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I believe Judaism and the Jewish people have survived throughout history, despite many existential threats because we kept our moral system according to our cultural conscience. It was certainly not because we were the strongest or most brutal. In fact, most of our enemies who conspired to annihilate us are long gone while we are still here. That should show you that brute force is not the long term solution...
Survived just. The Holocaust changed everything. Had the Nazis won the war, we would not be having this discussion now. And the reason why the Nazis did not win the war was because there were people who were willing to do anything, whatever it took, to win the war.Originally Posted by sharonbn
Personally, would not want me, my wife and my children to be dead noble peace prize winners in other words, winners of the Darwin Award. But to each his own.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
Completely fabricated.
The kingdom of Israel warred incessantly on the other Levantine polities, accomplishing massive ethnic cleansing- how the hell do you think they took all that territory to begin with? Flowers and chocolates? The Judeans (along with the Arameans) eviscerated the Pilishtim, the Maccabeas gutted and probably starved at least 50% of the Idomians and the Iturians, and converted the rest. Brutal campaigns were waged on military and "civilian" targets of the Nabateans and the Greek invaders; and certainly the Egyptians every chance they could. The Sicari slaughtered thousands of Romans and sympathizers after Herods time.
Bar Kohba massacred scores of Romans to free our land from occupation. They were as brutal as their neighbors and that is one fundamental reason you can speak Hebrew, have Jewish blood in your veins and claim that land you live on as Jewish at all. We took it by brutal force and kept it for 1500 years minimally under our sovereign control while beating back hordes of other invaders. And when we lost, we were massacred and ethnically cleansed, almost to extinction many times.
When the Jews were not sovereign and could not fight, they either fled, or perished en mass. During the Chmelnitski "massacre", aka Ashkenazi Holocaust 1, 10s if not 100s of thousands of Jews died, more than decimated, only 2000 families supposedly survived in the Ukrainian and Belorussian parts of the Pale of Settlement. Many fled south (Thats in part how we get Yiddish in Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria), even to the Ottoman empire, where they were in turn conscripted to fight for the Turks. Just like the Sephardim 250 years prior. And die as cannon fodder on Hungarian or Austrian volleys.
When Jews did fight in e.g., WW1 and more so WW2, like my family in the regular troops, or in the partisan irregular units especially, they killed scores of Germans and their henchmen, w/o blinking an eye. Troops that were wounded or retreating most often. Absolutely no one likes to talk about it, but it was business as usual, and not controversial.
Now we hear it never happened? Total BullS*. Stop trying to form fit our history into your so called morality. You cant live with mass slaughter of Arabs, ein baya, they will be more than happy to mass murder you and yours while you make excuses.
That "narrative", BTW, is exactly the position of the Herredi anti Zionists... who prayed all along, they say, and miraculously survived-right? WRONG. They died like bugs being rolled over with an 18 wheeler. God helps those that help themselves; the parity between the Left and the Ultra Orthodox comes to the political foreground again and again.
Do you mean to say that the Greek settled here in Israel? did Greek families follower the soldiers and traveled all the way from Greece to Israel and settled here?
I know that many of the locals (emphasis on locals) happily adopted Greek culture and language. Hence we got Aristobulus and Alexander (both Greek names) as kings from the Hasmonean Dynasty. but all I heard was that the Maccabees fought greek soldiers.
Once again, which Romans were massacred? There was NEVER a Roman city in the land of Israel with Roman civilian population. There were probably civilian officials and clerks that were in charge of such popular activities as tax collection...
just like there were no Byzantine settlements, Mamluk settlements, Ottoman settlements or British ones. Only soldiers and official functionaries, representatives of the foreign ruler. No foreign invader ever attempted to settle the land.
with one exception: the Arabs. They conquered the land in 635AD from the Byzantines and later regained control from the Crusaders. the conquest was followed by mass immigration from neighboring territories. they established new villages and towns, such as Ramla.
Once again, which Germans and henchmen were killed by the scores? It is true that the allied forces carpet bombed German and Japanese cities causing mass killing of civilian population. But did the partisans entered random houses and killed whole families, men women and children?
What I don't understand is why people always think of everything in extreme terms?
