Jew and Arab: Why We Think So Differently

Jew and Arab: Why We May Think So Differently

by Nadene Goldfoot

From the beginning in the land of Ur Kasdim, which lies in the new country called Iraq, Abraham, whose name originally was Abram, , father of Judaism and of Arabs, made some decisions that formed the essence of his family’s future. He had taken his wife’s Egyptian maid Hagar and had a child that he named Ishmael with her because his wife, whose name was Sarai at the time, had been barren. That was the start of trouble. Ishmael turned out to be a "wild-ass of a man with his hands against everyone and everyone’s hand was against him and it was said that he would rule over all his brothers". Abram was 86 years old when Ishmael was born.

Abram was 99 years old when he circumcised himself, and had Ishmael, who then was 13 years old, circumcised also.

When Abram was 100 years old his 90 year old wife Sarai finally conceived and bore Isaac, much to both people’s astonishment. Their names were now changed to Abraham and Sarah.

There came the day when Isaac was of the age to marry. Abraham didn’t want him to marry a Canaanite woman, but wanted him to marry someone from his own family who were residing in Aram Naharaim in the city of Nahor. They were called Arameans. Abraham’s servant came across Rebecca, whose line was from Nahor, brother of Abraham, and was very impressed with her. He selected her to be 40 year old Isaac’s wife and took her back to him.

By the age of 60 Rebecca also had been having trouble conceiving and finally was expecting twins, again as different in personality as Ishmael and Isaac were. Esau was born first. He was all red with lots of hair. Jacob was born with his hand holding onto the heel of Esau and was smooth-skinned. Esau became a hunter while Jacob stayed in the tents. The father favored the hunter while the mother favored his brother. Jacob did cooking and was very intelligent. He managed to get a very important birthright given to himself instead of his brother, for one thing. Essau finally married two Hittite women at the age of 40. They weren’t monogomous in those days. They were Judith and Basemath. The threesome with their children didn’t have the same reverence of spirituality that Rebecca and Jacob had. When Isaac was dying, Jacob managed to trick his father into giving him the very important blessing which was better than today’s inheritance left in wills instead of giving it to the first-born Esau. When a blessing was given, it was something that could not be changed. It was legally binding to the people involved. Esau was furious! He knew that it was important to Isaac to not marry the women of Canaan as he considered them to be evil, so what did he do to get even? He went over to Ishmael, now one of them, and married Mahalath, his daughter!

The two brothers never could make up. Esau refused to accept Jacob’s try at becoming friends. After all, he had been tricked twice by this younger brother. Jacob had brought Esau gifts at a meeting , but it was of no use. The die was cast that caused the chasm between the two peoples.

In 1947, Abba Eban along with a few other leaders held a secret meeting with Abdul Rahman Azzam Pasha, an Egyptian. They held a very revealing conversation. A Jewish fellow by the name of Horowitz had a plan for a joint political development of the Middle East.

Pasha said, "The Arab world is not in a compromising mood." He felt that though Horowitz’s plan was rational and logical, the fate of nations was not decided by rational logic. He said that nations never concede; they fight. He continued saying that Israel wouldn’t get anything by peaceful means or compromise. Only by force of arms will you get something. The Arabs will try to defeat the Jews. He didn’t know if they would win, but they would try. They had been successful in driving out the Crusaders but knew they lost Spain and Persia (now called Iran). He related that Arabs may lose Palestine also, but it was too late to talk about peaceful solutions.

He would only concede that an agreement had to be on their terms to be acceptable. They regarded the Jews as invaders and were ready to fight. Fighting is in the nature of peoples, he continued. They aspire to expansion and fight for what they think is important.
He didn’t think he was a representative of this new spirit. His son was one ready amd wanting to fight.

All this time, Azzam had no hatred in his voice and referred to the Jews many times as "cousins". Abba Eban and the group shivered at the thought that blind fatalism and not logic ruled the Arab mind. We do have a different mentality. Perhaps it's all due to something that happened thousands of years ago.

Reference: Book: Genesis 1948 by Dan Kurzman
Book: Tanach, the Stone Edition: Torah, Prophets/Writings.

Attacking Israel: Amnesty International

Amnesty International says it's a group that is a defender of human rights. To them it's all right that the Palestinians have been hitting Israel for the past eight years with missiles, but not all right for Israel to defend itself in anyway, even though homes and civilians have been in the line of fire of the hateful Palestinians.

Israel just happens to be the only democracy in the Middle East, and it's getting a bum rap. Amnesty International has now put it on the list for an arms embargo along with such lovely countries as:
1. Democratic Republic of Congo
2. Sudan: government against people of Darfur
3. Myanmar: tortures political prisoners
4. Somalia: practice rape and murder and affect 3.25 million people

Amnesty intends to prevent Israel from their right of self-defense and they don't intend to interfere with Hamas, a terrorist organization, at all. They must think it's all right to rain down the thousands of rockets they have been doing. With them, you can attack innocent civilians but not defend yourself against attacks. Hamas has a network to receive arms and they will continue to get arms, even though Amnesty is saying that it has called for an arms embargo on them, too. Amnesty realizes their embargo would not stop Hamas. Israel relies on lawful transactions between real states. Yet they have the audacity to go ahead and call for a U.N. arms embargo on Israel.

Guess what part of the world they must be a part of? I would say they definitely are not a defender of human rights. Their selection of the word, amnesty, confuses me. Amnesty refers to a government who grants pardons to a large group of people. Does that mean that they believe in saying that it's okay for the Palestinians to attack Israel? They are pardoning them? That's what they are doing.

Reference: B'nai B'rith International

Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon Brunch Meeting

Pam is speaking with her power point program.

