See? I can play your silly little games too! Get back to me once you have something of value to say. If you’re really quick about it, I’ll likely never hear from you again.

Amalekite: that makes how many times now you’ve tried to educate us with your anti-Semitic garbage within this forum? If I go to Texas, does this mean I can get an advanced degree in anti-Semitism based on your rantings?

Texas? WTF? Oh & it’s NOT garbage it’s called the truth. Plus you need to look up what the word ‘Semitic’ actually means – here’s a hint it’s NOT just “Jews.” Oh & ad Hominems like yours are committing the first logical fallacy the BA mentioned here & prove nothing. Just so you know.

@ Naomi Says: (March 31st, 2009 at 4:20 am)

Amalekite, I’d just like to point out that Judaism is both a religion and an ethnicity, and they’re not one in the same. I know people who are religiously Jewish but not ethnically (converts, basically), I myself am ethnically Jewish but not religiously.

And no, I don’t support what Israel does. No, not even a tiny little bit! But see, there are intelligent, rational ways to argue, say, the Israeli occupation of Gaza without resorting to attacks and accusing Jews of starting WW3 and that whole paranoid “OMG ZIONIST STATE” rubbish. If you want people to take your argument seriously, try to avoid the paranoid flailing about.

I’m glad you don’t support Israel’s atrocities in Gaza. I appreciate your comments. But please try to read my posts more carefully & look at what I’m actually saying. I’m NOT accusing Israel of starting WW3 merely noting that the risk of Israel’s seemingly endless wars against its neighbours escalating and spreading poses the terrible potential risks to the entire planet. I’m not the first to think or say this either.

@ Weirdo Fishy Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 11:19 am)

Male Kite: nobody cares here. You’re off-topic, and you’ve already lost your argument before it began by at least three counts:

1) You brought in Nazis. Anyone on the IntarWebz knows that the first mention of Nazis to support an argument immediately loses.

Nope. “Godwin’s law” is rubbish – & NOT everyone subscribes to it. Nobody should. When legitimate comparisons can be made they deserve to be – & should be & trying to make up some arbitrary censoring law that refuses to draw obvious comparisons is plain dumb.

2) You committed apostrophe abuse. At NO time is an “apostrophe-s” used to pluralize anything, even if a word ends in a vowel or is an acronym.

Oh big deal.

So what? It is not the spelling and grammar that matters it is the actual facts and arguments in question. Strike two for you, yourself. However you spell it!

3) You put up the “freedom of speech” defense as a preemptive strike, which means you were sitting safe behind your keyboard with defensive salvos ready to launch at everyone you’re poking at.

False assumption on your part. Even if you were right about this – so what?

You KNEW you were going to provoke a negative response and latched onto “freedom of speech” before anyone else could jump you. “Freedom of speech” is not a guarantee required of private organizations or individuals.

I know that anyone that dares look critically & skeptically at the sacred cow of Israel gets attacked by those with a vested interest in Israel and that’s the way they try to censor and stifle legitimate debate. You trying to do that are you?

I hope I can get some positive reaction of people actually thinking critically about Israel’s brutality and the intrinsically racist nature of Judaism.

Why is there anything wrong in this or in speaking out for what I know to be true through logic and experience and study?

All of these combined render your arguments meaningless. Placed in the proper forum and context, you might have provoked some dialog, but all you’re really doing is throwing a tantrum. That prevents anyone from caring about WHAT you say and focus instead on HOW you’re saying it.

I disagree. You have failed to refute or even consider my arguments.

Maybe *you* need to focus on what I’m saying rather than launching your own little ad hominems against me & pretending that makes you right somehow.

“.. I suppose that’s one victory in your favour. Okay, I’ll recalculate. You lose by two instead.”

Actually, Weirdo Fishy, I win by three to zip!

@ LukeL Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 11:47 am)

It never fails to amaze me how much antisemitism still prevails, yet now they call it antizionism. It is a potato potahto arguement. Amalekite you sound like Louis Farakhan who called Judaism a “gutter religion” your comments are also mysoginst in context.

Nothing I have said is anti-Semitic – actually it’s very pro-Semitic the Palestineans and Arabs are Semitic! Criticising Judaism and the atrocities committed by its followers is simply pro-Humanity – please note I have NOT said – nor will ever say that Jews should be persecuted merely that they should STOP persecuting OTHERS!

