h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I dont think that there is a fear of Islam at all. If that were true then there would not be millions of Muslims throught Europe, the Americas and Oceania. And heres another thing, I am sick and tired of people genralsing Europe and America as 'Western nations' as we are all very diffrent. Most Europiean countries have their own landuage and very diverse culture. And dont come up with 'you genralise Asia, we will genralise the west' because there are far more countries in Asia than Europe and America and so if we didnt genralise then we would be insuting Pakistanis and Indians by getting them confused. Also, most countries are former soviet states and are all very simmilar, mostly LEDC's and under martial law. The Isral state of afairs is very unfair. The UN is making Israil pull out of a country that does not exist. Its their land and they should be allowed to put tanks wherever they like. We dont stop the Russians in Chechneia so why stop Israil?

It isn't Israel's land. The Occupied Territories were forcefully stolen by Israel from the Palestian people and many would dispute the ownership of the rest of the land in that part of the world.

Some would say that this injustice has to be corrected before peace can be established. Justice before Peace.

Acording to the Bible and the Qu'ran, God led his chosen people (the ISRALI's) out to the promised land (ISRAIL) therefore it is Israils. Also, thorought the bible the Israilites defeated the Palistinans time and time again. Its unfair to give the palistinains anything. They should consider it lucky that they get anything.

The Judeans were forcibly removed from Palestine in Roman times. This has nothing to do with the Bible or the Quran. It has everything to do with the subsequent colonization of the region by the British and the French, and with treatment of Jews in Europe, forcing another migration into former territories of the Ottoman Empire.

The Zionist theory of Greater Israel is nothing more than a recapitulation of the Nazi theory of Liebensraum. That's rather ironic, don't you think?

A kindly European tipped me off to a typo, that may be a full-blown Freudian Slip. It's Lebensraum, not Liebensraum. Somehow I'm getting living space confused with loving space. I wonder what that could mean? Probably has something to do with fear of Christianity. &;D

Hiya Alpha5.
I'd just like to welcome you to reality!
If you hadn't noticed, even if this land was taken off the isrealis..this was probably thousands of centuries ago ( i.e. Biblical times..or possibly the stone age! )

Now, imagine if you where a palestinian living there at the present moment. .. and you and your people have been living on that land for as long as you can remember! Your grandparents died on that land,, and their grandparents died on that land... obviously, it is now your land!. You would fight to keep it ..for as long as you lived.

Imagine being killed for just living in your own home, which was on a piece of land ruled by isrealis during the dinosour times! and they want it back aftre all these years!
now that is pathetic! to kill so many civilians, woman and children, to terrorise them, to torture them and bury them with bulldozers..and for people like bush to help give aid not to the victims ..but to people like sheron and his nazi-like goverment.

If isrealis really want to live in their promised land, live in it without hoarding out the people who already live there. There is something called living together in peace! .. but i suppose you don't get that anywhere now..thanks to terrorists ( including not only palestinian terrorists, the IRA and alquaeeda but sheron, bush, and putin)

It makes me sad to hear that there are people who are so narrow minded! in this world and that they would waste human lifes for a bit of land!

If all the people in the world had to move back to the very land where their first ancestors came from.... them most of the human race would be lost as to where to go!

Why don't we just make a seperate planet for peope like that!
...and the whole of the human race can move there..that'll solve everything..we can all live happy on planet mars till one day one of these humans decides that the whiole of mars is his to rule...because his great ancestor had ruled it zillions of years ago but due to the fighting between the human races they all killed each other..so there is no evidence!.. and we start all over again! humans eh? you can't live with them, you can't live without them!

Land is life, not only for humans but for all living things. The West has substituted credit for it so long that many people now equate money with life. That's where the problems arise.

The bible is merely a collection of traditional writings, most of it without provenance. It certainly does not provide a basis for judging modern political situations.

The modern position is that in the 40s the Israelis grabbed land belonging to someone else (the Palestinians)and turned it into their own state. The Palestinians objected (and object) violently and who can blame them!

The bible is merely a collection of traditional writings, most of it without provenance. It certainly does not provide a basis for judging modern political situations.

The modern position is that in the 40s the Israelis grabbed land belonging to someone else (the Palestinians)and turned it into their own state. The Palestinians objected (and object) violently and who can blame them!