One extreme is don't resist at all and let yourself, your family, your friends and people be killed instead of fighting back.
The other extreme is kill everyone in sight, including all civilians of any side that attacks.
But anything in between is not possible?
Sigh ... I wasn't going to spell out what I meant by "do whatever is necessary to win the war", But unless I do, I now understand that some people will think that I mean to use extreme measures. So I better elaborate:
What I meant was, do as much as necessary to steer towards victory. If possible, keep faith with your own morality but if the enemy does not play by the same rules and looks like gaining the upper hand by taking advantage of our scruples, then we need to relax our scruples in order not to lose and become victims. Yes, if necessary, in extreme situations this might even mean mass destruction of the enemy in order to save ourselves from mass slaughter. But surely this need not be the only option?
Who was it who said: "If you want peace, prepare for war"? Whoever it was, he was spot on. By the same token, if our enemies know that we are prepared to go to extremes, if necessary, to ensure our survival, they are less likely to threaten our survival. Conversely, if they think that every Israeli thinks like sharonbn, nothing will convince them not to threaten our very existence again. And despite sharonbn's 'religious like' confidence that once again the Jewish people will survive despite all odds, the Jewish people could easily "wake up dead". Yes, all of us. Today's modern weapon systems could easily make that a reality. And then we will all be dead heroes. Personally, I would rather see no one dead. But if we are going to be dead because of bloody minded enemies, then as a last resort, I want them to know that by doing that to us, they would be guaranteeing their own collective demise too.
Hopefully, that knowledge upfront, will guarantee that no side would need to experience mass extermination.
Sigh, that was a mouthful and somewhat convoluted. That's why I did not want to spell it out.
Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.
Author: John Galsworthy 1867-1933, British Novelist, Playwright
I agree with most of what you said, Reffo, and I suspect that bar-arallu will too. But that's avoidance of the issue (in my eyes)
That is because in the "middle" (as opposed to extremes) there is no moral conflict.
The six days war was fought (for the most part) between regular armies using conventional weapons. While there are conflicting views on the results of the war, there is little to no argument regarding the course of the war itself.
like you said - if you and your enemy maintain (again - for the most part) the rules of engagement, than no one will claim "lets nuke them".
The real test for one's moral values come when you're facing an enemy who doesn't uphold the same values.
What should a soldier do when the enemy hides among civillian population? is it ok to use civilians as shields in urban warfare?
wow..do you know the history or WWII? those two bombs literally stopped an invasion, whos estimated of killed or wounded was over a million... vs 200,000 dead Japanese from the bombs.
a few numbers about the invasion that was planned
The Vice Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, Vice Admiral Takijirō Ōnishi, predicted up to 20 million Japanese deaths.[13]
estimated the invading Allies would suffer between 1.7 and 4 million casualties in such a scenario, of whom between 400,000 and 800,000 would be dead, while Japanese casualties would have been around 5 to 10 million
or perhaps the fire bombing of Tokyo
10 March 1945: 334 B-29s dropping incendiaries destroy ~267,000 buildings; ~25% of city[8] (Operation Meetinghouse) killing some 100,000
vs Hiroshima where 80,000 were killed out right and another 70,000 injured
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the simple fact is, that the two A bombs saved millions of lives...ignoring that for some "knee jerk" reaction is absurd. You might as well as go back and claim the machine gun is pure evil as it killed hundreds of thousands in WWI and WWII
or perhaps death by being firebombed is "not so evil"
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and if it keeps our neighbors a little bit nervous that they too might lose their lives if they attack us en mass, then its not so evil
we already did the "moral" thing and let them kills us, it really didn't work out too well.....
yes, I know the history of WWII, do you?
1) soldiers are not civilians. They are not "protected" under the same moral restrictions. You are not supposed to save the lives of your troops at the expense of civilian lives of the enemy.
2) by the time the A bomb was dropped, the Japanese were already ready to surrender (there are many evidence to that). all they wanted at that time was to save the position of their emperor. i.e. they refused to Truman's "unconditional surrender" demand, and wanted to negotiate terms.
So in order to avoid the lives of "only" 80,000 civilians, the all that was required was to agree to negotiate terms of surrender.
