People of the Book: an inter-faith dialogue. UPDATE:1

Its time, Dear Reader, to take a cursory look at The People of the Book, the followers of the three monotheistic religions which govern the behaviour of a large percentage of individuals and societies on this planet. The Tanakh. The Bible. The Quran. Very serious texts that have their genesis in the Abrahamic tradition that worships one God, and no bloody Golden Calves. (Really, this so-called entity should be in lower case, but there are conventions.) None of this a polytheistic God for every occasion, but one single voice who doesn’t share his Wisdom and Law with a whole bundle of mongrel competitors as instanced by Hinduism.

Abraham offing his son: the Hollywood version

And the question should be, just how do the textual institutions (that includes their religious spokes-types) contribute to the fountain of human happiness in our Global Village, since all provide the final word on the behavioural norms which govern the thoughts and actions of individuals, families and political institutions/the State. And, to be sure, they variously operate in both secular and theocratic States.

Now, when you think about the expected normative behaviour outlined in these Sacred Texts, any reasonable person would assume that these three belief systems would seek to create the greatest good for human kind generally. After all, we don’t expect degrading and/or vicious doctrines to have a long life span, and since all these three religious systems have been around for millennia, we would expect them to be inherently good, and hence beneficial for both the individual and the larger society which they influence, shape and organise.

As wicki notes, “most citizens in the State of Israel are Jewish, and most Israeli Jews practice Judaism in some form”. There is a ton of nit-picking regarding the variants of Judaism of little interest to individuals not belonging to The Chosen People. Furthermore Israel purports to be a secular democracy saturated with Judaic beliefs, so lets cut to the chase and look at the manner which its government treats the Palestinians.

According a number of diaspora Jews:

“As Jewish survivors and descendants of survivors and victims of the Nazi genocide we unequivocally condemn the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the ongoing occupation and colonization of historic Palestine. We further condemn the United States for providing Israel with the funding to carry out the attack, and Western states more generally for using their diplomatic muscle to protect Israel from condemnation. Genocide begins with the silence of the world.

We are alarmed by the extreme, racist dehumanization of Palestinians in Israeli society, which has reached a fever-pitch. In Israel, politicians and pundits in The Times of Israel and The Jerusalem Post have called openly for genocide of Palestinians and right-wing Israelis are adopting Neo-Nazi insignia”.

And here is their list of Israeli op eds calling for a Final Solution to the Palestinian ‘problem’.

Genocide as a spectator sport

And HERE is a detailed link for the above.

Lumpen prole Jews wearing Nazi symbols

And HERE is the link.

I could really ladle on the evidence that Israel is behaving in a manner similar to Nazi Germany – crop destruction, wholesale land clearance via terror tactics, a complex and degrading system of passport controls, ghettoization, etc – it is out there and in plain sight if you dare look.

Postscript.
The Chosen People. Uber exclusivist, informed by an over-overarching monotheistic belief system and plain vicious with a leadership who should be prime candidates for the International Criminal Court. Mining a history of victimisation for all its worth, and getting away with it in an epoch where universal concepts of genocide, human rights etc supposedly have real legal teeth.

And if you are interested in the Palestinian perspective on Israel, the Jewish lobby and recent events in that part of the world, I recommend The Electronic Intifida and the columnist Ali Abunimah in particular.

As Peter Beinart points out his article The American Jewish Cocoon The New York Review of Books Sept-Oct 2013 American Israeli spin merchants only talk to each other and they never explore the Palestinian perspective.

Two additional points:
The former head of Shin Bet Yuval Diskin has stated that “over the past 10-15 years has become more and more racist…….” p20.

Secondly, Beinart makes the point that Abunimah is no slouch when it comes to understanding how the American Israeli lobby thinks, so he is a Palestinian commentator to be taken very seriously.

To be continued.

………………………………………………………………………………
UPDATE.

In the last day or so, I ended up in a slanging match with one Ji Xiang – Capital in the North BlogSpot.com – when commenting on another subject on FOARP’S site – Fear of the Red Planet. Now, Foarp has been around for eons and is an individual with balanced views on most matters.

Not so, this one Ji Xiang – a Jewish person probably holding a US passport – who quite obviously spent seven seconds reading the above (ignoring the Israeli media links provided) and then called me out as a Holocaust denier. A serious charge to put it mildly, so its time to ladle on the evidence that Israeli is a State actor every bit as murderous as any in the Middle East. And we certainly have an abundance of murderous scumbag States to choose from in that part of the world.

And just so readers know who I’m talking about, below is my interlocutor Ji Xiang armed for bear in the wilds of Guangxi province in 2009.

It’s not that Israeli public opinion is monolithic: there are dissenting voice and organisations who believe Palestinians are human beings, not stereotypes and ciphers of the Evil Other and fanatical, crazed Muslims to
boot. In contrast to flesh and blood with aspirations and the usual issues of paying the rent, putting food on the table and getting the brats off to school. We are talking about a very binary perspective and there’s no commonly shared humanity.

Wicki has compiled a list HERE and its well worth a bit of link time, as it connects to a wide range of human rights organisations, and not all focus on Palestinian issues. One such group is B’Tselem, a brilliantly layed-out and authoritive reporting organisation on human rights abuses in Gaza and the West Bank.

The International Legal Assistance Consortium, the Swedish Bar Association and the International Bar Association announced on 11 Sept. 2014 that the 2014 Stockholm Human Rights Award will be presented to B´Tselem. The Stockholm Human Rights Award was established in 2009, and is awarded annually to an individual or an institution for outstanding contributions to the rule of law and the promotion and protection of human rights.

So we have a very credible organisation similar to Human Rights Watch.

Sorry. The dashboard is getting a bit unmanageable, so continue on the next post.
Apol.