Does he do this for the benefit of his own people, or is he actually deluded enough to think the world will listen to him? I mean, he's got to be alienating even Europe with statements like this. So I was thinking who was craziest: President of Venezuela, N. Korea, or Iran? I wish I could do a poll.
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Wow, iran isn't exactly on good terms with the rest of the world as it is. I'm not sure that they need to be bringing more trouble down on themselves.
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I think he's posturing so he appears strong domestically, though it's entirely possible that he believes those things. I'm not sure how well it's going to work for him.
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That was my impression too twinky. If I were him I would worry that my local posturing would create international consequences.
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It's hard to say. He might feel that international consequences are inevitable, and that therefore he may as well shore up his domestic support as best he can. It could also be that he's a megalomaniac and wants attention of any type. My current theory is that he's trying to improve his domestic support so he can show the international community that the Iranian people are behind him (regardless of whether or not that's the case) and stall any international consequences until after they have at least one nuclear bomb.
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With the idiocy that the US ambassador is spouting at Canadians being only the latest example, the DubyaAdministration is equally lacking in contact with anything vaguely resembling reality.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: With the idiocy that the US ambassador is spouting at Canadians being only the latest example, the DubyaAdministration is equally lacking in contact with anything vaguely resembling reality.
If you want to attempt to equate the two, that's fine aspectre. However, that to me indicates being out of touch with reality.
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quote: If I were him I would worry that my local posturing would create international consequences.
What's odd is that many people seem to think worrying about the international consequences of local posturing is a sign of weakness in their leaders.
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quote:Originally posted by Noemon: Can you elaborate, aspectre? What is the US ambassador saying?
Yesterday the U.S. ambassador to Canada accused Paul Martin of playing the anti-Americanism card in the context of the Canadian election campaign. A few days ago at a global climate change conference in Montreal, Martin criticized the U.S. for its environmental policy. The stupid thing about it is that Martin doesn't have a leg to stand on here, since per capita, we are actually one of the worst offenders in the world. It seems as though it was a fairly obvious ploy to distract attention from his own government's lack of action on that front by playing to Canadians' inherent sense of smug superiority and our eagerness to dump on America.
The thing is that all of the party leaders in our election want to be seen as 1) able to repair our "fractured" relationship with the U.S., and 2) able to stand up to the U.S. on issues such as the softwood lumber dispute.
On a related note, the U.S. cut its softwood lumber duties significantly last week, but did not eliminate them.
Anyway, while I think the U.S. ambassador should feel free to not stick his wrinkled nose into our election campaign, he's quite right to chastise Martin for the latter's unjustified comments. Martin shouldn't have given him an excuse. I don't think this situation is analogous to what's happening in Iran.
Added: Oh. It's also obvious that the U.S. would prefer a Conservative government under the leadership of Stephen Harper. That's basically why I'm annoyed by the ambassador's comments despite accepting them as fair; whether it's intentional or not, they're giving their preferred candidate a helping hand.
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Watch what happens. He's going to keep hollering this, like a mantra, and slowly but surely, one European politician is going to suggest that maybe it isn't the worst idea in the world, and then another, and eventually, the idea will enter into currency as a legitimate option, even to those who oppose it.
posted
Noemon, here is a decent summary of what happened. Martin today responded pretty harshly to the ambassador's comments by saying he won't be "dictated to" in terms of what subjects he will raise during the campaign.
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Out of interest, why shouldn't nations deeply concerned about the plight of the Jews offer up bits of their own countries to be Jewish territories?
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Out of interest, why shouldn't nations deeply concerned about the plight of the Jews offer up bits of their own countries to be Jewish territories?
That makes more sense than nations that don't want to welcome the Jews giving up bits of their countries.
In 1990 the curators of the Auschwitz Museum dropped their estimated death toll from 4 million down to 1.5 million. Are they guilty of this crime? It's essentially the same figures that Ernst Zundel was arrested for using.
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posted
I would guess that back in the 50's after everything that had just happened, Jews might not have felt safe in Europe.
