Dear Jae, Rasheed, Platt, Rob, Wim and all.
First, a welcome to Jae. Jae is right to point to Kabala (in his second
post), since some of the metaphysical issues we deal with in this forum
are strongly related. I just spent a pleasant weekend in Safed, the city
with which the Kabala is most closely connected, and naturally, Kabala
was one of the topics of discussion for the group I was with. Maybe I'll
have some comments on that in future.
For now, I'd like to remind Jae that Jewish tradition holds that a man
shouldn't study Kabala till he reaches the age of 40 (by which time he's
supposedly gained wisdom and a full knowledge of the Talmud). The only
reason I bring this up is that there is a tendency in discussions like
this to jump on themes and trivialize them - call it the impetuousness
of youth.
Jae, I certainly do not intend to put you down - just to SLOW you down.
Till now, I've been the only Israeli in this forum, and have learned to
tread VERY VERY carefully. On the one hand, I don't want to see this
forum degenerate into a slanging match on Israel. On the other hand, I
like to say enough to show people that they might be wrong (you can look
back in the archives for my various comments, e.g. look at September -
http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0109). That is why I am now
making one of my occasional replies to this thread. You will see that I
address this to a number of other people:
Rasheed (Hi Rasheed!) is a Muslim living in the USA. Not surprisingly,
he has a natural sympathy for the Palestinians. It wasn't hard to get
Rasheed to come out against the sort of terror now wrought by various
Palestinian groups. He has already learned that things are not so
simple. Rasheed and I already have a friendly private correspondence,
which is as it should be, even if we do have strong disagreements.
Platt is a right-wing American republican - not something I like about
him, but his pragmatic approach happens to be sympathetic to Israel and
its hard line against Palestinian terror. Besides that, we probably
disagree on absolutely everything else (right Platt ;-)).
I don't know Rob yet, but can see that he has a lot to learn. Rob (and
Rasheed), did you know that the USA embargoed arms sales to Israel until
1973!!! Israel was already the "bad boy" long before that as far as the
United Nations was concerned. Israel is used to frequent UN
condemnations, but every Israeli Government sees its prime duty as
protecting its citizens, not pleasing the UN.
We all know about what happened to small E. European state that bowed to
international pressure in 1938 and accepted the infamous Munich
agreement. As for Arab hostility against Israel, that goes back even
further. If we look at Palestine some decades before Israel was even
created, the victims were mostly Jews. For some of the Jewish
communities (e.g. Hebron, Gaza), the murders were followed by eviction
- all this under the generous protection of the League of Nations,
represented by the British Mandatory government. It is thus hardly
surprising that Israel today is not particularly obsessed with pleasing
the rest of the world.
As to Wim (Hi Wim), he is a well-intentioned European liberal who
refuses to see Israel's problem in existential terms. Wim, you say that
there is no legitimizing killing, but killing goes on whether or not it
is legitimized or not. A nation cannot stand by quietly and allows its
own citizens to die at the hands of attackers. There is no question that
when a terrorist group launches an attack, someone is going to be
killed. Personally, I prefer that it is the terrorists.
Jae, and everyone who missed it, you might like to look at the Bob Dylan
poem I posted here recently.
(http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/0109/0172.html, or
http://www.farbrengen.com/).
Best regards to everyone,
Jonathan
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk
[mailto:owner-moq_discuss@venus.co.uk] On Behalf Of Gendo138@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, November 04, 2001 2:23 PM
To: moq_discuss@moq.org
Subject: Re: MD Logical Conclusions Anyone?
Uh, I have been out of the scene for a year, but I have an intimate
knowledge
of the Palestainian-Israeli conflict (I live in Israel) and of MOQ, so
could
someone brief me about this arguement before I jump in?!
Jae Angel
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