Today was our annual Brunch meeting of JGSO. Pamela Weisberger, the program chairman for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, came up from California to be our speaker.

She spoke about finding people in the newspaper in such articles as marriages, divorces and items of deception and murder in the 1890's. She has visited and researched her ancestral towns and villages in the Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian archives. She has also found much information in 19th to early 20th century city directories, newspapers and court records. Most of her examples were from work on her own families presented in a power point program.

We enjoyed the bagels, cream cheese and lox with tomatoes and onions. Along with that we had hard boiled eggs, a variety of fresh fruits and pastries for dessert.

Everyone left hoping to find some juicy tidbit recorded in some historical newspaper that would reveal more about the ancestor they were researching. ProQuest, here we come.

Yom HaShoah Today by Nadene Goldfoot

The Holocaust killed 6 million Jews in Europe. On April 12, 1951, we started a universal remembrance establishing and starting on that day, Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Day, a day to remember these people who died.

We've been observing this day ever since then. This year it falls on this day, the 27th of Nisan. This occurs 8 days before Yom HaAtzmaut, or Israeli Independence Day. We do a lot of remembering. That makes us good historians.

It's good we do this. Iran has been trying to white-wash these facts by denying the Holocaust. So have other anti-semites. The fact is that Hitler and his followers tried to eradicate all the Jews in the world and that's a horrendous thing. It's a traumatic lesson to us. After living in Germany since the Middle Ages and being good citizens, Jews were then the scapegoats for whatever problems the country had. Suddenly they became less than human to the average German through Hitler's rantings and ravings. The whole country except for a very small few turned against them, and they were led to slaughter.

Yes, we did realize at that point the necessity of having and living in our own country where we could control our destiny. It became of the utmost importance to establish Israel after the war when the opportunity finally arose after 2,000 years of praying daily for our return to our homeland.

It's shocking to me that Iran is calling Israel a racist state when Muslims have 23 countries that are Muslim and we are trying to hold onto Israel, the only Jewish state in the world. We have a million Muslim Arabs living in our state while they have no Jews. Who is the racist?

It's even more shocking to me that the world seems to be going along with their warped logic and is accepting their charges. When will people wake up? I guess they are true followers of Hitler. If you say a lie long enough, people will believe it. I think that's the true evil in the world; the lack of reason.

Reporters Start With Opinions

Russell Crowe spoke on TV in an interview today about his 2009 movie, State of Play where he plays the part of a reporter. He said that he felt reporters started with opinions. They might change that opinion if they gain new facts.

I feel this is true. Russell said it was human nature to have an opinion about something. I see this with reporters dealing with Israel. So many seem to start with negative opinions about Israel and do not dig to find the truths. When important people like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finklestein knock Israel, the rest of America follows suit without thought. They are being led like sheep.

One uplifting item is that very recently CNN broadcast information about Israel's accomplishements that are excellent. I felt a miracle was happening.

Remember that every reporter has an agenda and his reporting reflects it. One reporter that changed her opinion about Israel that I know of is Joan Peters who wrote the book, "From Time Immemorial." She was acclaimed and consulted by American presidents for many years and her book was most accepted. She wrote about who the Palestinians really were and where they came from and when. Thanks to her delving into finding actual facts, these revelations turned up in print. It's a tome to wade through but worth every effort. The question is: are American reading levels up to it? There are no pictures. Finklestein and Chomsky have spent much time knocking her great revelations. That's all they do; knock.

Resource: http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enPage=HomePage shown on CNN

1930's Values Popular Again: Hatred For Jews

Stuart H. Schwartz, Ph.D., is alarmed that the world is turning against us and tells it like it is in his article in American Thinker, "We are all anti-Semites now". He points this out in many ways.

1. Young higher educated people have shown signs of being against older American values: the free economic market. They are more socialistic now.
a. Campuses demonstrating anti-semitism: Boston College "Palestinian terrorists demonstrating courage and wisdom."
b. Columbia U, financial support from Arab States
c. Harvard: new Middle Eastern studies, using Israel as codeword for Jew, cheer Hamas terrorists/destruction of Jews

2. It's Israel's fault that there is terrorism, like Jimmy Carter's writings in his book.
a. Joining the Human Rights Council who denounce Israel.
b. Feelings: Jews and Israel out of step with the world.
c. Feelings: Israelis/Jews morally and politically inferior to the worst terrorist groups in world.
d. World accepting persecution of Jews and maybe 2nd genocide.
e. Golden Globe award winner: Paradise Now-exploring human side of terrorists recruited to kill Jews.

3. Our government now embracing militant Arab positions (anti-Jewish)
a. Exterminating Jews:
1. Southern Israel rocket attacks: 8 years of rockets
2. Beheading of Reporter Pearl because was Jewish

4. Newspaper Coverage
a. Davis Cup match in Sweden: Islamists screamed for death of Israeli players/all Jews
b. Cartoons; Jews as Nazis eating Palestinians
c. Positioning such cartoons: under newspaper banner "The New York Times."

Be prepared. The tide has turned against us in many ways. Being 1 % of the world's population is a dangerous position. We're still the scapegoats of the world and people are constantly ready to sacrifice us in the name of obtaining their selfish happiness. This is how WWII started and we were on the altar. I never thought it would happen again, but here it is. Take your heads out of the sand and look.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/we_are_all_antisemites_now.html

Hadassah and Portland's Purim Carnival

Today was the Purim Carnival at the MJCC. Hadassah took part by manning a table with Hadassah information and selling pink cotton candy for the Kollel. Everyone was delighted with the spun perfection. At the table were Carolyn Shain and Michelle Suffian Chilton. I helped take in the money and made change. We were there from one o'clock till four.