Sadly, hoping for a peaceful utopia in Palestine didn't really work out as planned.
Would it be easier if they uprooted and moved to Europe? In the long run, probably. But it'll never be a viable option to the Israeli people, and I can't blame them for thinking that.
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Thanks twinky, both for the summary and for the link. The link is blocked from my workplace for some reason, so it'll have to wait until I get home.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Out of interest, why shouldn't nations deeply concerned about the plight of the Jews offer up bits of their own countries to be Jewish territories?
Because there's only one place on earth that is ours, and that's the land that God said is ours. You want to give us Alaska, that's cool (no pun intended). We could use the oil. But it'll never be our homeland.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Out of interest, why shouldn't nations deeply concerned about the plight of the Jews offer up bits of their own countries to be Jewish territories?
That makes more sense than nations that don't want to welcome the Jews giving up bits of their countries.
Actually, what makes the most sense is for nations making claims on our homeland to get the hell out and stop trying to kill us.
In 1990 the curators of the Auschwitz Museum dropped their estimated death toll from 4 million down to 1.5 million. Are they guilty of this crime? It's essentially the same figures that Ernst Zundel was arrested for using.
They did nothing of the sort. The 4 million was Jews who were imprisoned there ("who suffered and died"), and not only those who died.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I would guess that back in the 50's after everything that had just happened, Jews might not have felt safe in Europe.
Sadly, hoping for a peaceful utopia in Palestine didn't really work out as planned.
Peace or no peace, it's our home. It'll always be our home. We never gave up our claim to it, even after the Romans kicked us out. The fact that it was invaded by others in the interim doesn't in any way lessen our ownership. It's unfortunate for those who thought they were entitled to just take it, but we're home, and they're just going to have to deal with it.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Would it be easier if they uprooted and moved to Europe? In the long run, probably. But it'll never be a viable option to the Israeli people, and I can't blame them for thinking that.
I don't much care about (or for) the Israeli people. That land does not belong to any Israeli nationality. It belongs to the Jews. The Jews who live in Israel have certain perogatives due to the fact that they're there right now, but ownership belongs to all of us. In perpetuity.
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quote:Actually, what makes the most sense is for nations making claims on our homeland to get the hell out and stop trying to kill us
Not really a rational argument when the people making that claim consider it their homeland as well. Regardless of who is right and wrong, documentation isn't moving either group off the land.
As for your responses to what I said before: Meh. There were people there before you, and people moved in after you, I don't really see how it's different than any other land in the world when it comes to the formation of nationstates.
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posted
How is it not a rational argument? It may not be a sufficient argument for you, but "not rational" doesn't follow from what you said.
And given the forgetful tone of some of the posts here, I thought it was worth the reminder.
Oh, and what I said about the Iranian rants leading to people actually taking it seriously? Well, it just happened here on this thread. On a forum full of intelligent people. Imagine what's going to happen in the real world.
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Makes the most sense for you, perhaps, but I think it hard to say something currently seeming quite impossible makes the most sense overall.
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How is it not a rational argument? The "we got here first" mentality first of all, when they weren't the first ones there, they drove out the people that were there first, and I highly doubt all the Jews in Israel would clear out willingly just because the Caananites decided they wanted to move back in.
Also the fact that you find it irrational to move however many million Jews, but think it perfectly rational that the millions of Palestinians should leave their homes to find new ones. Shall they dig up their ancestors and take them with them when they go as well?
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: They did nothing of the sort. The 4 million was Jews who were imprisoned there ("who suffered and died"), and not only those who died.
The Auchwitz Museum, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation of Poland, etc. have all changed their figures downward since 1990, reflecting that less than 1.3 million people of any creed were killed at Auschwitz.
quote:from http://www.rense.com/general62/aauc.htm Franciszek Piper, director of the historical committee of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, said yesterday that, according to recent research, at least 1.3 million people were deported to the camp, of whom about 223,000 survived.
