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SOME DEFINITIONS (Yeah, right)
Posted Apr 16, 2002
ZIONISM: A heartless, fascistic entity amounting to nothing more than vicious, acrimonious racism.
COMMUNISM: Essentially totalitarianism, which negates people's free will and wishes to make them all the same.
CAPITALISM: Obviously, the only solution to all the world's problems.
MISCONCEPTION: All of the above.
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Latest reply: Apr 16, 2002
THE NEW ISRAELI CONSTITUTION
Posted Mar 29, 2002
SECTION 1: Israel's Rights
1. Israel has a right to exist.
2. Israel has a right to exist free from the fear of terror.
3. The people of Israel have the right to choose their own government.
4. Israel has the right to defend itself against its enemies, but first it must be sure of two things:
i: The definition of "defend."
ii: Who its enemies are.
SECTION 2: Israel's Wrongs
1. Israel does not have the right to occupy territories where their presence is uncessecary and innapropriate.
2. As a relative democratic power, Israel does not have the right to blow the s**t out of anything on a whim.
3. Israel does not have the right to oppress helpless, impoverished Palisintians.
SECTION 3: What Israel must do
1. Pull out of all occupied territories.
2. Make an immediate distinction between terrorists (who want to annihilate Israel and ultimately Judaism) and regular Palistinians (who, for the most part, just want Israel to leave them alone.)
3. Remember: Every year the Jewish people celebrate Passover, the festival commemorating our Exodus from slavery in Egypt. Every year we affirm that, as we were once oppressed, the plight of the oppressed everywhere earns our support. Think about it.
4. Ultimately, give the Palistinians their own state. It's just RIGHT, g-ddammit.
SECTION 4: The Science of Terror
Terrorism in Israel must stop.
Palistinian terrorists must be eradicated.
However, the necessity for this eradication does not justify the murder of innocent Palistinians.
The world at large must realise that the men slaughtering Israelis as they eat or shop are not after independence or freedom from oppression. They want terrible, retributory destruction. They cannot be allowed to triumph.
Similarly, the actions of Israel are unjustified and wrong. The lion cannot continue to crush the mice in this manner.
SECTION 5: The Solution?
Two states, and an immediate start on making up for all the years when, instead of talking, we were at each others throats.
G-d promised the land of Israel to the descendants of Abraham.
That means Muslims too.
In the end, Jews and Muslims are followers of like creeds, like rules, and like faiths.
Far more unites us than divides us, and it is imperative that we remember this.
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Latest reply: Mar 29, 2002
UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENCE
Posted Feb 15, 2002
All black people are criminals or savages.
Asians are stealing our jobs.
Jews are money grabbing liars.
Arabs are terrorists.
Romanies are thieves.
A black girl in a London school was one questioned by her teacher;
"Where are you from?" the teacher asked.
"Kensington, miss."
"No, where were you born?"
Puzzled, the child replied "I was born in a hospital in East London, miss."
"No, no," said the teacher, "before that."
Racism, and hatred, has always existed. Wherever there is difference, there is hatred.
It’s a fact; man hates what is different to him.
When the British Empire first spread to Africa, the Imperialists were terrified of the natives. Who were these people with brown skin? They had heard, maybe seen, but never really examined these natives. They were, to these men who had grown up seeing only other white men, as different as is possible.
I do not blame the Empire for fearing difference, for fearing the unknown. Sadly, it is human nature to do so. The blame does not lie with the fear of the difference, but with the reaction to the fear. Instead of talking, negotiating, discovering these people, the frightened Imperialists kept their distance, and instead of finding out the truth they made up their own facts to appease their fears. Shockingly, those same "facts" are echoed in the opinions of modern society, the ones mentioned at the beginning.
So what can be done to crush this terrible evil? This evil that has caused more deaths, more torment, and more suffering than any other evil known to our planet? How can we stop man hating what is different?
The initial answer is obvious; eradicate difference. It seems logical that if everyone is the same, there will be no hatred. No inequality. And indeed, some societies have tried to do just that; adopt a totalitarian regime to eradicate difference. But this, sadly, can never work. When this happens, the monotony of the society becomes controlling, dictating, and impossible to escape from.
Difference is the very thing that keep us going, keeps us motivated, keeps us alive. Imagine a society where everyone was the same. Everyone thought the same, acted the same, and believed the same. Imagine that society.
Think about it.
How, in such a society, would anyone muster up the strength to work, learn, educate or even think. Everybody is the same. Everybody has the same opinions. There is nowhere else to go. When such a society is allowed to come into being, people suffer.
