AJE: Israel approves loyalty oath

[Ryman of the North]

Really...

So Denmark bans religious services for Non Lutherans? --No..

Denmark denies citizenship for non Lutherans? --------------No

Denmark pusecutes non Lutherans? -----------------------------No

So what you are really saying is Denmark has freedom of religion but does it differently from the United States...

It's a far cry from saying... Nobody has freedom of religion other than the United States.. or Most countries discriminate against religious minorities..

Both assertians are entirely false.

im at work, so im curious, how many new catholic churches go up in Iran every year? how many in Saudi arabia? if we are gonna ask why the Israelis dont want islam spreading in their country why dont we discuss why islamic countries dont allow other worship AT ALL.

[JMS]

igotabombandjihad is a puppet, there is a reason they have a "supreme ruler" and he is a religious figure.

Obama and Pelosi are puppets..... There is a reason why we have a SUPREME COURT....... NOT!!!

Fact is the Supreme Ruller of Iran operates a lot like our Supreme Court. They don't get involved in the day to day running of the country but rule on broad issues. Not based on the law; but based on religious acceptability of that law.

[mcsluggo]

are people here HONESTLY not interested in holding Israel to a higher standard than effin IRAN? seriously???

that is weak swill.

[JMS]

im at work, so im curious, how many new catholic churches go up in Iran every year? how many in Saudi arabia? if we are gonna ask why the Israelis dont want islam spreading in their country why dont we discuss why islamic countries dont allow other worship AT ALL.

If you want to say Israel is just as bad as Iran and Saudi Arabia then I think you've gone significantly farther than I'm going down this road.... Again thank you very much.

[jpyaks3]

im at work, so im curious, how many new catholic churches go up in Iran every year? how many in Saudi arabia? if we are gonna ask why the Israelis dont want islam spreading in their country why dont we discuss why islamic countries dont allow other worship AT ALL.

How many catholics are in Saudi Arabia or Iran?

Cool fact in Cairo there is a law (possibly was a law) that whenever a mosque goes up a church must go up as well. So all throughout downtown Cairo you will see giant mosques with giant churches right next to them. Its a really weird sight.

[JMS]

Except in Iran, religion does have direct rule. The good President is a figurehead with almost no real power.

Except in Israel religion also has a direct rule. One religioun is constitutionally kept in the majority through the systemic discrimination of millions of folks born there. Of millions of folks who are citizens there. It's just a different mechanism for religious control.

[JMS]

How many catholics are in Saudi Arabia or Iran?

Actually quite a few in Saudi... Lot of exPats there.....

Iran might not have a lot of Catholics.. but they have a lot of Bohigh folks there which are recognized as a religiously pursecuted minority by the UN.

Again I'm not defending Iran which is a theocracy... Or Saudi which is a monarcy.

[jpyaks3]

http://english.aljazeera.net/photo_galleries/middleeast/2010106113512196166.html

You could easily miss the thin, gravel road that leads to Al Arakib, a Bedouin village in the north Negev. It is a bit ironic, given the enormity of the struggle there and its deep implications for the Jewish state.

Israeli forces have razed the village five times since late July, sparking cries of ethnic cleansing and leaving more than 300 Bedouin homeless. But the equally determined residents, along with a handful of Jewish activists, continue to rebuild.

The government claims that Al Arakib was abandoned and, as such, belongs to the state. Israel calls the Bedouin squatters who "infiltrate" the area and settle it illegally. According to the state, these people must be removed to make way for a forest to be planted by the Jewish National Fund.

Villagers, some of whom hold Ottoman-era deeds to the property, say that the Israeli army asked them to leave temporarily in 1951. Believing they would be able to move back, they left. It was then, they say, that the state declared Al Arakib abandoned and expropriated it.

....

Just days before the village was destroyed for the first time, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, declared that "an international campaign is being waged against the definition of Israel as a Jewish state .... The significance of these attacks is that various elements are liable to demand their own national rights and the rights of a state within the state of Israel - in the Negev, for example, if it becomes a region without a Jewish majority". Netanyahu added that such a change would be "a real threat" to the Jewish state.

[jpyaks3]

Actually quite a few in Saudi... Lot of exPats there.....

Iran might not have a lot of Catholics.. but they have a lot of Bohigh folks there which are recognized as a religiously pursecuted minority by the UN.

Again I'm not defending Iran which is a theocracy... Or Saudi which is a monarcy.

Saudi Arabia and Iran are pretty much indefensible (also I forgot about the massive amounts of Catholic east asian laborers in the kingdom), I was just trying to make the point that there is a very significant portion of the Israeli population being denied these rights.

[JMS]

The US was founded by christians, christian principles etc etc only very recently did seperation of church and state become a priority.

Really? So Thomas Jefferson was a Christian? The guy who rewrote the entire bible removing all the miracles. Nope, Jefferson was a Deist who believed not in Jesus but a spinoza type of nature god.....

• “The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.”
  
• “The serious enemies are the priests of the different religious sects to whose spells on the human mind its improvement is ominous.”
  