The 1.1 million victims included 960,000 Jews, between 70,000 and 75,000 Poles, nearly all of the 23,000 Gypsies sent to the camp and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
So with ~4 million fewer people killed at Auschwitz, why do some insist that the 6 million Jews killed figure, heavily based on the Auschwitz numbers is still accurate?
This is what Iran's president is saying. He argues that the 6-million figure is part of a myth that the Israeli government uses for leverage. When he says "They have created a myth today that they call the massacre of Jews and they consider it a principle above God, religions and the prophets," he seems to be saying this in as inflammatory a way as possible. I haven't heard of people in supposedly free countries being detained over saying God doesn't exist, yet people are tried for the supposed crime of "Holocaust Denial" (when most of them do no such thing; they point out that some of the common figures are outdated or incorrect).
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I was under the impression the number was upwards of seven million total. That number is still taught in schools, and for that matter, colleges.
What new information came to light in the 90's for the drastically reduced number?
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posted
Last week I heard about a friend's uncle who was something of a history buff and was making claims along these lines. The odd part is he would start out with "The holocaust never happened" and then when questioned about why he says that he explains that the estimates of 6 million killed weren't accurate and it was probably more like 1.5 to 2 million. My friend's reaction was pretty much the same as mine when I heard that:
Even if it is true (and I am no historian to claim which number is more accurrate), that's still a heck of a lot of dead jewish people. 1.5 million people killed still qualifies as a holocaust in my mind.
posted
I agree. But it also means that a lot of people qualify for a holocaust.
What the Americans did to the Japanese should be called a holocaust, what the Russians did to, well, themselves should be a holocaust. What the Japanese did to the Chinese and what the Chinese did to the Chinese should be called holocausts. What's going on in Darfur is a holocaust.
It isn't a word specifically reserved for the murdering of Jews is it?
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The first big lie being perpetrated here is that the statistic that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust was based on estimates that 4 million Jews were killed at Auschwitz. This is simply untrue.
Estimates of the number of people killed in the Holocaust are based on European sensus data collected before, during and after the war. Detailed records exist which contain nearly all of the names of people (Jews and non-Jews) killed in Nazi concentration camps and death camps.
And by the way, the estimate is that 11-12 million people were killed in the Holocaust -- 6 million Jews and 6 million non-Jews. I find it utterly repugnant that half the people murdered are left out of the count simply because they were not Jews.
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Lyrhawn, Holocaust is a word reserved for what happened in World War II simply because it is. Genocide is the general word that you're actually looking for describes the intended extermination of a people because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual preference, etc. Considering that the US didn't try to exterminate the Japanese, the Russians didn't try to exterminate themselves (same for the Chinese), and the Japanese weren't looking to so much exterminate the Chinese as they were trying to subjugate them and perform horrible experiments on them none of those examples could even be considered genocide. Dafur is the only case I would agree qualifies and unfortunately after past discussions on this forum it seems most people don't even agree on that.
Tom, I already remember you bringing up this frankly ignorant point before just phrased differently. Look, Jews were not the first occupants of modern Israel's borders and they may very well not be the last, however Jews do have a legitimate claim on that specific land. Not only have Jews continuously occupied it longer than any other group of people that are currently around today, but it holds religious significance that some random peice of Europe does not. What you may not realize is that even after the forced Exodus of the vast majority of Jews from Israel is as a group the Jews have always wanted to return to Israel exemplified by the yearly prayer at Passover, "Next year in Jerusalem." All of this is why the desire for a Jewish state is called Zionism, Zion being a mountain in the Holy Land, as opposed to Israelism or some other name.
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quote: Look, Jews were not the first occupants of modern Israel's borders and they may very well not be the last, however Jews do have a legitimate claim on that specific land.
Your definition of "legitimate" here appeals to an authority I can't quite recognize. They WANT the land, certainly. Many of them have ancestors from the area. And they used to rule a portion of it for a relatively short time. Does this constitute a "legitimate claim?" Or does the legitimacy of that claim stem from the fact that they really, really think they ought to have the land, in the form of an unsigned mandate from God Himself?