When people try to eradicate difference, they merely create suffering. They eradicate it forcefully, fascistically, brutally, and forget that we are not, and will never be all the same. What is right for some is not so for others. We must learn and remember that. Furthermore, we must know that difference is not something to be hated, nor is it something to be gotten rid of. It must be kept alive, respected, and above all, understood.
I am different. I am different to every one of you. Just as every one of you is different to every one else. I am not just different because I have a different religion, skin colour, hair colour, eye colour or any physical feature you can pick out, I am different inside. My thoughts are different, my feelings are different, my beliefs are different. Just as yours are. I surely have a right to look, feel and believe as I choose, without people fearing me or hating me for it. I say again; do not hate difference, understand it.
When we understand difference we will see that it does not need to be feared. We will be able to hold a mirror to our own lives, our own differences, and the fear that other people must have of us. When we understand difference we will finally realise the one thing that binds us all; we are all human, and that is a strong enough bridge to unite every one of us, however big our differences.
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Latest reply: Feb 15, 2002
BEING A JEW
Posted Feb 15, 2002
"It's hard," I said to my friend Stacey, "being the only Jew in the school."
She looks at me contemplatively. I think she's about to utter some profound words of support.
"What about Joel?" she says.
"Joel is a Jehova's Witness, Stace," I reply.
The same expression appears on her face.
"But..." she pasues..."but...they're the same thing...aren't they?"
Now, dear Stacey isn't exactly affluent in the old brains department, but the ignorance which exists towards my religion and organised religion as a whole within the majority of teenage society is worrying.
It is almost impossible for me to be Jewish. I am convinced that I am the butt of some gigantic cosmic joke, whereby G-d has placed me in my current locale and amongst this peer group as some kind of 'test of character.'
The order of the day for my peers is very, very clearly defined: Apathy.
I am vulnerable not only because I hold extreme political views (you're not meant to hold any political views at all, says the adolescent code, you'r not meant to care) but also because I'm a practising Jew. (Jew? Jew? Something to do with religion, aint it? Sorry, no way.)
Apathy is a terrible, terrible evil. From apathy springs ignorance, from ignorance fear, and from fear springs hatred.
I do not want everyone to become learned scholars of Judaic law, but knowing the difference between a Jew and Jehovas Witness would make it just a little bit easier for me to live a Jewish life in a totally secular community.
Of course, there are exceptions. My best friends, my real friends, know not to ask me out on a Friday night, because I'm celebrating the Jewish ceremony of Shabbat. They don't even have to know that much detail. Just know and accept that my social calendar cannot be totally complicit with everyone else's - I have other commitments.
I suppose it is some kind of perverse credit to my tenacity that I have managed to retain my Jewish identity in the face of the crushing apathy (and sometimes disdain) of my peers. I think it fair to say that my Jewish identity has actually been strengthened living where I do - I've had to fight to retain it, somethig I would not have had to do had I grown up in Edgware, Manchester or Glasgow.
Anyway, the points I'm trying to drag out here is this; No-one should ever be victimised for having conviction, be it religious, political or of any other nature.
Dispelling apathy and ignorance of all sorts is something I place very high on my 'Things To Do When I Rule The World List.'
When mankind has conquered apathy, he can begin to conquer ignorance. And when ignorance is eradicated, then, and only then, will man be able to live in something resembling harmony with his fellow man.
'Keyn Y'hi Ratzon.'
May this be G-d's will.
(You can read more about the neccessity of eradicating ignorance in my next essay.)
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Latest reply: Feb 15, 2002
BEING A JEW...
Posted Dec 24, 2001
BEING A JEW: If you have begun to read this essay, finish it. It makes little sense unless fully read.
An essay by Shalom Rubenstein.
It is very hard for me to be Jewish.
I have concluded that, second only to the remotest, barrenest, remotest, most life-forsaken corner of the driest desert, my village is the most secular community on the face of the earth.
I am certain that I am the butt of some gigantic cosmic joke, by which G-d has selected me to observe how a Jew flounders and struggles when bombarded by the secular temptations of western society.
On top of all this, I have had the misfortune of being born in such a year that guarantees I hit adolescence at the very time when the world is at the peak of its insistence to stop me from being religious.
It is nigh on impossible for me to uphold half the laws my faith requires, and I resent society because of it.
But nevertheless, I am still Jewish.
I have not renounced the very foundations of my existence just because modern teenage culture required it.