• “I join you [John Adams], therefore, in sincere congratulations that this den of the priesthood is at length broken up, and that a Protestant Popedom is no longer to disgrace the American history and character.”
  
• “In every country and in every age the priest [any and every clergyman] has been hostile to liberty; he is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.”
  
• “I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition [Christianity] one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies.”
  
• “His [Calvin's] religion was demonism. If ever man worshiped a false God, he did.”
  
• “Their [Presbyterian’s] ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival if they had power.”
  
• “It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist.”
  
• “It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
  
• “If by religion, we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your [John Adams’] exclamation on that hypothesis is just, ‘that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it’.”
  
• Christianity neither is, nor ever was apart of the common law. Feb. 10, 1814
  
• “Christian creeds and doctrines, the clergy's own fatal inventions, through all the ages has made of Christendom a slaughterhouse, and divided it into sects of inextinguishable hatred for one another.”
  

Benjerman Franklin was a Christian? A Unitarian who did not believe in the divinity of Christ or trinity. George Washington who honors liberty 15 times in his fairwell address but never once mentions God or Jesus... George Washington who never once in his life took communion, offered at his church every sunday.

Maybe John Adams,

• “Nothing is more dreaded than the national government meddling with religion.”
  
• “Thirteen governments [states & former colonies] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretense of miracle or mystery...are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”
  
• “It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service [formation of the American governments] had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven...”
  
• Treaty of Tripoli ― Ratified by the Senate and signed into law by John Adams on 10 June, 1797.
  
• “[T]he Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion...”
  
• “How has it happened that millions of myths, fables, legends and tales have been blended with Jewish and Christian fables and myths and have made them the most bloody religion that has ever existed? Filled with the sordid and detestable purposes of superstition and fraud?”
  

Maybe Not.

There were certainly Christians among the founding fathers... It's just as certain those christians likely had a history of religiously pursecuting each other. Like Queen Marry the Catholic pursecuted the Protestants... IOr Henry the VIII pursecuted the catholics.

but then again you dont have to worry about those pesky catholic canadians forcibly converting you to anything more than our superior beer and bacon.

I haven't had the Bacon, but your beer is very fine.

Israel cannot afford to let an islamic majority run the show, it would mean the end of Israel which is something no rational person wants.

That seems to be an argument in support of religious pursecution by religious majorities? An argument Jews in Israel seem perfectly willing to make for Israel but would be justifiable horrified if the same argument were made in the United States. or Canada.

one last thing ,do you mean systematicly discriminates as in expels them completely ? because thats what the islamic countries did to the jews.

Sytemic discrimination is descrimination which affects the group.... As apposed to personal discrimination. We in the united states recognize and are experienced with both types of discrimination.

[JMS]

Saudi Arabia and Iran are pretty much indefensible (also I forgot about the massive amounts of Catholic east asian laborers in the kingdom), I was just trying to make the point that there is a very significant portion of the Israeli population being denied these rights.

By some Israeli projections more than half the population which live under Israeli law. And that is really the entire jist of this discussion....

The reason the loyalty oath has been changed to a pledge of the Jewish State rather than to the State is because the demographic bomb is now detinationg in Israel. Jews majority is under threat. That's why they need this new oath, to try to lock folks into something whch is under threat of loosing majority support.

[Ryman of the North]

the founding of the united states was by a religious group was it not? while franklin and jefferson were anti religion I agree, the majority of the US was not. although you do make some good points there, I still think the US was not really interested in seperation of church and state insofar as it didnt wnat the church of england running the show, there is a difference between that and having clergymen elected.

and destroying the jewish homeland through getting a majority results in the same thing, I dont think too many people would support the creation of another islamic republic at the cost of a reasonable and staunch ally.

[JMS]

the founding of the united states was by a religious group was it not?

Absolutely not... Although some pursecuted religious groups did settle in the united States and even founded some of our original colonies... Like the

• Puratans in Plymoth Mass.
  
• Quakers in Pensylvania..
  
• Catholics in Maryland, named after Queen Mary Tutor
  
• The Baptists of Rhode Island ( Roger Williams founder of Rhode Island couldn't stand the rigger of the pilgram/Puratins in Mass, So he created the slacker colony of Rhode Island and founded the first Baptist church there)..(*)
  

(*)Williams had argued against civil punishments for religious crimes (wussy) and, as a result of his expulsion from the colony, he founded the town of Providence and the new colony of Rhode Island, specifically as a place of refuge for those seeking religious freedom.

while franklin and jefferson were anti religion I agree, the majority of the US was not. although you do make some good points there, I still think the US was not really interested in seperation of church and state insofar as it didnt wnat the church of england running the show, there is a difference between that and having clergymen elected.

I think you missed my point. perhaps because I didn't pitch it very well. Jefferson, Franklin, Washington, Adams and all the founding fathers were not anti religion. They were very religious. They just disagreed with each other on their strongly heald religious beliefs. Many were christians, Many important founders were not. But it's not like even the christian founding fathers agreed with each other on religion. Puritans, Baptists, Catholics, and Anglicans all disagreed and had a history of pursecuting each other!!!

