Re: Re: A Republican I almost could be talked into torturi...

[Guest guest]

It is true that in the Bible the Israelites did wipe out a few cities. This was called a Ban, when everyone in the city was killed. The Ban was not unique to the Israelites, rather it was standard practice in warfare of the time. If a city was taken during this time, everyone inside could expect to be killed or sold as slaves.

Further reading of the Bible, however, shows that they did not kill everyone. If you read beyond the conquest of Israel, you will see many references to other people still living in there. This was also not uncommon. The cities were the centers of power and were crushed, while the people in the countryside, the farmers and herders who made up the majority of population, we left along, though they were subjugated to the new rulers. This made economic sense. Farmers grew food the new rulers could use. Killing them off would have destroyed a valuable resource.

So, while God did tell the Israelites to take a few cities and conquer the land, it was the cities that bore the brunt of the war and they were handled according to military custom of the time.

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 11/12/2006 2:07:20 PM Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

Because I understand that many ancient semitic cities were moretribally-based rather than nationalistic, I suggest that wiping out acity was in effect a very real form of genocide. After all, who hearsof the Ammonites, Jesubites, Perizzites, or scores of other ancientpeoples anymore except perhaps in the odd Sunday school class?

This was par for the course in ancient times. An enemy would be wiped out as an entity, but not necessarily as a people. That is to say, their power base would be destroyed and their culture overshadowed by the new people in charge. Like I said, if you read the Old Testament, you can still see that there are many people other than Israelis living in Israel, so many so that there are frequent admonitions against intermarriage or even association. Therefore it is clear that not only were many left alive but they were also allowed to keep their religion and culture, at least so far as they did not threaten Israel's hold on power.

Look at it another way. In ancient times up through fairly modern times, the urban population was 5% or less of a given area. There were some exceptions of course in the more developed societies, but less than 10% was the norm. Now, A typical "Holy Land" city probably had a population of between 5,000 and 10,000. If one of these cities was wiped out to that last human being, that would still leave at least 100,000 people in the countryside. Given the sizes of the armies some of those little nations could field, that would be a fair estimate (armies of a few tens of thousands with about 15% maximum of the population being military material). Once the cities was destroyed, the king and nobles dead, the rest of the population had little reason to fight.

Perhaps they understand their own history, traditionsand present culture better than us? If so, then the take-away fromthe Third Reich's *pogroms* for these Zionistas is: "we must wipe outthe Palestinians"? I cannot think of a worse hypocrisy.

I understand some of the history but not so much the Jewish culture. What I do understand is that Progroms are different that what is happening in the Middle East today. The progroms, which did not begin with the Nazis but had been going on for over a thousand years, were targeted at the Jews for various reasons.

What is happening in the Middle East now is more complicated. First, the Jews were driven out of the Holy Land, in large part, in several phases. The first of these was after the Jewish revolt against the Romans and the second major one was when the Muslims drove them out during the crusades. Prior to WWI, some Jews had moved back to the Holy Land. The land at that time was sparsely populated and untended. They began to change that with farms and so forth. This continued through WWI and up to WWII. During that time, more Jews moved there and also helped build up the land.

Two things get lost here, usually. First, the Jews bought the land they settled on from the local owners. Most of these owners were absentee landlords who only cared about what money they could make, so this did displace some Muslims, the tenant farmers, but this displacement only happened because the Muslim landlords sold the land. Second, the Jews' efforts were boosting the economy so Muslims came looking for work. During the WWI to WWII interim, several times more Muslims came to Palestine than did Jews.

It was only after WWII that Israel was formed. This was done by agreement from the UN to give the Jews a land of their own after the Holocaust. However, the Muslims refused to accept this and launched their first war in 1947 I believe it was. During this time, many Palestinians (as they were called even though most of them were migrants draw by the promise of jobs in the recent past) fled the original borders of Israel because the Arab nations wanted them out of the way of the fighting and that the war would be over soon and there would be no more Jews. The Arabs lost though and those Palestinians have been living in camps ever since, camps neglected by their Muslim brothers. Several wars followed after this.

Now, the Israelis don't want to wipe out the Palestinians, rather it is the other way around. The Israelis want to live in peace and just get on with their lives. It is the Muslims who have the terror groups like Hamas whose sole purpose is to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews. An example of this thinking is clear regarding missile attack on Israel. The Palestinians in Gaza believe that it is their right to fire missiles at Israeli civilians but that Israeli retaliation aimed at those launchers and terror leaders are war crimes. Now that is hypocrisy.

We back Israel and Europe backs the Arabs. France and other European nations have been cutting deals with Arab countries as a means of preventing terrorism in Europe. Part of those deals was to allow lots of immigration and for those Muslim immigrants to set up their own communities with their own rules inside the host country. We can see the results of that in France, or we would if the media covered it. This year, over 2,500 French police have been injured in those neighborhoods and they are exceedingly dangerous. Every night scores of cars are burned and now busses and mass transit are being attacked, with civilian casualties.

I don't like everything Israel has done. They have sold some of our high tech military hardware to enemies like China and they attacked one of our ships years back, the USS Liberty. I also don't like how they botched their foray into Lebanon: it took far too long and achieved too little because the politicians got in the way. A short, sharp fight is better politically than a drawn out conflict.

I also don't think democracy is always the best way. The Palestinians would have been better off with a strong leader who would live at peace with Israel and was strong enough to control the terrorists while at the same time bringing in foreign aid to build up his country. We should have left Sadaam in power too. I think he could have been negotiated with and Iraq under him would have been a strong check against Iran. Now Iran has nothing to stand in its way and is going to be an even bigger problem than Iraq ever was, thanks to the Israelis knocking out Sadaam's French built nuclear plant. Other Middle Eastern democracies like Egypt are slipping as their economies can't keep up with their exploding populations and they allow radical Muslims to preach and recruit without opposition.

As for the poor dying for the rich, that is also the way it has almost always been. In places there have been the warrior nobility who did most of the fighting, with the poor not being allowed to learn to fight or bear arms so they couldn't oppose the nobility. There were times when wars were settled by duels between champions. But by and large, it was the poor who served in the massed ranks in wars started by politicians.

Today, however, things are a little different. People are all saying how the war is about oil and keeping the oil companies rich. The unspoken truth is that oil is as vital to our survival as food and water. The US imports 60% of its oil now. If that were cut off, the economy would collapse almost overnight. There would be riots for gas just like there used to be riots for food in days past. Yes, some people are getting rich off of oil, but we need it. I don't think anyone would be having this discussion if we imported 60% of our food and someone threatened to cut it off. The spectre of mass starvation would lead to war, and a war with little opposition. oil is the same, just that people don't realize it.

[Guest guest]

Don,

I was going to reply to your last post, but I am not. I had my suspicions with the previous post, but posted anyway. Now I am sure that you are just trying to bait me. Your tone, along with certain comments make this clear. A dead give away was the "Bushies" slur.

So, as interesting as this topic might be to discuss with someone who had honest intentions, I will no longer comment on it.

[Guest guest]

Don,

I was going to reply to your last post, but I am not. I had my suspicions with the previous post, but posted anyway. Now I am sure that you are just trying to bait me. Your tone, along with certain comments make this clear. A dead give away was the "Bushies" slur.

So, as interesting as this topic might be to discuss with someone who had honest intentions, I will no longer comment on it.