I have refused to give up, just as many Jews have refused to in the past. The very fact that Judaism still exists, despite the incomprehensible horrors it has endured, is the greatest testimony and accolade it could receive.
Our tenacity is nothing short of incredible, and it has given seed to many triumphs of our culture, perhaps none more incredible than the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.
Many men and women were pivotal in this wondrous event, but at the base of it all was one man; the father of modern Zionism; Theodore Herzl.
At a time when Israel is very much at the centre of the news, it is important to reflect on why it really exists.
The thousands who were mercilessly butchered in New York are the victims of a struggle in which both sides are wrong, yet both sides are too stubborn to admit it.
While I make no secret of being outwardly, conceptually at least, pro-Israel, a passionate Zionist even, I cannot condone many of Israel’s actions under Shiron in this war. (And it is a war.) But while I realise that we too have been stubborn, and in many of our actions downright wrong, I cannot believe anyone would deny we have had a pretty raw deal too.
Not only have hundreds of our innocent civilians been murdered, but everyone else in the world seems to be against us as well.
We hear of reports informing us of how ‘little Muhammad Al-Nissr will not be handing in his homework tomorrow…another victim of Zionist barbarism.’
They were obviously not this blunt, but essentially this message is being conveyed to an impressionable British public with a history for xenophobia.
When I was in Spain, I read posters raging against ‘Jewish Barbarians,’ and I recently learnt of how Arab schoolchildren in Israel are taught to chant ‘Kill the heathen Jews. The Jews must be killed.’
I assure you, those facts are quite true. (I do wish to add, however, that this right wing anti-Semitic view is obviously not apparent throughout the Islamic world. It resides within a tiny minority of Muslims, just as anti-Islamic feeling resides with in a tiny minority of Jews. I would be distraught if anyone were to think I was an Islamophobe.) I think it pivotal that we make the distinction between the genuine, freedom fighting Palestinians upon whom the British media focuses (with these I can easily sympathise, and, looking at Judaic history, even empathise), and the terrorists who are responsible for the suicide bombings. British media labels all Palestinians as freedom fighters who desire peace. While many are, it is important to realise that terrorist organisations like Hizbollah and Hamas do not want peace. They want to destroy Israel and ultimately Judaism.
One would not be far wrong in thinking that the world’s media is indeed against Israel, seemingly wishing to stop it existing in the same way secular temptations of society seem to want to stop me from being a Jew.
It is pivotal, therefore, now, more than ever, to look back, and concentrate on why Israel really exists, and to take a look at the dream of the man who started it.
France, 1894, and a young Hungarian Jewish journalist is dispatched to cover a case that is stirring up controversy in France.
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish soldier, has been scapegoated, and falsely accused of spying for German. He is given a puppet trial, and found guilty.
Anti-Jewish riots break out all over France, in areas where Jews had previously enjoyed equal rights.
The journalist took a moment to ponder his own Judaism; He had always taken it for granted before now, but upon seeing how easily anti-Semitic hatreds could surface, incited by nothing but one false trial, he recognised a problem.
He concluded that Jews would only ever be truly safe from this hatred when they had their own state; a state governed by Jews, inhabited by Jews, and a safe haven for Jews everywhere.
This state was Israel, and the young Hungarian was Theodore Herzl. He saw how easily the Jews could be used as scapegoats in Europe where they were in a minority, and he knew that this was dangerous.
It is a chilling thought when one contemplates that Herzl was indeed exactly right; Anti-Semitic feeling could easily be incited, as they were incited to almost apocalyptic effects forty five years after the Dreyfus case with the shocking events of the Shoa.
Herzl died in 1904, and never lived to see his dream become a reality, but in 1948, when my race was still in deep shock from the most catastrophic obscenity inflicted on any ethnicity in history, the state of Israel gained independence.
Its nationhood was instantly, literally instantly, thrown into the balance when war broke out.
Israel, newborn, weak, with an army using homemade weapons, Israel had to stand up to the unquestionable might of the Arab Coalition, which was essentially the rest of the Middle East.
In typical style, Israel won, but it has been fighting ever since.
I admire Theodore Herzl, and the state of Israel, because, in the face of bitter resistance from forces far stronger than itself, they fought on.
Herzl ultimately won his battle, and I pray nightly that Israel should win its.
‘If only you will it, it is no dream.’
T.Herzl
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Latest reply: Dec 24, 2001
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Shalom Rubenstein
Researcher U187085
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