As for my pointing out the misogyny in the OT itself being somehow misogynist? (If that’s what you are somehow on about?) I don’t think so!

@ Daffy Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 10:02 am)

Amalekite, Why didn’t the Arabs give the Palestinians an independent homeland before 1948? Because they didn’t want to…

Well Bzzzt! Wrong. It was because the land – both Palestine and much of the Arab world – was then under foreign, non-Arab, control first in the hands of the British Empire and then under a UN mandate that’s why!

Arabs killing Arabs is hardly unusual. Having Israel as a scapegoat is the ONLY thing uniting the various tribes; that’s another fact for you. If Israel went away, you would see bloodshed on a much larger scale, I have no doubt. I wonder who you would blame then?

Sheesh, and folks have the nerve to call *me* racist!!?

Your “facts” are just utter nonsense as even you must know if you think about it longer than a minute. Arabs gave the West much of astronomy, algebra, the concept of 0, and far more. For many centuries Arabs were far more advanced than the West. The Arabs btw. aren’t a group of savage tribes – and still NOT united even with the supposed “scapegoating of Israel” as you’d know with a minimum of research. Look up Sunni & Shia, the histories of Palestine and Iran, the Ottoman Empire and some Muslim scientists such as “Alhazen”, “Avicenna”, al-Sufi, al-Battani and others sometime. Try & have *some* idea of what you’re talking about before you post please!

And I am neither Christian, Muslim, or Jew. I am a Taoist of Irish/Scottish decent. I wonder where that fits in your hate filled thinking?

You don’t know anything about me yet judge me “hate-filled?” Just because I point out uncomfortable truths?

Why would a Scottish/Irish Taoist do that? Why is what I’ve said sounding so unreasonable to you? You ask yourself that and then please tell me. Over a pint of Guinness / whisky if you’d like!

@ TSFrost Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 10:05 am)

“what I’ve said here is true and important and should not be ignored”

True? Maybe. Important? Not really all that much. There is a long history of different religious factions hating one another. Same with different races and nationalities. We Americans tried to eradicate the indians. Should we living today be held accountable?

Yes – or at least it should be acknowledged and remembered not just forgotten. I’m not the only person to think this matters either. The Israelis are being armed and funded and politically supported by the West esp. the USA and that has very nasty consequences for everyone.

What do you hope to accomplish by all this ranting? Most on this list already agree that religion has properly mucked up most of our history, which is why we’re speaking out against all of it.

To make people think and raise awareness of some of the things they are often misdirected away from thinking. Hardly “ranting” either – merely pointing out the Israeli Emperors nudity & asking why we’re all paying and harming our future for his invisible “finery”.

@ A. Bakker Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am)
P is for politics, always good for a fight
But perhaps somehere else than on an astronomy site

& @ The Mad LOLScientist, FCD Says: (March 30th, 2009 at 10:17 am)

@Amalekite: Racist or not, ( NOT!) your comments do qualify as political screeds, which are entirely out of place here.

Not at all. The BA himself frequently posts on politics (eg. US elections) & it is *his* blog.

Now okay, he has told me he thinks its off-topic & from him I’ll accept that – although, personally, I consider the issue of applying skepticism to Israeli propaganda to be equally as valid and important as applying it to Creationism – both are political lies that are doing our planet rather a lot of harm.

No, I’ll discount what you say *if* (& when) its wrong. That you are clearly going to be biased because of your background doesn’t help of course!

@Amalekite Said: Oh & have I pointed out yet that the core, key defining premise of Judaism is irredeemably, intrinsically racist? I.e. that the Jews are gods “Chosen people”

Show me any religion that doesn’t define themselves as being chosen in some way by their deity. In fact, it’s a common joke among Jews that – given the persecution Jews have faced over the past few thousand years – we wish that God would choose someone else for awhile.

But Judaism isn’t a religion for anybody of any ethnicity – it is *specifically* devoted to and self-obsessedly about just twelve – now two -tribes. God apparently “chose” just these few tribes out of all the Humans he supposedly created. Other religions eg. Islam offer salvation to all comers – not just those descended on their mother’s side from a jew. There’s a very big difference there.

