Rafael quotes a narrative, with links, that describe the negative parts of Israel.
Most of us believe a completely different narrative, that describes Israel in its positive light.
Both of us could have read the other narrative, and we could have accepted it. There is no real preponderance of truth on either side (maybe there is, but neither side have shown it here).
As Jews, we are brothers and cousins to many people in Israel, and we share an ethnicity, fate, history, religion, and culture.
Muslims share little with the people of Palestine besides some parts of the religion. They are not one ethnicity, especially those from the Balkans. They do not share a common fate, what happens with Palestinians has zero bearing on people in Croatia, Indonesia, or even Iraq. They do not share a history or a culture.
The feelings of brotherhood between Jews makes it only understandable that we will believe the narrative that places Jews in the best light. But why do Muslims have this feeling? Why is Rafael a brother to Achmed in Khan Younis? Why believe his story over ours?
I can confirm that. Why do you think they shouldn't support hamas?
"Because they are terrorists"
What does that mean exactly?
"Well, they were doing crimes and want to wipe out all jews"
Well, thats the crux of the issue: People (whether Muslim or other goyim) who support Hamas do not think that these claims are true. They say: these claims are fabricated, Hamas did not do war crimes. The story of 40 beheaded babies was exposed as fake. The white house retracted bidens claim that he saw evidence, tzahal told the anadolu agency that they have no evidence for that claim, it turned out that the journalist on twitter who spread the story got it from a settler by the name of david ben zion, who in the past called for the burning of palestinian houses. When tzahal then published pictures of burned bodies (among them babies), it turned out that these were victims of friendly fire. Israeli apache helicopters shooted and hit israeli houses and civilians while trying to catch Hamas fighters. Video footage from the helicopters itself were published, too. Thats not surprising: Hamas does not have the weapon to tare down concrete houses and destroy all these cars, that were completely burned and whose roofs were hit by rockets. According to the investigation of israeli police itself, Hamas did not even know that this party would happen anyway. Israel reduced the number of reportedly killed from 1400 to 1200 and half of them were israeli soldiers and policemen and the rest, as we said, were killed in friendly fire or in fights between Hamas and tzahal.
The israeli hostages released said that Hamas was friendly and took care of their medical needs and that they were even visited by Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who spoke to them in fluent hebrew. https://youtu.be/0WdCiaZ_1pY?si=BNeCnYa8n9tOLP0c
Did some Hamas fighters do crimes? Maybe yes. But thats the point: these crimes were deeds by individual soldiers (and those should be condemned and legally persecuted) not the plan or the programm of Hamas itself. In its official program, published in 2015 and also translated into english, Hamas says explicitly: "Our issue is not with the jews, but with the zionists. Its an ethno-ideology based on ethnic cleansing that constantly conflates jews and zionism."
See it this way: why did Hamas attack in the first place? For once, to raise again international awaireness for the plight of the occupied Palestinians. They achieved that.
Secondly, to stop the normalization process between israel and the arab countries. They succeeded in that, too. I saw an interview of the egyptian politologist Dr. Usama al-Ghazali Harb on egyptian tv who broke into tears and apologized to the Palestinians for having advocated for normalization with israel in the past.
Thirdly, Hamas wanted to traumatize the israeli army and tarnish its reputation and the reputation of the israeli intelligence and accelerate the polarization and enmity of the israeli public against netanyahu and his government. They succeeded in that, too. So far, over 300,000 israelis have left israel and more hundreds of thousands have been evacuated from israels south and north. It has left a deep wound on the israeli economy, one israeli economist even stated its more serious than anything israel suffered in decades.
Fourthly, Hamas wanted to, by raising international awareness to the zionist occupation, destroy israels reputation in the western public as well. As you can see, that has been going well, too.
Fifthtly, and maybe most importantly, thousands of palestinian youth and women are, according to international law, ilegally held in israeli prisons for years without any trial. Hamas wanted to exchange the hostages with these. You remember when israel released thousands for just one captured soldier. So far, this is succeeding, too. Additionally, these hostages have spoken about the sexual violence, beatings and psychological torture in israeli prisons, harming israels position even more.
My point is: Hamas does want to gather support. They do not want to be hated by the world. Of course the stories of the atrocities were fake: why would Hamas capture hostages, so that they, after the exchange, talk about how mean Hamas was to them.