Outlawing religious participation of the government wasn't done because the founding fathers wanted to supress religion. It was done because none of those guys wanted the other group to control and suppress their own religion as had been done in Europe and even previously in the United States...

( * Puratians in New England regularly pursicuted Baptists, Christians, and other Protestants. Catholics in Maryland had to pass a tollerance act in the 1600's to outlaw pursecution of Catholic by Protestants when Cromwell ruled n Britain.

Separation of Church and State was done in order to promote religion. It wasn't done as an afterthought either. It was as I said placed in the beginning of the first ammendment of the constitution... ratified with the constitution itself. Before freedom of press, and before freedom of assemble.

It was the first thing the founding fathers did.

Ratified december 1791.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

and destroying the jewish homeland through getting a majority results in the same thing, I dont think too many people would support the creation of another islamic republic at the cost of a reasonable and staunch ally.

Again I don't think destroy is a good adjective. Change is better. We assoicate theocracies or country's involved in religious pursecution with the least cultured and most backward societies on earth. There is a reason for that. The only reason Israeli's support such policies is because they are blinded by the double standard. When the blinders come off, the double standard will too.

[Ryman of the North]

It would be change if perhaps the people trying to get control of said homeland hadnt openly campaigned for its destruction for as long as its been around. I strongly doubt that if it was suddenly allowed to have an arab majority that the state of Israel would exist as long as it took to "vote"

[oisn1]

To be fair, Oisn1 did. Like much of the Palestinian argument you see only what you want to and hear only what you want to.

I think if you invoke Germany, and the Warsaw Ghettos, you are certainly implying Nazism.

Well I wasn't invoking Nazism, but I don't know about many open air Ghettos where a undesirables are essentially trapped in the city under threat of death. Honestly, Israel doesn't compare to Nazi Germany as they don't gas people and do crazy experiments on them, but there are parallels to how people are rounded up. I made the comparison because other examples of ethnic cleansing are more overt, in that people are put into "concentration" camps or prisons. Palestinians are essentially put into prisons that are labeled "cities" much like Jews were "allowed" to live in Warsaw (before Germany accelerated their programs). Sorry for being unclear about that, but the comparison holds.

[oisn1]

NO JMS thats you reading what you want and not what I wrote or my point, my point is that BECAUSE Britain, the US russia et al ARE real states, so is Israel. if one is then they all are.

and sparsely inhabited is very different from densely inhabited as the arabs claim, I provided the stats that showed the area was sparsely inhabited just to show that arab immigration happened too, people forget that these million palestinians didnt all come from palestine.

That depends on what you mean by densely inhabited, if you mean over 400,000 to 600,000 then yes it is inhabited.

2. Palestine was not an empty land when Zionist immigration began. The lowest estimates claim there were about 410,000 Arab Muslims and Christians in Palestine in 1893. A Zionist estimate claimed there were over 600,000 Arabs in Palestine. in the 1890s. At this time, the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine was still negligible by all accounts. It is unlikely that Palestinian immigration prior to this period was due to Zionist development. Though uncertainty exists concerning the precise numbers of Arabs living in the areas that later became Israel, it is very unlikely that the claims of Joan Peters that there were less than 100,000 Arabs living there are valid.

In 1917, during the British mandate, the estimates of population in Palestine were (642,850) person, distributed as (515,000) Muslim, (62,550) Christian, and (65,300) Jews.

McCarthy, Justin. The Population of Palestine: Population History and Statistics of the Late Ottoman Period and the Mandate. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

All this data came from the British census of Mandatory Palestine and yet you keep ignoring it. Honestly speaking, the points about the numbers are inconsequential (doesn't deny the right of Israel to exist today, which I believe is a given) but and are only used to distort the facts to further de-legitimize the rights of the Palestinian people.

[oisn1]

This is exactly correct. the bottom line is that the palestinians are banking on it. they did it to what used to be the christian run government in lebanon and showed it as a viable strategy. its combines the old french way of colonising (breeding out the natives until you dilute the blood and achieve a majority) with the political reality of strict democracy (majority rule).

Israel was given to the jews to become a JEWISH homeland, IMHO if you don't want to be jewish why would you want to live there unless you sympathised with the jewish people? Palestine for Palestinians, Israel for the jews, its not exactly hard to figure out. the key would be getting each side to accept the existance of the other.

I think the problem of this loyalty oath is due to the current distribution of land and the state of a peace treaty being very low. Every day and every year makes a viable two state solution less and less realistic. If Israel keeps eating up land then a one-state solution becomes the only solution (outside of total ethnic cleansing or a mass expulsion of all Palestinians from greater Israel). In that way, a loyalty oath to a Jewish state makes Israel into a Theocratic nation akin to apartheid South Africa where the minority rules the majority. If the current laws stand where Israeli Arabs are essentially second class citizens, then this will be the outcome and Israel will no longer be a democracy.

[Sekhmet728]

Al Jazeera is better than CNN? Ahahahahahahaha

Only if you ignore the propaganda 30% of the organization.

The way I see it:

Christian Right - Fox News

Godless Liberals - MSNBC

Islamic Middle East - Al Jazeera