Seriously, I appreciate that a lot of people want to live in Israel, for whatever reason. But "legitimate" claims to territory are a lot like "inherent" human rights.
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Maybe if you read the whole the post you would hae seen the part where I gave reasons for a legitimate claim based on non religious reasons. However, since the Muslims who also claim the land based on their own religious reasons accept the Jewish Bible as truth I think we can actually use it a real source since both sides largely accept its authority. Regardless, you didn't ask for "legitimate" reasons why Israel belongs to the Jews, but why scraps of Europe wouldn't be a suitable alternative and I've certainly given you legitimate reasons for that.
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quote: Maybe if you read the whole the post you would hae seen the part where I gave reasons for a legitimate claim based on non religious reasons.
Again, your "legitimate" claim is based on ancestral presence. I'm afraid that this gives people a great reason to WANT to live somewhere, but it's not typically enforceable in court.
That many Jews would rather live in Israel than in Europe is something I appreciate. I myself would, especially on these cold winter nights, not mind living somewhere a little warmer. But there's a huge distinction between thinking that Hawaii might be a nice place to live and insisting that Hawaii has been ceded to me by God, so everyone currently there had better get out.
That the Holocaust gave moral authority to Zionism is understandable. But I think the insistence on Zion as a place does Zionism itself a disservice, and certainly risks all of its goals for what I consider to be a short-sighted focus on the supernatural properties of a thin strip of desert.
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quote:Holocaust is a word reserved for what happened in World War II simply because it is.
OT, but if Holocaust only refers to WWII, then what is Westley talking about in The Princess Bride when he asks for a Holocaust Cloak?
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If your family once had a house in Hawaii, but had been illegally evicted and forced to leave Hawaii, but had never gave up on the land that was rightfully yours I would support your claim to regain your house. Of course, its not the general policy of Zionism that "everyone currently there had better get out." Also keep in mind that when Israel was founded it wasn't in the possesion of the local Arabs either so by your logic that the last owners should be the current owners doesn't hold water. Furthermore, at this point why is it OK for Arabs who left Israel to come back and claim Israel for themselves, but not for the Jews before them to?
I'm not just insisting Zion is a place, its really there, you can visit it if you want so I can't imagine how any disservice to anything is being performed.
If you're going to ask for Jews to stop caring about Israel's religious significance then you had better be prepared to ask the same of Muslims and Christians as well. Since that's not going to happen for anyone you might as well accept that there is no acceptable alternative to Israel as a homeland for the Jews.
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Has anyone read a book called The Chosen? It explains that some Jews thought they should wait for God to bring them back into Zion, and that some Jews thought they should form there own nationstate right after WWII ended. Whats the deal with that?
I don't know how to actually quote this so I'll just copy/paste it.
" Also keep in mind that when Israel was founded it wasn't in the possesion of the local Arabs either..." posted by Newfoundlogic.
was it unoccupied? There were probably Arab tribes hanging out by thier bad nomad selves at least, even if no recognized goverment was established.
Also I belive (now, I'm not a Theologist so bear with me)that that land was promised to the seed of Abraham, who aparently is everybody over there's dad. If I'm not mistaken, Jewish people believe that their line of dissent is actually the true one because it comes from Abrahams legitimate marriage.
Now with all that said, is this really just a fammily dispute on a global scale? Some people need to really be more carefull over what they are killing each other about.
quote:"If your civilization consists of aggression, making oppressed people homeless, suffocating the voices of justice and bringing poverty to a majority of the world's people, we say loudly that we hate your hollow civilization," he said.
Riiiiiiiight... so the West climbs above the middle ages and creates a bright way of life with technology, welfare, education, and capitalism... and suddenly we're stealing from them?
All this is just demagoguery by Iran...ssdd...to give their oppressed people a scapegoat that isn't their government. The Arab governments often remind me of little children. They need to grow up.
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quote:This is what Iran's president is saying. He argues that the 6-million figure is part of a myth that the Israeli government uses for leverage.