One grave mistake of Hamas in my opinion is, that it did not take enough precautions for the protection of the palestinian civilians in Gaza itself. Hamas was calculating that israel will not repeat its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza out of concern for the hostages. They were wrong and they underestimated tzahals brutality (seems like Hamas never heard of the hannibal doctrine). Hamas did not count that tzahal wil just repeat the old fallacious refuted claim of "human shields"and will even use phosphorus. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2014/07/jeremy-bowens-gaza-notebook-i-saw-no-evidence-hamas-using-palestinians-human and read also this report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde21/1178/2015/en/
I remind you of the origin of Hamas: israel is built on zionism, the idea of a jewish state in Palestine. For that, you need a majority jewish population. This requires privileged laws of immigration for jews around the world, ban on the return of the 700,000 palestinian refugees of the nakba in 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of most of non-jews from palestine. Cuz how jewish is a state, were jews are in danger of becoming a minority? (See: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/370-ten-myths-about-israel)
I am a white straight european man. Be honest, if I asked for such a white ethnostate, what would you, the adl and the local israeli embassy say about me? And wouldn't the college kick me out for being a white nationalist and then jewish professors on colleges publish papers about the necessity of the abolishment of whiteness and wouldn't jewish billionaires keep funding these universities? Have you wondered why actual neo-Nazis like richard spencer and nick fuentes have explicitly praised israels national policy and vowed to imitate it? Watch spencers exchange with a rabbi: https://forward.com/news/356336/alt-right-leader-ties-white-supremacy-to-zionism-leaves-rabbi-speechless/
My point is, just as you are confused why people would support Hamas, the goyim around you are also horrified how you can support and trust tzahal and its narrative.
Turning from anti-zionism to actual antisemitism, you know my position that I condemn that and I think (and that has been my impression from what I as a polyglot have seen from Muslims around the world in these 2 months) that most people see the difference between jews and zionists. But you will always have people on both sides where emotions take the betterof them. A reason why you see less islamophobia from the jewish side is that jews are just mich smaller in comparison to Muslims and gentiles in general. Even among evangelicals (the younger ones) prevails an anti-israel narrative. But if you want to see zionist hate (even zionist antisemitism directed against jews criticial of israel), there is a twitter account I have heard of called Stop Zionist Hate
Wow Rafael I usually like your comments but now you are full of 💩💩💩
600 civilians killed in friendly fire incidents, and all the rest are soldiers? How stupid can somebody be to believe that? I don't think you are stupid, somehow when comes to this you have lost all common sense. But here we don't do censorship, so I am allowing this comment to stay to show how wacky the pro-Hamas narrative is.
Listen, if you want a justification for Hamas, it's much easier to just say that the resistance is allowed to kill civilians just like the IDF terrorists are. That's way easier and more truthful than whatever complete nonsense you are spouting.
You liked my comments as long as I was trashing secularists, Muslim reformists and even when I was debating whether judaism is even true. But now, when I totally predictably took the stance that I did, you are angry?
If you just said: "look dude, you are wrong, because of this and that. Your information is biased and wrong cuz this and that", that would be fine.
But repeating: Ah thats nonsense, Khkhamas is evil, they this, they that, that not gonna convince me
Rafael, I apologize for the harshness. I will tell you I liked your comments even when you were "trashing" parts of Judaism, such as the Prophets and the Oral Law, because of your scholarly and articulate representation of that (incorrect) viewpoint. But your recent comment about 600 civilians getting killed in friendly fire incidents was straight up conspiracy theorizing nonsense, worse than 9/11 truthers. Do I really need to bring you news sources that Hamas shot and killed hundreds of civilians? And if I did, would you trust any of them?
I didn't say Hamas is evil in my comment, did I? In fact, I gave an alternate justification for their actions which I believe is shared by millions of people.
"And if I did, would you trust any of the spurces?"
Of course I would. There is a reason why I kept out of these substacks and discussions, cuz I want to be sure about my beliefs and sources. I wil go a step further than you and demand that these Hamas fighters who shot the civilians should be punished amd legally persecuted.
Yeah, one can come up with rationalizations for killing civilians, if one wanted too (and I don't). In the view of a Hamas soldier, israelis (excluding children and old people) are serving the army and could be regarded as military threats, too.
I explained on the first day of the attack why such thinking is false and not comptaible with Sharia, but alas.
Accordingly, tell me why you have a problem with the sources I provided? Israeli analysts amd pundits, the hostahes themselves and information provided by the investigations of the israeli police?
