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Monday, November 11, 2013

Cat Calls From Hamas: How They View Judaism

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                            

Hamas' Deputy Minister of Religious Affairs, Abdallah Jarbu, doesn't think much of Judaism at all. Back in 2010, he proclaimed that Jews suffer from a mental disorder, because they are thieves and aggressors...in fact, they are foreign bacteria, a microbe unparalleled in the world."  He is praying that Allah would "annihilate this filthy people who have neither religion nor conscience."  Then he added that he condemns "whoever supports sitting down with them and whoever believes that they are human beings."

By saying all this, isn't he condemning his own religion of Islam?  Where in the Koran does it call the "People of the Book" such vile things?   Mostly, Jews were to be respected for being who they were.  Moses is a prophet to Muslims.  So are others in our history.

What sounds like sour grapes to me should be examined.

Thieves?  Jews have less criminal behavior than anyone in cities in the USA.  Thievery is condemned in our Torah.  Coveting is condemned, which leads to thievery.  We are hard workers and our estimation of a MAN is someone who takes care of his family with honor.  Sorry, Abdallah, we're not known to be thieves.  Of course he is aiming at the problems of Israel versus Palestine and intimating that we have stolen Palestine from them.   I have to retort that it is he who is suffering from a mental disorder that I've already written about; delusion.  He does not understand nor want to understand the history of the Ottoman Empire and WWI, and Britain and France's role in holding the mandates nor what the outcomes were.  He doesn't understand a thing about his own people, the Syrian-Palestinians and their history, nor Feisal and Abdullah's part in all this.  .  He's may be a smart guy but he's been so brainwashed that he believes this false story.

Aggressors?  Well, Abdallah, we are people of the Middle East after all. We share a lot of genes with them.   We have the genes for being leaders and leaders might be viewed as being aggressors.  We're not shy people.  We see something that should be done and we know how to organize and do it.  Is that a bad characteristic?  It's something that gets things accomplished.  You might say this of all leaders.  King David and King Solomon could have been called aggressors.  Our aggressiveness is softened by following the 10 Commandments.  We're not cruel people. Without the Torah we might be like others. That keeps us in check.

Filthy people?  Do you know what a mikva is?  It's like the Christian baptism, a free running water-hole where women go every month, where men go every week before Shabbat.  It's water, our friend. We've been using the mikva ever since Moses.  We were dunking people in free running water before others thought of washing.  Our tradition is to wash our hands before eating.  In the diaspora (outside of Israel) we were accused of poisoning people because we had less sickness than others in times of something that came along like the flu or scarlet fever or whatever was catching.  That's because we practiced cleaner habits than others.    We have laws-rules about keeping our homes clean, about what to do in case of infection and viruses and diseases written right in our Torah by Moses.  Every year we do a giant spring cleaning for Passover, something Americans have adopted, not knowing where the tradition came from.  We invented cleanliness, and I know that our neighbors, the Syrians, follow the same ideas, but I don't know about the rest of the Middle East.  Many Syrians are probably walking around with Jewish genes as we were one giant playground way back in King David's day.  People got mixed back then and even recently.  Or possibly being nearby and sharing some friendship, as Syrians used to do with Jews caused them to copy some of our traditions.  That was the whole idea when we came along-to be the light.

Unparalleled in the world?  We are of course not foreign bacteria or microbes, but we are the remnant of a once great nation and people, down to being 0.02% of the world's population now.  We have more Nobel prizes than any other people.  Our IQ has been found to be higher than others.  The average world IQ is 100.  Ours is 106.  We have Einstein, who was an Ashkenazi Jew.  We invent wonderful medical advances and share it with the world.  The Ottoman Empire's leaders invited us back from eastern Europe to take care of their finances.  They couldn't handle it.  When they lost us, they went bankrupt.  We invented the idea of checks, loaning money, etc. from being on the Silk Road and trading.  No other people have been treated as badly as we have been, either, and yet we survive.  We are survivors, Abdallah.  It is written that those countries that help us shall be rewarded and those that try to destroy us will be destroyed instead.  You don't have to believe it, but the statement is there, for we are the Chosen People.  People have never understood that statement like we have, but it means that we were to light the way and are carrying the responsibility for doing so.  It's not meant to be that we are better than others.  We are people, not g-ds.