Why are you bending over backwards to cast what he says in the best possible light? He didn't say it was exaggerated, he called it a bloody myth. If he meant to say, "It wasn't as bad as they claim it was," he would have said that, man.
You've forgotten who you're dealing with due to your distaste for...something, I don't know. Israelis. Your own government. Who the hell ever. The leader of Iran hates Jews, would like the ones in Israel at least all dead and gone, and thinks they've made up a myth called the Holocaust in order to justify their presence in the Middle East. End of story.
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posted
Halocaust doesn't just mean genocide, it also means (and this is from dictionary.com): A sacrificial offering that is consumed entirely by flames or great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire. My guess (and this is just a guess, mind) is that the term was first applied to the genocide of the Jews during WWII because of the way in which so many Jews were killed and the ancient Jewish tradition of burnt offerings. I'm in no way trying to imply that the Jewish people themselves were a sacrifice, I'm just looking into the history of word's current usage.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: How is it not a rational argument? The "we got here first" mentality first of all, when they weren't the first ones there, they drove out the people that were there first, and I highly doubt all the Jews in Israel would clear out willingly just because the Caananites decided they wanted to move back in.
There are no Canaanites. And if they were, they've anyway stopped asserting title to the land for well over two thousand years.
We never stopped asserting our claim. There was just nothing we could do about it.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Also the fact that you find it irrational to move however many million Jews, but think it perfectly rational that the millions of Palestinians should leave their homes to find new ones. Shall they dig up their ancestors and take them with them when they go as well?
Hey, someone on this very board said that it wasn't unreasonable to suggest that five million Israelis be uprooted and transplanted elsewhere. If that's so, then it's even less unreasonable to suggest that a million or so Palestinians be moved. Particularly when there's actually an Arab country on the majority of the land that used to be called Palestine. Moving Israel to Alaska makes a lot less sense than moving Palestine to Palestine. I mean Jordan.
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quote:Originally posted by starLisa: They did nothing of the sort. The 4 million was Jews who were imprisoned there ("who suffered and died"), and not only those who died.
The Auchwitz Museum, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Nation of Poland, etc. have all changed their figures downward since 1990, reflecting that less than 1.3 million people of any creed were killed at Auschwitz.
Oh, that's nice. Reference one of the biggest Holocaust denial sites on the Internet. It's pretty clear where you're coming from.
Here, read this. It was the Soviets and the Poles who came up with the 4 million figure. It was most likely derived from Eichmann's estimate that 4 million Jews had been killed in the camps ([i]all of them; not just Auschwitz[i]) and another million shot or otherwise killed by mobile units.
Or check this out for simple proof that Nato and his sources are simply making this up. The estimates for Auschwitz have been down in the 1 million range since at least 1968.
quote:Originally posted by Nato: So with ~4 million fewer people killed at Auschwitz, why do some insist that the 6 million Jews killed figure, heavily based on the Auschwitz numbers is still accurate?
The 6 million figure isn't based on 4 million at Auschwitz. It's based on 4 million at all the camps. I can't figure out if you're personally trying to play propaganda games or if you've simply been misinformed. Either way, you're wrong.
quote:Originally posted by Nato: This is what Iran's president is saying.
No. What Iran's president is doing is trying to obliterate the State of Israel. He's trying to kick the Jews out of our own land.
quote:Originally posted by Nato: I haven't heard of people in supposedly free countries being detained over saying God doesn't exist, yet people are tried for the supposed crime of "Holocaust Denial" (when most of them do no such thing; they point out that some of the common figures are outdated or incorrect).
Fraud gets prosecuted. Bummer. As to whether the anti-denial laws in Europe are okay... well, I personally think they aren't. But Europe has always been big on controlling people. I don't believe you can get prosecuted for Holocaust denial in the US, and that's a good thing.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I agree. But it also means that a lot of people qualify for a holocaust.
What the Americans did to the Japanese should be called a holocaust,
Pardon me? Are you talking about the internment camps? Are you saying that those were death camps, where the Japanese were methodically exterminated, with the goal of eliminating ever Japanese person on the face of the earth?