Pro israel people reject the uns condemnation of israel, they reject btselem, they reject amnestys international evluation of israel as an aparthrid state, they reject jews condemning israelas self hating leftists, they reject al jazeera, al arabiyya etc.
Who is a good source according to you? Who am I supposed to refer to? Hananya Naftali? Bibi the liar? Hagari? If you reject the goyish sources for being potentially biased, fine. But that also applies to tzahal
I would think that that person is wrong. I wouldn't be angry at him and would just see his as misguided and try to correct him. I can't expect a person to have all the informstion on a regional conflict and having the "correct stance" (i.e. my stance I guess).
The fact you as an american even know the name milosevic after 30 years, for that alone hats off
Why can't you be like me? Maybe cuz we from the balkans have a thikcer skin
propaganda narrative belief is not a lack of common sense. he really believes this narrative and has taken the bullet on this one despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise. i would definitely call him out, and harshly, but not in the same language, but as someone who needs to look at the other side and weigh the evidence much more carefully. i've examined his narrative at length and it falls short for a ton of reasons. israel is not perfect, but they are not the actual bad guys here.
(also i imagine rafael waited until he had his side straight before checking back in with us here because he knew we'd be interested in discussing and calling him out.)
It seems like a combination of denial, and support.
I assume your reaction to the holocaust is similar; you deny it it, but nevertheless support it. I presume it didn't dawn upon you that that's contradictory.
You accuse me of supporting the holocaust? And denying it at the same time?
Seriously? Some of my family members from my mothers side have been killed in the yugoslavian resistance while fighitng the nazis and their collaborators.
As I said, give me evidence of khkhkhamas genociding systematically and deliberately jews I am going to condemn them as terrorists.
But just one little note for you to remember: if genocide inherently makes one a terrorist, then I must remind the rabotai in this comment section what the halakha says about the nations of kanaan (unless its genocide for me but not for thee). If you guys were chilonim or masortim I wouldn't bring this up, but since these are Hashems eternal mitzvot amd moral values that He revealed to Klal Yisrael to enlighten us goyim, of course this will be brought up.
If you just said: "look dude, you are wrong, because of this and that. Your information is biased and wrong cuz this and that", that would be fine.
But you unironically confirm the stereotypes: "Antisemite! I guess he likes the holocaust, too and denies it at the same time!"
i'm not sure we all have the answers about the genocide of the canaanites and co. what we do seem to know is that they were way more evil, or destructive to society as a whole, than anyone we know. but anyhow if judaism is true and God instructed it, we need no labels. i'm sure there's a good reason (one of my strong arguments as an atheist was this genocide. now i know that judaism is a whole lot stronger than this question so even tho i'm still not fully sure, tho i sort of understand it more now, i don't reject myreligion because a few qustions which pale in comparison to what we do know about it)
i don't think you're an antisemite jew hater, but i also don't think slifkin is as bad as other people here think he is. he's also been taken by a few wrong ideologies. you can't expect everyone here to treat what you said with more respect than slifkin. to me you seem like a truth seeker (your presence on this blog is a pretty good hint to that) an i will continue treating you with respect as long as you are respectful in our discussions back, but i would not blame others if they took a different stance. even happy bans atheists, though i know for a fact that they are misguided and not trying to be evil
and to be clear, to me personally, talking to you opens up my worldview a little more and i love discussing things with you. but i don't think you should expect that from everyone is all
"In the case of Muslims they see them as fellow Muslims resisting Zionist oppression."
Pretty accurate description.
The Ottoman Caliphate was in its last decades led by turkish nationalists, who were imitating secularist nationalists and removing Sharia Law (an example are the tanzimat reforms).
It is not a surprise that the Israeli government lies. What is forgotten, however, is that the Arabs have long been known as eager tellers of tall tales, going back to "1001 Nights" and even earlier.
It is also a tenet of Islam that the Jews corrupted the Torah, God forbid. There is no real point in dialog, because to the Muslim, everything we say is a distortion, at best.
You might be surprised, but 1001 nights has been always ignored and even mocked among arabis. It was rarely quoted, referenced or mentioned. There are only a couple of complete manuscripts of it before the 18th century. The arabic bibliographer of the 10th century Ibn al-Nadim listed it in his book Kitab al-Fihrist and described it as boring.
1001 Nights is not arab, anyway. The corpus started in india, then went to sassanian persia and was later after the advent of Islam translated into arabic and islamicized a little bit. It was only after the colonial conquest and translation into french and english that the stories of a 1001 nights gained popularity in the west, which then spilled over to the arab world, too.
