Housing subsidy pushes prices up

[Jovial Monk]

Yup, have to wonder why the surrounding arab countries did not take more refugees. Some politicians liking a situation where they could stir up trouble abroad if something wasn't too good at home?

[cynik]

I say give the reasonable jews tasmania, and send the rest of them, and the tasmanians, to live in texas.

No way - I'm staying. I'm used to living with Jewish people and I like them. And I believe they're entitled to a homeland.

That is a desperately dangerous statement to make, Hebe.

Is every religious group entitled to a homeland, or just the jews?

What about new religions? What about football clubs?

And the claim that jews are entitled to a homeland seems a weak way of claiming that the palestinians are not entitled to their own. Surely nobody is entitled to anything at the expense of someone else in innocent, lawful prior possession?

As for the comments about history being red in tooth and claw, that invites absolute disaster. I take it that you would be good enough to keep that position if Tel Aviv was struck with a nuke? You know, "Bad luck chaps, that is war. A bit red in tooth and claw you know, just forget about it."

I think all the talk about who deserves what is doomed to failure, and in fact it misses the fundamental point that simply will not go away. That is, quite simply, that Israel is a puppet state. It is a puppet state because it is not viable without the financial and military support of foreign power.

As time goes on, that support becomes more crucial, not less. In an age of nuclear weapons, I fear we are all just waiting for Israel to go up in smoke.

[Hebe]

Is every religious group entitled to a homeland, or just the jews?

What about new religions? What about football clubs?

Nope, just the Jews. No other group has been so consistently driven out of countries throughout history and persecuted the way they have.

[cynik]

You have obviously never supported Chelsea.

But really, hebe, what of the pagans?

Are they not to be given their own homeland?

And you might say, but these pagans, they are but a new invention, for the old and true pagans were extinguished by the red tooth and claw of history long ago.

And is that not especially true of the modern jews?

If you consider the jews a race, people marked by the genetics they carry from birth, then I grant the matter is more complex, but the truth is that every religion is a club that can be joined for a fee of some kind, and left, by adults, for any reason.

And in a secular world, why should the jews have their own nation when the protestants do not have their own?

I support some of Zwingli's ideas. Can I now carve a piece of Switzerland out for myself, and my special club of friends?

To argue that history has been hard on the jews is to forget that history has been kind enough to include the jews. Imagine the irony, to the aboriginal people's taste, of a white Australian claiming that history has created justification for a jewish homeland.

And finally, the jews have two homelands. In the soviet union a place was made for them to go and live and worship, as the dominant cultural group. They sneer and say it is in Siberia, but it is a habitable place, no desert, and from that place empires have arisen in the past.

It is myth and propaganda that the jews of today deserve or need any state of their own, and a lie to claim they hail from Israel according to the book of god. Even if you believe what is written in the jews own book to be an accurate history, if you actually read it you will find that the jews came to Israel out of egypt, and upon reaching the land of the cunannites, slew them all and took the land for themselves.

There is no justification for the creation of a homeland for any religious group, least of all when it means the annihilation of another people, the palestinians.

[Hebe]

You have obviously never supported Chelsea.

No, I support fecking Sunderland.

The pagans and Christians and Muslims exist everywhere, they don't need a place.

To argue that history has been hard on the jews is to forget that history has been kind enough to include the jews.

Yeah, like Clifford's Tower, the pogroms, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the Pales , the ghettos....

[Jovial Monk]

"the land of the cunannites" wink wink nudge nudge

[mantra.]

The pagans and Christians and Muslims exist everywhere, they don't need a place.

Why are the Jewish people considered so elite Hebe and the rest of us so ordinary and prolific that we can live anywhere? There was a funny article recently concerning a suburb of Sydney - St. Ives. Those living in St. Ives have always considered themselves a little more superior than the rabble residing in surrounding areas, but now they are being treated as lesser beings as the Jews move into their territory and begin to stake their claim.

A JEWISH group plans to overcome an ancient and restrictive religious commandment by creating a virtual wall around an entire North Shore suburb.

But its push for greater freedom has caused angst among some St Ives residents, who say it will block their views and create a "Jewish ghetto".

Under Jewish law it is forbidden to push or carry objects beyond the private home on the Sabbath and during holy festivals such as the Jewish new year, Rosh Hashanah, which began at sunset on Monday.

That means parents are often unable to take babies and young children to synagogues or parks because they cannot push them there in prams. Likewise, the elderly and disabled cannot be pushed in wheelchairs.

But the creation of a part-symbolic, part-physical zone known as an eruv allows Jews to carry out such activities within its boundaries.

"Really the ultimate aim is to basically help families, liberating people from their homes, such as young mums with kids in their prams," said David Guth, 32, of St Ives.

The married father of three children, including a five-month-old baby, is a member of Northern Eruv, a group seeking Ku-ring-gai Council's approval to create an eruv around St Ives.

An eruv already exists in the Waverley area, including along the promenade at Bondi Beach, but is so inconspicuous few people know it is there.

Most of the 20-kilometre boundary of the St Ives eruv would be demarcated using wires, cables and power poles owned by Optus, Foxtel and EnergyAustralia. But about 20 per cent would be formed by erecting 26 aluminium poles six metres high in 14 locations across St Ives. The poles would then be linked by a wire.

The development application drew 21 public submissions. Four, including one from the NSW Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, were supportive.

Most objectors were concerned about the impact the poles would have on views but some went further, claiming an eruv would benefit one religious group at the expense of others.

The chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff, dismissed the concerns, saying the plan would have little effect on the environment because it was "in the form of existing poles and wire".

Would we be up in arms and screaming from the rooftops if the Muslims built an eruv in 2 of Sydney's better suburbs?

[cynik]

Hebe, your claim that the jews have been persecuted in excess of other religious groups is without foundation.

Read the lateran councils, and see what they say about jews. It is clear that jews were tolerated in christian lands, and protected by the highest authorities. Now every other religion, every single one, was punished with death by burning. No other religion was allowed to do as it wished in christian lands, as the jews were.

The same is true of the soviet union. The orthodox church was destroyed and the priests shot. But the jews were allowed to have their own homeland, and they held the very highest positions within the communist party.

Just so, in roman times the jews were tolerated and allowed to thrive when christians were thrown to the lions.

The big question in history is not why the jews were persecuted, but why they were tolerated.

Sure, they suffered periods of persecution. But you get that, if you are a religious group that spreads stories about you innate superiority to everybody else. I mean, every religious group has been hammered repeatedly over the centuries.

Hebe, you have a bad case of blinkers when it comes to the jewish question. The jews are special because they special because they are special. And because they are so special, they must be treated in a special way.

The jews are just another variety of smelly arab throwback that has outlived its welcome in a civilized, scientific age. That does not mean they should be persecuted, but it sure as shit means they do not deserve any special treatment. In fact, if the laws of sedition and equal opportunity were applied, scarcely a single rabi would be able to stay out of jail.

Have you heard what the jews say about non jews? Have you?

[Hebe]

Hebe, you have a bad case of blinkers when it comes to the jewish question.

I admit it. It's based very much on emotion and experience. If I had any sort of power I'd have to be more balanced. As it is, I have a prejudice which is fairly resistant to reason, despite the odd cringe.

Have you heard what the jews say about non jews? Have you?

Yep, also about women. It's abhorrent. I guess all the Jews I know are pretty secular.

[JW Frogen]

Perhaps the oxygen levels in the Swiss Alps are too thin to sustain the titanic intellect of our international lawyer of mystery but I would think that any lawyer would know that there is only one basis for a nation being legally legitimate in the present age, UN recognition.

Israel has it, to date the Palestinians do not. (At least not as a state, though the right to establish has been recognized.)

Israel accepted the UN offer in 1949; the entire Arab world rejected it and chose a war of extermination.

And they lost.

And lost.

And lost……and…hence Israel’s expanding borders.

As to historical claims for a nation, well even though this is of little legal relevance without UN recognition, the Jews have the oldest continuous presence in the region of any continuous culture. Most of the people existing in Palestine pre the first Jewish conquest were either exterminated, (these were the rules of the time, played by everyone) or became Jews. Witness (or not, depending on your reading habits) how the temple priests and Pharisees claim Jesus could not be the Messiah because he was a Galilean, and they had been recently converted to Judaism.

I call Jews a culture for a reason, because neither they nor their oppressors have ever defined a Jew as a religion. Present Israel allows immigration on grounds of decent from Jews whether one practices the religion or not. Indeed Israel is not a theocratic state, many of the founders were secular, the courts often strike down religious laws and Muslims who remained in the state post the founding are Israeli citizens. Nor was Zionism a religious moment, it sought a homeland for all Jews practicing or not.

Israel offered the pantheist Einstein the very first Presidency of Israel.

Why?

Because most of the world considered Jews Jews whether they practiced the religion or not.

The Nazis determined who was or was not a Jew based on decent, not practice of a religion.

This has occurred time and time again in history, from the Spanish oppression of even Jews who converted to Christianity generations before to Stalin’s purge of Jews who advocated atheism and communist ideology. (I find it interesting cynik offers the proposition that Israel should not exist in Palestine because there were previous inhabitants yet condemns them for not going to Siberia *UNDER STALIN!!!!!!* where there were, yes, previous inhabitants. But then one can strain for any intellectual consistency in your posts longer than it would take Paris Hilton to write a non-ghost written novel.)

I know, this is all annoying reality for cynik. He wants to rant and a rant needs emotion, not reason, and certainly not reading, but for the reality based here it is.

Oh, there is one other way to establish a state, have the power to make it happen and protect it.

Israel can do that too; so far the Palestinians cannot.

Israel contracted; it left Gaza, without pre-conditions. Sharon forced his own settlers to leave; he made them leave by force.

Had Hamas concentrated on building a state, civil order, and then recognized Israel’s right to exist the pressure from the US on Israel, indeed the pressure within democratic Israel to then follow suite on the experiment in most if not all of the West Bank would have enormous, Israel would have accepted a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

Instead Hamas chose the same old same old war, which has seen the Palestinians loose more and more, territory. Which has now made it almost impossible for most Israeli politicians to advocate a complete, or indeed any major withdrawal, from the West Bank.

Has any people been so poorly led as the Palestinians since the Lucy ape descendant who said, "no, I think we should stay in Africa, this is where the future is"?

The one reality based opinion cynik stumbled upon is this, one nuclear strike and Israel may cease to exist.

Which is why if they do not prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons I predict President Obama will offer Israel the protection of the US nuclear umbrella, he will state any nuclear attack on Israel will be considered an attack on the US and so the US will retaliate with overwhelming nuclear force.

Just as the US did with Western Europe and Japan during the Cold War.

Still cynik rant away, just don't expect to insult the entire world's dignity by expecting them to buy it. Still, you might just catch most of PA.

This version.