Actually, you might suspect the Bible was originally intended to justify the conquest of Canaan. You can see the hardening of political ideology in Exodus as well as the extension of questionable ancestral claims in the latter parts of Genesis. There is also an apparent progressive disempowerment of women, including their claims on the land and the clan or tribal inheritance.

That would argue in favor of your claim that the Bible doesn't provide a basis for adjudicating the modern political situation. What it does do is demonstrate that this isn't the first time it has been used to advance questionable territorial claims.

Listen nonxistenz.
If The palistians grandfathers died on that land then how far back in time does the Isralites link to Israil go. The Israiles are letting out the land to the Palistians and they are getting cross about the living conditions when there lucky to be there . And to answer everyone elses points about modern day politics having no relevance to the bible, look at the 10 commandments, most of them have a basis in modern law or as a social rule. There are laws about murder and stealing and adualtary. Also it is not realy acceptable to swear by God in public (with the possible execption where you can do it in public but not at school?!). You can see that the bibles relevance today, look at some examples of predictions about Syria. God said that the land would one day be barren and life less and look now. Aslo, the bible makes signifcent scientific predictions. Here are some examples
Physics: Job ch 26:v 7
Haematology: Leviticus ch 17: v 11
Earths wind systems Ecclesasities ch 1: v 6
Astronmy: Jerimiah ch 33: v 22

How can you disprove the bibles relevance with this proof? look up these refrances and work out the links.

Alpha 5:

I'm not everybody else. I have a name, Rita. Try using it once in awhile, please.

Until I obtain a copy of the Bible to look up your quotes, I have a couple questions. First, which translation are you using? Second, how do you know the modern day Israelis are even related to the ancient Israelites? Maybe you should include book, chapter and verse on that if you please? Did you know Hassidic Jews don't even recognize the State of Israel? Some of them live there too.

Sorry Rita, for the genralisation, but many were taking the view opposed to mine and I needed to genralise for times sake. And I am using an NIV(New international version) inclusive landuadge edition

Ps The link between modern and anchient Israilites goes back to Abraham as all humans do. Modern and Anchient Israilites lived in the same area. That makes the Anchient ones the moderns founding fathers.

Why does it matter who was ther first?

Either way in 1945/6/7 I can't remember the UN said that the Israel could have some of Palestine and the Palestinians could have the other bits. Please corresct me but doesn't Israel ocuppy, rule it all?

Lets look at History as very body likes to do.

1939 Hitler takes part of Poland = WW2
1982 Argentina takes the Falklands and South Georgia = The Falklands War
1991 Sadam Husain takes Kuwait = The Gulf War

Therfore why don't we help the Palesinians gain reclaim there own nation? (It may bring down Oil prices for the Americans as the arabs may be tahnkful)

Yes I know I can't spell Thankful.

Alpha 5:

I know this is probably your religion speaking and I don't want to show any disrespect, but when you make assertions about the things under discussion supporting them with scriptural quotes, I think you have placed these scriptures in the path of criticism deliberately. Why you would do this, I don't know, but since you have, I will answer you.

You say that all people are descended from Abraham. Do all people then claim Palestine? Or only the Jews or the descendents of David, "my servant" or the tribe of Levi? Are they only those who are faithful to the Covenant? Which covenant? The old ones or the new one?

Am I, Rita, Lakota, a descendent of Abraham? I don't think so. Please understand how this notion might be insulting to me. This is the "gospel truth" of the matter, "In the beginning, you had the Book and we had the land. Later, you got the land and we got the Book." That's not a very good trade, I think.

That doesn't make me want to become a Catholic or Episcopalian or Born Again Evangelical, yada yada, Christian, or be faithful to any covenants of this power the rabbis called Adonai because his name was unpronouncable. I am not a child of this father who commands the Israelites to kill every living thing in a village. He reminds me of Huitzilopochtli who's thirst for blood was unquenchable. This is the kind of bloodthirsty brutality that fostered genocide in the Americas. It was cited as authority for Manifest Destiny, the conquest of another "Promised Land". It was and is reprehensible in America and it is no less reprehensible in Palestine.