If legends are the measure of the truthfulness of a people, do we want to start to discuss rabbinical literature (not even ordinary jewish lay literature) that mentions mermaids and golems?
But no, we do not reject jewish claims out of hand.
Stories of jewish origin are called israiliyyat إسرائيليات
There are 3 kinds of them according to to Islamic scholars (see Ib Taymiyyahs introductory book to the science of Tafsir).
First one are those which are true i.e.those that are confirmed by Gods Last Message. For example the prophethood of Moses.
Second are those which are definitvely false i.e. those jewish stories which contradict the Qur'an and the Sunnah.
Third is the one where we do not know whether it was true or not which means we stay neutral regarding it. E.g. King David having 40,000 soldiers or information like that
Its not just that Muslims are sceptical towards information published by the israeli govenrment and intelligence, but also pulitzer award winners and New york times correspondents for the middle east like Chris Hedges, who lists dozens of cases throughozt history of israel making stuff up: https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/18/chris-hedges-israels-culture-of-deceit/
Or even the israeli historian and yom kippur war veteran ilan pape (see his book ten myths about israel) and other historians from the new historians
A. Its the truth. We have discussed this on another place but I did not want to push you more back then.
B. Hedges is not in nyt anymore. Have you btw even read the article before making this judgement (rhetorical question, of course you did not, you are an israel supporter).
You unironically affirm the stereotypes:"Oy vey! They are antisemites!"
Of course they are, of course they are.
Just like the UN, Amnesty international, btselem, Breaking the Silence, the whole group of New Israeli historians, the leftist jews, even charlie kirk, even john hagee, gabor mate, norman finkelstein and many many more, isn't it?
All these people and organizations from different continents somehow have all conspired to hate kal yisrael (this conspiracy theory you do believe?). Must be that dark goysih neshama that the alter rebbe in the tanya has been talking about.
And these jews must be gilgulim of the erev rav
There is a former zionist israeli now pro-palestine activist, named Avigail Abarbanel. She wrote an article titled "Why I left the cult", where she describes zionism as a cult.
She knows a thing or two about cults. She is a psychiatrist.
Interesting. 'Advocacy work' with whom, and why is that not 'hischabrus lrosho'?
Why is thanking the United States not 'hischabrus l'roshoh'? - is the US Government committed to shevah mitzvos benei noach?
Of all the typical Jewish chutzpah. Agudah don't get off their backsides, in any sense, for the rally (apparently that is not considered enough advocacy work), for all sorts of claimed reasons, and then issue the statement below.
No, I don't. But he had plenty of 'personal hashkofos' that, as I wrote, was (and are) diametrically opposed to what the Lakewood ayatollahs would consider the only authentic orthodox Jewish mesorah.
You really believe you can determine a person's hashkofo from one particular book? Sad.
To all my fellow trolls that were having issues with the temporary email that happy posted earlier. I've come across a different site which works much better
" a sputtering, drooling hate machine who spends all day yelling at his enemies over the computer. "
Could say the same about you and your small group of friends (if that, it's quite possible its only you or a group of 3) who spend all day spamming Natan's blog with idiocy. Talk about a lack of self-awareness.
Rafael quotes a narrative, with links, that describe the negative parts of Israel.
Most of us believe a completely different narrative, that describes Israel in its positive light.
Both of us could have read the other narrative, and we could have accepted it. There is no real preponderance of truth on either side (maybe there is, but neither side have shown it here).
As Jews, we are brothers and cousins to many people in Israel, and we share an ethnicity, fate, history, religion, and culture.
Muslims share little with the people of Palestine besides some parts of the religion. They are not one ethnicity, especially those from the Balkans. They do not share a common fate, what happens with Palestinians has zero bearing on people in Croatia, Indonesia, or even Iraq. They do not share a history or a culture.
The feelings of brotherhood between Jews makes it only understandable that we will believe the narrative that places Jews in the best light. But why do Muslims have this feeling? Why is Rafael a brother to Achmed in Khan Younis? Why believe his story over ours?
I picked this book up at Capital Seforim in Lakewood. I never read it, but now I'll give it a try.
Unrelated question: what did I miss in these last weeks? Has slifkin made an anti-charedi purge?
I don't see joyous, nor rational traditionalist nor shimshon in slifkins comment sections? Did he ban them too or did I just miss them?