3) The mainstream historian view of today claims that the dropping of the A bomb was not even meant to achieve unconditional Japanese surrender (as was mentioned above, it was game over for them by that time), but as a card in the (new) game of the cold war vs Stalin's Russia.
PS
the fire bombing of Tokyo falls under "carpet bombing" which I also mentioned in my post (and I do consider that a war crime, especially in the case of the bombing of Dresden which was motivated purely out of revenge)
The real test for one's moral values come when you're facing an enemy who doesn't uphold the same values.
What should a soldier do when the enemy hides among civillian population? is it ok to use civilians as shields in urban warfare?
sharon..its not really much of a test......if those who are shooting at us from those 'civilian areas" and we might get killed, then we kill them first, using overwhelming force (disproportionate to use the leftest dictionary).
its not much of value test, since every army will do the same to save their own soldiers.....if there is no direct threat, one can play around take their time and blow up the building when the kids are at school, but if there is a unit in trouble because of that building....it will be brought down.
what?..of course we do....do you really think i'm going to let my guys get killed one by one, when i can call in an artillery strike or tell that merkave next to me, to blow away that sniper in the third floor...kids or no kids?
do you know ANY one who let their kids get killed because of some civilians were protecting the shooters.
and that was the lesson of WWI.....unconditional surrender was the way to destroy those evil societies and rebuild them as western democracies, which had a far better chance of preserving long term peace.2) by the time the A bomb was dropped, the Japanese were already ready to surrender (there are many evidence to that). all they wanted at that time was to save the position of their emperor. i.e. they refused to Truman's "unconditional surrender" demand, and wanted to negotiate terms.
that was the success of the those two bombs....unconditional surrender, and it worked
short term "feel good morality" is foolish.....history is full of those examples, especially around here
then please explain why did the US army lost 3000 soldiers in the latest war in Iraq.
why not carpet bomb Bahgdad? why not drop a nuclear bomb on that country?
I can guarantee you it would bring unconditional surrender...
ha ha ha
the unconditional surrender of WWI brought the NAZI regime and WWII.
the lesson from that was the Marshall plan. go read about it.
short lesson After WWII, the western democracies rebuilt the educational system of germany, rewrote the school books, removed all the biases and taught the new generations a "new history" taught then new western democratic values, etc.
The marshal plan worked because the allies had complete control over it, giving money away incase you didnt notice, doesnt always help if there is no social change as well (our neighbors are the obvious example)
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same was needed for japan that had no western democratic values, didnt even know of them, that too required western control which comes only with unconditional surrender.
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that was why unconditional surrender was the goal and was stated in the beginning
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iraq?.....why use nuclear bomb? it wasnt needed, nor was carpet bombing...the problem was not the surrender, its what came after.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone would just get along?
Until that happens, sitting back and wishing for the best is not an option.
Having a nuclear weapon doesn't mean one must use it, but it makes 'the other guy' think twice before flipping the switch.
Pray for the peace of Israel
The answer is yes. 3-4 times actually. Ionian type greeks, as "sea peoples," aka Pilishtim not only settled southern Levant, but everything from the Horn of Anatolia down to the Nile. They brought everything from families to dogs and cattle. Again it happened in the elite settlement during the reign of the Seleucid Empire and the Ptolomaic Empire. Both Greek. Assyrians furthermore gutted half the community or more of Israel, and replaced it with colonists from Assyria. The shomronim are most probably derived from this implantation. Ezra bemoaned it, and rejected the colonists as being Jews. Even though they practiced some sort of syncretic, nominal, form of ancient Judaism.
Their legacy is the kulturkampf waged on all things hellenic, which extended into the religious bifurcation of Parism (field/decentralized priesthood/Levim) vs Tsadukim (which were the majority of the Cohen Temple priesthood, aligned with the Greeks); that is, the alignment with Persian interests vs Greek Interests, and the attack on all thing "Helenist", which to this day is pejorative among the Rabbinical Heredim, who are a pharisaic derived after all. You dont have comparable polemics by Samaritans or Karaite Jews, who plainly are not derived the same.I know that many of the locals (emphasis on locals) happily adopted Greek culture and language. Hence we got Aristobulus and Alexander (both Greek names) as kings from the Hasmonean Dynasty. but all I heard was that the Maccabees fought greek soldiers.