The command that you are referencing (to massacre the native population of the “promised land”) was an ancient one and no serious Jewish authority would consider it to apply to situations today. (You might find some fringe rabbi who says it applies, but fringe groups exist in all religions.)

True – so why do we focus on fringe Muslims and ignore fringe Jews? Should there NOT be as much focus on the extremist fundamentalist jew as there is on the extremist Muslim?

Oh & just because a command is ‘ancient’ doesn’t make it (as you might logically expect) less significant – in religion it’s sadly often the reverse.

“In all truth, Judaism is not really a religion so much as an ethnic race cult. What other legitimate religion is defined as being inherited from your mother’s side?”

So it wouldn’t be a cult if you were counted as entering the religion by your father being part of the religion? Would it be a cult if Jews decided that a baby was part of the Jewish religion after being dunked in water (*cough* Baptism *cough*)? How do the “rules for entry” make it a cult? You are either born Jewish or you convert. Yes, there are Jewish converts. There aren’t that many simply because Judaism doesn’t seek to convert people. Not only don’t we go around knocking on peoples’ doors, but we actively discourage people from converting. Keeps out the “I want to be a Jew today. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be Buddist” converts.

Like Madonna? *cough, cough *

Interesting that you do NOT want converts – that raises the immediate question of “Why not?” Oh yes, because you’re really about that ugly word ‘race’ and not “spreading the word” to all people as other universalist faiths seek to do. That sounds more like to me than your ad hoc & overly modern “religion-for-a-day-faddists-out” excuse.

What actually happened was, Palestine was controlled by the British Empire. In it lived a group of Arabs as well as Jews, Christians, etc.

True enough. There was the ‘Mandate of Palestine’ which was captured from the Ottoman Empire – and majority Muslim with some very small minorities of others incl. a handful of “native” Jews. Then a politico-religious movement began in the 1880’s among the Ashkenazim (European) Jews sick of being persecuted by Europeans (another story as to why *that* was.) who sought to create a specifically Jewish homeland :

“A land without people for a people without a land” as the slogan went.

Except of course that it was *NEVER* a “land without people!” The people were the indigenous Palestinean Arabs. Nor really were the Jews – many immensely wealthy and powerful such as the Rothschilds – “without land.”

Anyway, these European (Ashkenazim) Jews put their enormous political power & wealth to work and made their own little Zionist movement colonial adventure playing on religiosity and sentimentality – and the desire by many Europeans to see the Jews far from their own countries. The Jews – the original Zionists – now bought up large amounts of Palestinean land from absentee landlords and British imperialists and used their political weight to get some feel-good declarations like the Balfour one through supporting their cause.

After the Holocaust, the UN decided to carve up Palestine into two states. Israel would be the new Jewish State and Jordan (which at that point included the West Bank area) would go to the Arabs.

Not quite right. Jordan was the Transjordan mandate – a separate area again. The Mandate of Palestine was to be split – by people who didn’t live there and really had NO right to give it away : 55% to the Ashkenazim Jews and 45 % to the Palestineans.

Now if say, the govt of Fiji took over your nation and split it 45 % to your people and 55 % to somebody else’s – say the Palestineans – How would you react? Would you be happy?

Oh & WHY for pity’s sake should the persecution of *European Jews* by European non-Jews lead to the punishment of an innocent third party that was NOT responsible for the Shoah (Nazi holocaust)? Why allow the Nazi’s to get their way by having the Jews move elsewhere? Why not punish Germany for its anti-Judaism by having the Jewish state imposed on them?

Dare I suggest that the “brown people” counted less at the time – as Palestinean lives still seem to count for less today?

Arabs living in Israel were allowed to stay. They weren’t kicked out.

WRONG. Read up on Deir Yassin and other acts of “ethnic cleansing” & crimes against Humanity that occurred during the Nakbah – Palestinean for “Catastrophe” – when the Jews won the 1948 war. Oh & read outside one-sided Jewish propaganda. try reading some of the books by Noam Chomsky, Edward Said and Said K. Aburish among others. The real truth is far different from what you might have been taught already.

However, the surrounding Arab countries didn’t like a group of Jews suddenly in their midst and decided they’d “drive them into the sea.” The Arabs living in Israel were told to flee and that they would get their homes back once Israel was destroyed.