See https://irrationalistmodoxism.substack.com/p/of-assemblies-and-evasions
Purge is the right word. I think he banned seven or more of us. There were so many it was hard to keep count.
"I have the feeling most of them support hamas"
I can confirm that. Why do you think they shouldn't support hamas?
"Because they are terrorists"
What does that mean exactly?
"Well, they were doing crimes and want to wipe out all jews"
Well, thats the crux of the issue: People (whether Muslim or other goyim) who support Hamas do not think that these claims are true. They say: these claims are fabricated, Hamas did not do war crimes. The story of 40 beheaded babies was exposed as fake. The white house retracted bidens claim that he saw evidence, tzahal told the anadolu agency that they have no evidence for that claim, it turned out that the journalist on twitter who spread the story got it from a settler by the name of david ben zion, who in the past called for the burning of palestinian houses. When tzahal then published pictures of burned bodies (among them babies), it turned out that these were victims of friendly fire. Israeli apache helicopters shooted and hit israeli houses and civilians while trying to catch Hamas fighters. Video footage from the helicopters itself were published, too. Thats not surprising: Hamas does not have the weapon to tare down concrete houses and destroy all these cars, that were completely burned and whose roofs were hit by rockets. According to the investigation of israeli police itself, Hamas did not even know that this party would happen anyway. Israel reduced the number of reportedly killed from 1400 to 1200 and half of them were israeli soldiers and policemen and the rest, as we said, were killed in friendly fire or in fights between Hamas and tzahal.
The israeli hostages released said that Hamas was friendly and took care of their medical needs and that they were even visited by Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who spoke to them in fluent hebrew. https://youtu.be/0WdCiaZ_1pY?si=BNeCnYa8n9tOLP0c
Some zionists threatened the hostages with imprisonment if they speak up again: https://youtu.be/_5dZvaDryrM?si=ItbW-2noHeIRZkDX
Did some Hamas fighters do crimes? Maybe yes. But thats the point: these crimes were deeds by individual soldiers (and those should be condemned and legally persecuted) not the plan or the programm of Hamas itself. In its official program, published in 2015 and also translated into english, Hamas says explicitly: "Our issue is not with the jews, but with the zionists. Its an ethno-ideology based on ethnic cleansing that constantly conflates jews and zionism."
See it this way: why did Hamas attack in the first place? For once, to raise again international awaireness for the plight of the occupied Palestinians. They achieved that.
Secondly, to stop the normalization process between israel and the arab countries. They succeeded in that, too. I saw an interview of the egyptian politologist Dr. Usama al-Ghazali Harb on egyptian tv who broke into tears and apologized to the Palestinians for having advocated for normalization with israel in the past.
Thirdly, Hamas wanted to traumatize the israeli army and tarnish its reputation and the reputation of the israeli intelligence and accelerate the polarization and enmity of the israeli public against netanyahu and his government. They succeeded in that, too. So far, over 300,000 israelis have left israel and more hundreds of thousands have been evacuated from israels south and north. It has left a deep wound on the israeli economy, one israeli economist even stated its more serious than anything israel suffered in decades.
Fourthly, Hamas wanted to, by raising international awareness to the zionist occupation, destroy israels reputation in the western public as well. As you can see, that has been going well, too.
Fifthtly, and maybe most importantly, thousands of palestinian youth and women are, according to international law, ilegally held in israeli prisons for years without any trial. Hamas wanted to exchange the hostages with these. You remember when israel released thousands for just one captured soldier. So far, this is succeeding, too. Additionally, these hostages have spoken about the sexual violence, beatings and psychological torture in israeli prisons, harming israels position even more.
My point is: Hamas does want to gather support. They do not want to be hated by the world. Of course the stories of the atrocities were fake: why would Hamas capture hostages, so that they, after the exchange, talk about how mean Hamas was to them.