That said, there was settlement by Seleucid Empire across Syria and Judah (and Nabatea). They intentionally set up polis states and put in not only garrisons but had governors, and all the trappings of Greek life, which included everything from artisans, wine makers to butchers etc... Exactly the same way that Jews and everyone else creates communities.
You've read Josephus? The Florus/Urine riots? We dont have exact numbers or even estimates. But the assumptions I've heard in my history courses were in the 1000s, strictly due to estimates of classical period era bureaucracy sizing. It is assumed to be comparable to other places, like better documented Greek and Roman occupations in Anatolia and Gaul.Once again, which Romans were massacred? There was NEVER a Roman city in the land of Israel with Roman civilian population. There were probably civilian officials and clerks that were in charge of such popular activities as tax collection...
It's not only the issue of settlement that I had issue with your overarching statement, no need to tune it, a simple retraction will do. It was the fact that Jews fought tooth and nail and, when they could not, they fled or were killed en mass. When they did fight they fought total wars, with nothing off limits. There was nothing special about our methodology of warfare. Nothing at all. We know that there were non garrisoned Greeks and Romans living in Judea at various points, and other Canaanites before that. *They did all disappear* on occasion. It wasn't voluntary. During the Sicari activity and Bar Kohba insurection, we know that foreigners and their helpers were specifically targeted. Not only military, across the board. BK per se forced every Roman to leave Judea. Jan Hurcanus the Maccibee, I gather you have selective reading skills, so I say this *again*, slaughtered scores of Idumeans, aka Edomites. Who are Cananites not Arabs.just like there were no Byzantine settlements, Mamluk settlements, Ottoman settlements or British ones. Only soldiers and official functionaries, representatives of the foreign ruler. No foreign invader ever attempted to settle the land.
1. Jews should not use the term "AD". We should use the academic word, CE. Do you know what AD stands for?with one exception: the Arabs. They conquered the land in 635AD from the Byzantines and later regained control from the Crusaders. the conquest was followed by mass immigration from neighboring territories. they established new villages and towns, such as Ramla.
Sure, this skips over the stage for the events, as I mention. Post Bar Kohba, post Exilarch period, there were far fewer Jews... the Alaxandrian revolt brought most Jews into Roman and Byzantine holdings up north, or so it is debated today. The failed Samaritan revold decimated their numbers as well. By 685, there was virtually nothing left of a sizable Jewish community. Though some held on, not only in Ramla but in Jerusalem and Hebron too. I'm not too sure how this works toward anything supporting your stated argument that Jews did not fight, and then, completely and comparably to every entity that attacked them.
Absolutely. Wounded, feeling Germans where killed by the 10 thousands. By Russians and yes by Jews that were members of the regular army and partisans. Ukranians caught by the partisans helping Germans were immediately executed. In the 1000s if not 10k range, and believe me they remember that to this day and we are not their favorite people in the world.Once again, which Germans and henchmen were killed by the scores?
Hell yes. Random = collaborationist. Romanians, Ukranian, Latvian, Lithuanian. *Every house* I would say, at some point, not just random ones. Do you even know how many German women were rapped by the Red Army in the end of WW2? Do you know how many Germans where completely ethnically cleansed at gun point (a minority shot on sight) in Koningsburg, in Western Poland, in Bohemia? How many Hungarians in the Carpathian Ukraine by the USSR? I gather not.... I dont feel particularly happy or vindicated about any of that stuff, but you should be conscious of the fact that it did happen and Jews were conscripted by the Russians in the same units.It is true that the allied forces carpet bombed German and Japanese cities causing mass killing of civilian population. But did the partisans entered random houses and killed whole families, men women and children?
This pretty much sums up how I see it. No need for a history lesson. It's just basic common sense we don't defang ourselves until our friendly neighbors defang themselves as well.
"Study astronomy and physics if you desire to comprehend the relation between the world and G-d's management of it." - RaMBaM (Maimonides), Guide For The Perplexed
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