Ah yes, that old line. Cultures differ and Arab style of speaking poetically and passionately in their rhetoric is quite different from what Westerners are used to and from may have really been planned. Not that we’ll ever know.

Contrary to Israeli mythologies the well-equipped, well-armed well-led, well-funded Jewish side always had an insurmountable advantage over mere justice, fighting for one’s real homes and numbers. The real “David” in this “David & Goliath” tale, ironically, was always the Palestinean and Arab side.

Many did flee, though some remained. (And thus Israel actually has a thriving Arab population within its borders.)

Thriving you reckon?

Have you any idea of what most “Israeli Arabs” go through? Of how bad the Jews make their lives? Thought not.

This left the Arabs who fled in a tough situation. They couldn’t simply return. However, the Arab countries refused to integrate them into their populations. They stuck them in refugee camps and used them to 1) distract the from their own regimes’ bad acts and 2) incite hatred for Israel.

Way to attribute motives – a logical fallacy. Oh & by Arabs you mean Palestineans who were driven out of their own country by forces they were powerless to stop – and many who tried were killed. Yeah, according to you they were supposed to just shuffle off and die. Give up on getting their homes back. Bow down to their new masters. Put yourself in the place of the Palestinean refugees for a sec and you’ll see how unfair and ridiculous you are being.

Today the problem is one of hatred and fear on both sides.

Not so. The problem remains that Israel is violating international law in repressing the indigenous Palestinean population. The Occupation, the illegal Israeli settlements, the Jewish fundamentalists who seek a “greater “eretz” Israel stretching “from the Nile to the Euphrates” – that is what is *creating* all this ‘fear and hatred’ you refer to.

The Israeli’s hate for suicide bombers and the like has spilled over to the normal Arab population and the Arab’s hatred for Israel/Jews has been passed down from generation to generation. The end result is a tough cycle to break.

True. But not complete – the Israelis have created the suicide bombers by giving the Palestineans no hope, no chance, nothing else to fight with. When you have nothing to lose ..

Israel could totally alter the situation if it withdrew to the pre-1967 lines and accepted publicly the right of the Palestineans to live freely with proper sovereignty (incl. border control & foreign policy) and control over their own lives. If Israel gave up its secret WMDs or supplied the Palestineans with a proper military equal in strength to deter *either* side from invading the other. But that’s not going to happen now is it?

No Jews aren’t 100% blameless in the Israel-West Bank/Gaza mess, but they aren’t the devils you’ve painted them to be either.

Actually, yes, they are. Not devils perhaps but very much in the wrong and ones committing & causing by far the worst of the problems. I’d say the fault lay very much with the Israeli side & the Palestineans are “far more sinned against than sinning” to quote Shakespeares phrase.

And your depiction of the Jewish religion is completely out of whack.

No, it’s pretty much spot on. You just refuse to accept that stark reality.

Amalekite: your comment was off-topic, inappropriate, and basically trolling. You’ve done this before too. You’re welcome to post here on topic, but if you do this again, I will retroactively go through all your comments and mark them all as spam. Are we on the same page here?

Well we disagree but I’ll play by your rules.

I’ve only just now seen that response of yours – & I do NOT beleive it to be a fair characterisation of my comments.

I believe it was (& still is) fair to add Israel to a list of things Americans and others need to be *far* more skeptical about – & Judiaism which I believe gets away with far less criticism than it deserves. I thought that was still on topic esp. given the very wide range of topics mentioned in this original poem.

Am I allowed at least to respond to others attacks against me here?

—–

The Amalekites were a Semitic tribe recorded in the Old Testament / Talmud / Torah as one of history’s many victims of the genocides carried out repeatedly on their neighbours by the Israelite tribes – other victims include the Moabites, Jebusites, Canaanites, Amorites and Philistines. The Amalekite king was spared by Saul – only for the “prophet” Samuel to enter the room, abuse his king and then murder and hack into pieces the Amalekite king – an unarmed prisoner. Samuel went on to launch a racist diatribe claiming the Jewish god Yahwah was so upset at Saul’s failure to completely exterminate the Amalekites, another Semitic people, that he was removing Saul’s kingship – and later his life. Today Israelis still revile the long since exterminated Amalekites using it as a term of abuse which is sometimes directed towards the Palestineans. The term is also used for atheists.