One grave mistake of Hamas in my opinion is, that it did not take enough precautions for the protection of the palestinian civilians in Gaza itself. Hamas was calculating that israel will not repeat its indiscriminate bombing of Gaza out of concern for the hostages. They were wrong and they underestimated tzahals brutality (seems like Hamas never heard of the hannibal doctrine). Hamas did not count that tzahal wil just repeat the old fallacious refuted claim of "human shields"and will even use phosphorus. https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2014/07/jeremy-bowens-gaza-notebook-i-saw-no-evidence-hamas-using-palestinians-human and read also this report: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde21/1178/2015/en/
I remind you of the origin of Hamas: israel is built on zionism, the idea of a jewish state in Palestine. For that, you need a majority jewish population. This requires privileged laws of immigration for jews around the world, ban on the return of the 700,000 palestinian refugees of the nakba in 1948 and the ethnic cleansing of most of non-jews from palestine. Cuz how jewish is a state, were jews are in danger of becoming a minority? (See: https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/370-ten-myths-about-israel)
I am a white straight european man. Be honest, if I asked for such a white ethnostate, what would you, the adl and the local israeli embassy say about me? And wouldn't the college kick me out for being a white nationalist and then jewish professors on colleges publish papers about the necessity of the abolishment of whiteness and wouldn't jewish billionaires keep funding these universities? Have you wondered why actual neo-Nazis like richard spencer and nick fuentes have explicitly praised israels national policy and vowed to imitate it? Watch spencers exchange with a rabbi: https://forward.com/news/356336/alt-right-leader-ties-white-supremacy-to-zionism-leaves-rabbi-speechless/
My point is, just as you are confused why people would support Hamas, the goyim around you are also horrified how you can support and trust tzahal and its narrative.
Turning from anti-zionism to actual antisemitism, you know my position that I condemn that and I think (and that has been my impression from what I as a polyglot have seen from Muslims around the world in these 2 months) that most people see the difference between jews and zionists. But you will always have people on both sides where emotions take the betterof them. A reason why you see less islamophobia from the jewish side is that jews are just mich smaller in comparison to Muslims and gentiles in general. Even among evangelicals (the younger ones) prevails an anti-israel narrative. But if you want to see zionist hate (even zionist antisemitism directed against jews criticial of israel), there is a twitter account I have heard of called Stop Zionist Hate
Wow Rafael I usually like your comments but now you are full of 💩💩💩
600 civilians killed in friendly fire incidents, and all the rest are soldiers? How stupid can somebody be to believe that? I don't think you are stupid, somehow when comes to this you have lost all common sense. But here we don't do censorship, so I am allowing this comment to stay to show how wacky the pro-Hamas narrative is.
Listen, if you want a justification for Hamas, it's much easier to just say that the resistance is allowed to kill civilians just like the IDF terrorists are. That's way easier and more truthful than whatever complete nonsense you are spouting.
Ask yourself why you liked my comments.
You liked my comments as long as I was trashing secularists, Muslim reformists and even when I was debating whether judaism is even true. But now, when I totally predictably took the stance that I did, you are angry?
If you just said: "look dude, you are wrong, because of this and that. Your information is biased and wrong cuz this and that", that would be fine.
But repeating: Ah thats nonsense, Khkhamas is evil, they this, they that, that not gonna convince me
Rafael, I apologize for the harshness. I will tell you I liked your comments even when you were "trashing" parts of Judaism, such as the Prophets and the Oral Law, because of your scholarly and articulate representation of that (incorrect) viewpoint. But your recent comment about 600 civilians getting killed in friendly fire incidents was straight up conspiracy theorizing nonsense, worse than 9/11 truthers. Do I really need to bring you news sources that Hamas shot and killed hundreds of civilians? And if I did, would you trust any of them?
I didn't say Hamas is evil in my comment, did I? In fact, I gave an alternate justification for their actions which I believe is shared by millions of people.
"And if I did, would you trust any of the spurces?"
Of course I would. There is a reason why I kept out of these substacks and discussions, cuz I want to be sure about my beliefs and sources. I wil go a step further than you and demand that these Hamas fighters who shot the civilians should be punished amd legally persecuted.
Yeah, one can come up with rationalizations for killing civilians, if one wanted too (and I don't). In the view of a Hamas soldier, israelis (excluding children and old people) are serving the army and could be regarded as military threats, too.
I explained on the first day of the attack why such thinking is false and not comptaible with Sharia, but alas.
Accordingly, tell me why you have a problem with the sources I provided? Israeli analysts amd pundits, the hostahes themselves and information provided by the investigations of the israeli police?
Pro israel people reject the uns condemnation of israel, they reject btselem, they reject amnestys international evluation of israel as an aparthrid state, they reject jews condemning israelas self hating leftists, they reject al jazeera, al arabiyya etc.
Who is a good source according to you? Who am I supposed to refer to? Hananya Naftali? Bibi the liar? Hagari? If you reject the goyish sources for being potentially biased, fine. But that also applies to tzahal
I would think that that person is wrong. I wouldn't be angry at him and would just see his as misguided and try to correct him. I can't expect a person to have all the informstion on a regional conflict and having the "correct stance" (i.e. my stance I guess).