Now, you have cited the authority of science in the scripture. Let's examine that assertion for a moment. These are quoted from the RSV (Revised Standard Version), which is a Protestant English translation of the Bible, they are quoted directly from your citations.

"He stretches out the north over the void and hangs the earth upon nothing."

What does this mean? How is it related to physics? What it seems to state is that the earth is hanging in nothing and only the northern sky is visible. That does not accord with what we know now. This is not good physics.

"For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life."

What has this to do with hemotology? It seems to state that blood sacrifice constitutes atonement, not a very original idea and not very scientific. People have probably known for ages that blood was essential to maintain life in mammals and many other creatures. Hunters knew this and still do. They did not rely on scripture to tell them. The Europeans didn't discover the circulation of the blood until the 16th century and then they didn't cite the authority of scripture in support of it. Quite the contrary.

"The wind blows to the south, and goes round to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns."

Not on earth. Prevailing winds counter the earth's rotation. At latitude 40 South they can actually go completely around the earth unobstructed by continents. One thing they do not do is circumnavigate the globe going around from north to south and back again. This is not good meteorology.

"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered and the sands of the sea cannot be measured, so I will multiply the descendents of David my servant, and the Levitical priests who minister to me."

The visible stars accessible to the unaided eye number approximately 5000-6000. They most certainly have been numbered and indeed cataloged. I leave it to you to decide if the authenicated descendents of David and the Levitical priests are the same number or not, but this is not good astronomy.

You may assert many things about these scriptures with some degree of confidence, I'm sure, but calling them predictive of science is not supportable.

Regarding the land claims of the Israelites: They rest ultimately on a field purchased from a Hittite for a burial place and little more. That the Israelites should assert that their god gave them all the rest of the land is hardly surprising and hardly provable. They took the land by brute force and they were ejected from it by brute force and disbursed all over the world. Some say this is because they were not faithful to the covenants made with their god. If that's so, then what in the intervening generations has changed? Are they faithful now?

Who belongs to the Congregation of Israel? All circumcised males who claim to be faithful to the covenants? There are over 600 laws and ordinances in the Torah. Who can claim to obey all of them?

Arthur Koestler, in The Thirteenth Tribe, marshals considerable evidence in support the notion that the Ashkenazi Jews of Europe are in fact the descendents of Kazaks converted to Judaism in medieval times long after the Kingdom of Judea was destroyed. What is their claim to Palestine now then? They are no more descendents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, called Children of Israel, than the Lakota are.

So let me suggest something. Why must we resort to bogus claims of prior occupation? There isn't enough land in all the State of Israel to hold the Jews of the world secure against another Holocaust. The people there now are settlers and squatters. They have been met with hostility, which is only natural. They are maintained by the brute force of Americans primarily. Their presence is a testimony that America and Europe cannot deal justly with Jews or, indeed, their own lower classes.

Maybe it's time that American and Europe discovered how to do that without forcing people to migrate to someone else's country. If that lesson had been learned five centuries ago, the Lakota would still be living in relative prosperity near the Great Lakes, not in poverty on the plains of South Dakota.

Consequently, I cannot endorse your scripturally-based point of view on this issue. It strikes to close to home and I'm sorry about that but that's the way things are.

I'd like to respond to the actual topic, which is "fear of Islam". I believe that people fear the type of people who commit heinous crimes in the name of Islam. Any religion (whether Islam teaches it or not) whose members sometimes form terrorist cells is going to get a bad rap. I don't believe most people are skeptical about Islam because of religious differences (and I'm talking about Europeans and Americans). If Christians and Jews (and I'm talking about Europeans and Americans again) were against Islam for religious reasons, I think they would also be just as against other religions, including Buddhism and Hinduism, for example. All of this comes from my American point of view, and I'm not referring to the situation in Israel/Palestine, because I know there are religious differences that are very different from what I'm talking about.

(Here comes an off-topic aside...) I believe religion offers many things to people, including spiritual enlightenment and a guideline to living a better life. Religion also divides and breeds hate in some cases, many cases, actually, and I sometimes wonder if it's worth it. If anyone has seen the Indian movie "Earth", maybe you'll understand a little of what I'm talking about.

Or the powerfulJewish lobby in the States?