews were exterminated in the death camps and no one on the outside knew about it. Today, we know evey single person in Gaza and in Israel who is injured and killed in the fighting, on the very day that it happens, even in the hour that it happens.

It is just our consciousness of these things which makes it all seem worse than ever.

And then, lucky us, it is not enough that we have our relatives, and inlaws, and neighbors, and coworkers to fight with; we also have all of these strangely remote bodyless souls on this blog, to fight with, too. People can be alot meaner when they are anonymous on these blogs, but then at the same time, they are not as real, either, as your own loved ones, or your own enemies.

So, don't let all this stuff get you down.

I personally, feel an exhilerated buzz, that shows no sign of going away, that Obama is now President Obama. He is such a contrast to Bush. He really is, literally, a breath of fresh air, to relieve us from the suffucating and obnoxious "old regime."

My only fear is some violence being done against him. I have a feeling that he is in a dangerously precarious position. But, there is nothing to do but hope for best and pray for the best, and see what happens next.

SusanJacoby:

ON history: M'deah, you should know this by know.

IX

My wing is ready to fly
I would rather turn back
For had I stayed mortal time
I would have had little luck.
– Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.
________________________
As well, there was this fellow, Nietzsche. Perhaps, you've heard. How about elevating the discourse level to meet your threaders half way?

SusanJacoby:

"But I don't think anyone is going to get very far with people who believe that they're entitled to a certain piece of Jerusalem because Muhammad ascended into heaven there, or to some piece of desert because Jewish prophets are supposedly buried there."

Concentrate on the Church of the Nativitiy and other Christian pitty wingy things that somehow always get in the way of things.

SusanJacoby:

I have a considerably amount to say in reply to some of the unfortunate rhetoric here, but I once again request that you abandon this obsolete term anti-Semites, as every other literate person has. I've already explained why and cannot do so again right now, as I'm short of time.

Hopefully, I'll have a moment to deal with Carter's book, the resignations from his staff that followed due to outright fabrications, etc.

I will also get your absurd reduction of the Middle East vs. West (Colonizing, dictator supporting, World Bank, torturing West) to Israelis and Palestinians.
______________________________
For now, this:

"If you want to see how little a great many people have learned from any and all of these evils, take a look at the huge number of bigoted, horrific comments on my blog--from anti-Semites who consider any mention of the Holocaust another exaggeration about the plight of "poor Jews" to those who actually consider the Holocaust a reason why any suffering inflicted on Palestinians is fully justified. The world is not a blog (fortunately), but the kinds of views expressed in response to my essay this week are indicative of the force of unreason on these issues."

I followed your Shoah post for some time, and, in fact, just posted on it again. The Christian antisemites, i.e., racists didn't overwhelm it, but they made their presence felt, as did some secular (unobservant) and observant Christians whose staunch anti-racist stance has always been evident.

However, I saw nothing that suggested "to those who actually consider the Holocaust a reason why any suffering inflicted on Palestinians is fully justified."

Nor have I ever heard from any Palestinian, and I know Palestinians, that the Christian colonialist torture inflicted upon Muslims (cutting off thumbs, cutting off hands and tying them around necks, etc.) justified suicide bombing, car bombing, slashing to death, etc.

Kindly, get your facts straight.

Farnaz

Susan Jacoby,

I admire your guts to keep writing in the face of this outpouring of bigotry and ignorance. Even the more moderate posters (few in number) seemed to have axes to grind. Nothing positive was presented, no dialog ensued, no solutions pursued, no peace made. Only endless howling, complaining, and posting of depressing lists of atrocities. All this gets us, and the world, nowhere but backwards. I'm going to stick it out for a while, but the swirling clouds of gloom and hatred are really getting me down.

Susan noted:

" But I don't think anyone is going to get very far with people who believe that they're entitled to a certain piece of Jerusalem because Muhammad ascended into heaven there, or to some piece of desert because Jewish prophets are supposedly buried there. "

Well said and that is exactly why these people must come to grips with the historic and theological flaws/myths of their religions which are responsible for this erroneous "rights" syndrome, some might call it the "pretty/ugly, wingie, talking, flying, fictional thingie" syndrome.