The fact you as an american even know the name milosevic after 30 years, for that alone hats off
Why can't you be like me? Maybe cuz we from the balkans have a thikcer skin
propaganda narrative belief is not a lack of common sense. he really believes this narrative and has taken the bullet on this one despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise. i would definitely call him out, and harshly, but not in the same language, but as someone who needs to look at the other side and weigh the evidence much more carefully. i've examined his narrative at length and it falls short for a ton of reasons. israel is not perfect, but they are not the actual bad guys here.
(also i imagine rafael waited until he had his side straight before checking back in with us here because he knew we'd be interested in discussing and calling him out.)
I will, we don't do censorship, as I said.
I appreciate that.
It seems like a combination of denial, and support.
I assume your reaction to the holocaust is similar; you deny it it, but nevertheless support it. I presume it didn't dawn upon you that that's contradictory.
You accuse me of supporting the holocaust? And denying it at the same time?
Seriously? Some of my family members from my mothers side have been killed in the yugoslavian resistance while fighitng the nazis and their collaborators.
As I said, give me evidence of khkhkhamas genociding systematically and deliberately jews I am going to condemn them as terrorists.
But just one little note for you to remember: if genocide inherently makes one a terrorist, then I must remind the rabotai in this comment section what the halakha says about the nations of kanaan (unless its genocide for me but not for thee). If you guys were chilonim or masortim I wouldn't bring this up, but since these are Hashems eternal mitzvot amd moral values that He revealed to Klal Yisrael to enlighten us goyim, of course this will be brought up.
If you just said: "look dude, you are wrong, because of this and that. Your information is biased and wrong cuz this and that", that would be fine.
But you unironically confirm the stereotypes: "Antisemite! I guess he likes the holocaust, too and denies it at the same time!"
i'm not sure we all have the answers about the genocide of the canaanites and co. what we do seem to know is that they were way more evil, or destructive to society as a whole, than anyone we know. but anyhow if judaism is true and God instructed it, we need no labels. i'm sure there's a good reason (one of my strong arguments as an atheist was this genocide. now i know that judaism is a whole lot stronger than this question so even tho i'm still not fully sure, tho i sort of understand it more now, i don't reject myreligion because a few qustions which pale in comparison to what we do know about it)
i don't think you're an antisemite jew hater, but i also don't think slifkin is as bad as other people here think he is. he's also been taken by a few wrong ideologies. you can't expect everyone here to treat what you said with more respect than slifkin. to me you seem like a truth seeker (your presence on this blog is a pretty good hint to that) an i will continue treating you with respect as long as you are respectful in our discussions back, but i would not blame others if they took a different stance. even happy bans atheists, though i know for a fact that they are misguided and not trying to be evil
and to be clear, to me personally, talking to you opens up my worldview a little more and i love discussing things with you. but i don't think you should expect that from everyone is all
"In the case of Muslims they see them as fellow Muslims resisting Zionist oppression."
Pretty accurate description.
The Ottoman Caliphate was in its last decades led by turkish nationalists, who were imitating secularist nationalists and removing Sharia Law (an example are the tanzimat reforms).
Its abolition in 1923 was just an formal act.
The first casualty of war is the truth.
It is not a surprise that the Israeli government lies. What is forgotten, however, is that the Arabs have long been known as eager tellers of tall tales, going back to "1001 Nights" and even earlier.
It is also a tenet of Islam that the Jews corrupted the Torah, God forbid. There is no real point in dialog, because to the Muslim, everything we say is a distortion, at best.
You might be surprised, but 1001 nights has been always ignored and even mocked among arabis. It was rarely quoted, referenced or mentioned. There are only a couple of complete manuscripts of it before the 18th century. The arabic bibliographer of the 10th century Ibn al-Nadim listed it in his book Kitab al-Fihrist and described it as boring.
1001 Nights is not arab, anyway. The corpus started in india, then went to sassanian persia and was later after the advent of Islam translated into arabic and islamicized a little bit. It was only after the colonial conquest and translation into french and english that the stories of a 1001 nights gained popularity in the west, which then spilled over to the arab world, too.
If legends are the measure of the truthfulness of a people, do we want to start to discuss rabbinical literature (not even ordinary jewish lay literature) that mentions mermaids and golems?