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: what the Russians did to, well, themselves should be a holocaust. What the Japanese did to the Chinese and what the Chinese did to the Chinese should be called holocausts. What's going on in Darfur is a holocaust.
A little perspective, please. War sucks. And personally, I don't know enough about what's going on in Darfur to know whether this is war or not. Even if it's war, it doesn't excuse atrocities. But you cannot compare it, either way, to a nation deciding, coldly, to kill every single Jew in the world. Particularly when the Jews weren't at war with them. All the Jews wanted was to be the best Germans and Poles and Russians and whatever that they could be. They were a completely peaceful population, and a decision was made to exterminate them.
I personally get tired of hearing about the Holocaust, because I get it already. And I'm sick of the "Jewish history began at Auschwitz" nonsense that some Jews who've abandoned Judaism and need a historical anchor seem to have glommed onto (Spielberg, for instance).
But I'm starting to understand in this thread why it needs to be remembered. If someone can honestly compare an attempt to exterminate a peaceful population whose only crime was being different with whatever atrocities you can imagine being perpetrated against a belligerant enemy, they need a wake up call, and they need it now.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It isn't a word specifically reserved for the murdering of Jews is it?
It wasn't just the murdering of Jews. Read a history book.
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quote: Because there's only one place on earth that is ours, and that's the land that God said is ours.
It's really a shame that no one held on to the deed.
Well, not only did we hold onto the deed, but I can give you tons of historical material from Christians and Muslims that will testify to our continued impassioned claims to ownership of the land and intent to return. Generally speaking, they found it hilarious and pitiful, but that's kind of beside the point.
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quote:Holocaust is a word reserved for what happened in World War II simply because it is.
OT, but if Holocaust only refers to WWII, then what is Westley talking about in The Princess Bride when he asks for a Holocaust Cloak?
Holocaust was a term used for burnt offerings. In older Bibles, you'll find "holocaust offerings" mentioned. Its use in The Princess Bride was in that sense.
quote:Originally posted by String: Has anyone read a book called The Chosen? It explains that some Jews thought they should wait for God to bring them back into Zion, and that some Jews thought they should form there own nationstate right after WWII ended. Whats the deal with that?
There were Jews who objected to the establishment of the state on general principle. Some were afraid of it causing anti-semitism. Others believed that we have to wait for the Messiah to come and lead us back to Israel (an idea that basically came from centuries of living in forced exile and needing to make a virtue of a necessity).
quote:Originally posted by String: I don't know how to actually quote this so I'll just copy/paste it.
" Also keep in mind that when Israel was founded it wasn't in the possesion of the local Arabs either..." posted by Newfoundlogic.
was it unoccupied? There were probably Arab tribes hanging out by thier bad nomad selves at least, even if no recognized goverment was established.
There were Jews and Arabs living there. But neither was sovereign. There'd never been an Arab state in that area. It was a backwater.
quote:Originally posted by String: Also I belive (now, I'm not a Theologist so bear with me)that that land was promised to the seed of Abraham, who aparently is everybody over there's dad. If I'm not mistaken, Jewish people believe that their line of dissent is actually the true one because it comes from Abrahams legitimate marriage.
Now with all that said, is this really just a fammily dispute on a global scale? Some people need to really be more carefull over what they are killing each other about.
It's not that we're killing each other. If Israel were to lay down arms completely today, there'd be hundreds of Jewish casualties by this time tomorrow. If the Arabs were to lay down arms completely today, things would be absolutely the same tomorrow. That alone should point to a fundamental difference between the two sides.
Basically, Israel wants to live in peace. The Arabs want Israel gone. There are Israelis like myself who think that the best solution is to expel the Arabs to another Arab country, but we're a small minority. And we most certainly do not go around blowing people up.
Most Israelis are more than happy to let the Arabs live where they're living. But that's not good enough for them. They want to obliterate the entire state of Israel, either through violence, or through their "right of return" claim, which would result in Jews as a tiny minority even in our own land. It's ludicrous.
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