Religion?  We only happen to be the originators of believing in one G-d.  We started monotheism, that's all.  Did you forget about Abraham and Moses already?  We have held onto our religion for 4,000 years.  How long have Muslims been at it?  Islam has been going on for only about 1,400 years.  Mohammad died in 632 CE.  You have forgotten that Abraham, who was alive in the 2nd millennium BCE, had a family that produced Isaac and Jacob who were the ancestors of Moses.  Ishmael and Esau were from this family but did not go along with monotheism, and their people had to wait for Mohammad.  So don't ever think we are not religious people.  We've been hit with everything humans can throw at us to divert our relationship with G-d:  the Romans and Jesus' death, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust and eternal anti-Semitism and still we hold onto our belief and traditions.  You should be so lucky to say the same one day.

Conscience?   Everything in Judaism has developed in us a conscience so strong that we all suffer from guilt complexes if we don't do the right thing. Haven't you ever read the book, Portnoy's Complaint?   We mothers have striven to develop a conscience in our children.  We strive to do a mitzva (good deed) constantly.  Israelis are known for their outer exterior as being tough, but inside, they have a huge conscience and that exterior cracks if need be.  I"ve seen it, and I myself am Jewish.  We were taught the laws of Kashrut (keeping kosher) that develops a conscience.  We don't even eat meat and milk at the same meal because it makes us think of that poor mother cow who will know that at the moment we drink her milk we are eating her child.  I get the picture in my mind every time this comes up.  We didn't go into Gaza and aim at all the people, did we.  No, we aimed at the sites where the missiles, rockets and mortars were coming from.

It was you without the conscience who stuck them amidst people and in schools,  trying to blame us as being terrible people, but we know your ways.  We even put our own IDF soldiers in harms way rather than harm your women and children.  We don't teach or expect our people to become suicide bombers, either.  In Israel, we have bomb shelters in every building.  In Syria, such a thing is unknown.  How about the rest of the Middle East?  Are they trying to protect their people like Israel is trying to protect theirs?  Who has a machine that can catch missiles and stop them before they explode?  Israel does.  You might just want it to happen in order to blame the aggressors.  Oh yes, who has been raining down rockets, missiles and mortars on southern Israel since 2001?  You have.  You are the aggressors who want our land.  You have no conscience.

You have given your own religion a bad name by your behavior.  Mohammad should be having a lot of oy, oy, oys right now, for people are only becoming atheistic seeing what religion is doing to our planet and what can happen from Iran's ability to get the A bomb.  You are the thieves who are trying to create a country  out of our legal one since you covet the idea, but came from all the surrounding states in the first place.  I swear, if you were given the land right now you couldn't keep it up.  You have no know-how.  You're just programmed to hate.   Another country such as Syria would take it over in a matter of months anyway.  Such is the story of the Middle East.  It's been a battleground since the very beginning of the world. When the Messiah comes and peace happens, then we'll know that people have changed for the better.

Hamas's exclamation about Jews was  brought out in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, The Devil That Never Dies. which was reviewed by Professor Glenn C. Altschuler from Cornell University.  His review was printed in the Sunday Oregonian.  Altschuler gave a bad review for Goldhagen's writing technique but realized he was reading about some mighty true facts about the anti-Semitism that has entered our world again and should be alarmed about.  I note that whenever someone bashes Jews, they call us just what they themselves are guilty of doing, and in this way try to throw the mantle onto us.  Usually it works.  People are so gullible and ready to join the pack of Jew-hating, that it works.

 It takes a strong-minded individual who thinks for himself and seeks out facts to be untouched by such lies and defend Jews when they themselves are not Jewish.  I"m wondering if we have such people today, or have those special gifted people all died off.  I hope not.  However, looking at today's universities, I doubt it very much.  They have become a bastion of anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism.

 I've read that the Messiah hoped for by all 3 religions might have already been born, someone from the Middle East, a descendant of King David.  He should be in his 30's by now.  Who knows?  Maybe there's someone out there with thoughts of how to bring people to their senses.  Our idea of a Messiah is a living man, a leader, probably an aggressive person, somebody that can sell his message to people.

Resource:  Oregonian newspaper, 11/10/13, page E5, Books; A sobering look at the rise of anti-Semitism by Glenn C. Altschuler
My review on the reviewer and the book and statements.
Abraham's Children:  Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People by Jon Entine




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