But no, we do not reject jewish claims out of hand.
Stories of jewish origin are called israiliyyat إسرائيليات
There are 3 kinds of them according to to Islamic scholars (see Ib Taymiyyahs introductory book to the science of Tafsir).
First one are those which are true i.e.those that are confirmed by Gods Last Message. For example the prophethood of Moses.
Second are those which are definitvely false i.e. those jewish stories which contradict the Qur'an and the Sunnah.
Third is the one where we do not know whether it was true or not which means we stay neutral regarding it. E.g. King David having 40,000 soldiers or information like that
Its not just that Muslims are sceptical towards information published by the israeli govenrment and intelligence, but also pulitzer award winners and New york times correspondents for the middle east like Chris Hedges, who lists dozens of cases throughozt history of israel making stuff up: https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/18/chris-hedges-israels-culture-of-deceit/
Or even the israeli historian and yom kippur war veteran ilan pape (see his book ten myths about israel) and other historians from the new historians
Nonetheless, there seems to be cultural predilection to tell tales. Pallywood can be a thing even as the Israeli government lies.
A. Islam is a false religion, full of heresy and lies.
B. NYT (and all of the MSM) was and is anti-semitic.
A. Its the truth. We have discussed this on another place but I did not want to push you more back then.
B. Hedges is not in nyt anymore. Have you btw even read the article before making this judgement (rhetorical question, of course you did not, you are an israel supporter).
You unironically affirm the stereotypes:"Oy vey! They are antisemites!"
Of course they are, of course they are.
Just like the UN, Amnesty international, btselem, Breaking the Silence, the whole group of New Israeli historians, the leftist jews, even charlie kirk, even john hagee, gabor mate, norman finkelstein and many many more, isn't it?
All these people and organizations from different continents somehow have all conspired to hate kal yisrael (this conspiracy theory you do believe?). Must be that dark goysih neshama that the alter rebbe in the tanya has been talking about.
And these jews must be gilgulim of the erev rav
There is a former zionist israeli now pro-palestine activist, named Avigail Abarbanel. She wrote an article titled "Why I left the cult", where she describes zionism as a cult.
She knows a thing or two about cults. She is a psychiatrist.
Warning: Disturbing images.
https://www.hamas-massacre.net/
Interesting. 'Advocacy work' with whom, and why is that not 'hischabrus lrosho'?
Why is thanking the United States not 'hischabrus l'roshoh'? - is the US Government committed to shevah mitzvos benei noach?
Of all the typical Jewish chutzpah. Agudah don't get off their backsides, in any sense, for the rally (apparently that is not considered enough advocacy work), for all sorts of claimed reasons, and then issue the statement below.
"Agudath Israel of America
has welcomed the ongoing
release of hostages amongst the
approximately 240 who were
brutally kidnapped and held by
Hamas for the past seven weeks.
In a statement they said: “We
have made their safe release an
important and necessary part of
our ADVOCACY work since October
7, and the focus of our prayers
beseeching the Almighty for His
mercies.
“As Americans, we deeply thank
the UNITED STATESfor its leading role
and hard work with other parties
in helping to bring about this result"
Wrong post
It's funny you are quoting a sefer by somebody with a background and hashkofo the opposite of everything the Lakewood ayatollahs stand for.
That's the point, genius. It's not the opposite at all.
You didn't read my comment properly, as is typical. I wasn't referring to the book itself.
You mean that the book is totally unconnected to Dayan Grunfeld's personal hashkafos, right?
No, I don't. But he had plenty of 'personal hashkofos' that, as I wrote, was (and are) diametrically opposed to what the Lakewood ayatollahs would consider the only authentic orthodox Jewish mesorah.
You really believe you can determine a person's hashkofo from one particular book? Sad.
Ohmigosh, you have discovered that there is such a thing as machlokes! You should make a Kiddush!
Yes, I believe a person's hashkafa in certain key matters can be determined by what they wrote about those key matters. Enough with you. Bye.
To all my fellow trolls that were having issues with the temporary email that happy posted earlier. I've come across a different site which works much better
https://temp-mail.org/en/
Thank you anonymous who showed this to me
As Shmuel Kunda would say, hop on the trolley
" a sputtering, drooling hate machine who spends all day yelling at his enemies over the computer. "
Could say the same about you and your small group of friends (if that, it's quite possible its only you or a group of 3) who spend all day spamming Natan's blog with idiocy. Talk about a lack of self-awareness.
Umm....