What this guy said.

geoffff

From a commenter at  New Matilda  Not sure if I agree with it all but that is because it is not my post. But it is a post worth spreading.

the_thermonucle...
Posted Thursday, June 4, 2015 - 00:58

Let's start with some of the simple things.

Jews are not a race.

Correct. Jews are not a race. Jews are an ethnicity or a tribe if you will.

They have always been that, whether you believe it or not.

Furthermore, as Judeans they were a nation. And now as Israelis they are a nation again.

Arguing that because Jews exist in Australia that Israel is not a Jewish state is disingeniuous. 

Jews are a religion, not an ethnicity

Typical crap. 

Jews may have once been a religion only but they became a fairly distinc people, culture and movement. 

For 2000 years in exile they've been treated as a people. In fact, every single Soviet Jew born before 1991 has their nationality recorded as "Jew" in their birth certificate in Russian. I certainly do.

Hitler treated Jews as a people, not as a religion (that's why he killed people whose paternal grandfather was Jewish, but according to Jewish religious tradition that person is not a Jew) and the Holocaust was a transformative event in the Jewish psyche.

Jews stole Palestinian land

A correction would be that Palestinians as Arabs were merely the descendants of the Arab hordes who captured the Babylonian province of Yehud in the 7th Century, having come out of Hejaz.

And having never had sovereignty in any land as a distinc people the Palestinians have not had their sovereignty stolen or removed.

No other state is based on religion

Israel is not based on religion. There's not even an official state religion like there is in say Denmark whose constitution affirms the Lutheran Church as the State Church.

But if you want a state based on religion - how about the Vatican?

Or the state of Pakistan formed at roughly the same time as Israel for the specific purpose of being a Muslim state?

Israel has no right to exist

Every state has the right to exist. There is no provision in international law for a state to be disassembled.

The one state solution is the only solution

A funny conclusion... given that the right of Jewish self-determination is in no way less important than that of the Palestinians.

Israel wanting to be a Jewish state is a racist policy

Article 1 of the 2003 Draft Constitution of Palestine which is already a part of the Palestine Basic Law: Palestine is part of the large Arab World, and the Palestinian people are part of the Arab Nation. Arab Unity is an objective which the Palestinian People shall work to achieve

Basically it's saying Palestine is an Arab state. Yet you all fall over supporting an Arab state which has an official state religion of Islam (Article 4[1]).

Frankly, if you support the right of an ethnic Arab state to form called Palestine, you really shouldn't be complaining about an ethnic Jewish state called Israel.

Arab blood flows through a large amount of Jews in Israel

Nope. Under Ottoman and Arab law during the 1500 years Jews spent as dhimmis under Muslim rule, the law was that a Muslim could not marry a jew under millet laws unless the jew converted to Islam. 

And a Muslim woman could never ever marry a non-Muslim.

So a Muslim woman could not marry a Jewish man and convert for him - meaning no Jewish kids came out of that equation... and a Muslim man could marry a jewish woman who would need to convert, plus the kid would be registered as a Muslim regardless because his/her dad was Muslim - and any Jewish worship was apostasy.

Genetic studies have confirmed this - there's statistically insignificant admixture from Arabs into Jews who lived among them in places like the Maghreb.

Jewish people existed without the need for Israel for 2000 years

Sure. We existed.

Let's review what happened in the last 150 years... pogroms in Russia forcing 2 million Jews to flee at the end of the 1890s, several hundred thousand went to Palestine over a 20 year period and started preparing the state... the rest went to America.

In 1903 and in 1905 there were anti-Jewish riots in Kishenev which later became part of Moldova - tens of thousands of Jews left for Palestine.

In 1918 Polish Jews copped the Kielce Pogrom. 

In 1919, the Kiev Pogroms started... 3000 rapes, 500,000 left homeless, 70,000 killed. 200,000 left - most to America... about 50,000 to Palestine.

Then in 1934 there were the Thrace pogroms in Turkey at which time 15,000 Turkish Jews pissbolted to Palestine.

And then off course the Holocaust where one in every three Jews in the world was liquidated.

We existed. And that's about it. It was a pitiful existence.

Now there are nukes with the star of david on them. Ready to give the 7th Century to anyone who wants to live in it.

None of the Zionist Federation's early leaders were from the region

Not in the slightest bit surprising. Jews had largely been exiled from the Arab lands after many subsequent invasions.

The ratio of Ashkenazi to Sephardi Jews was about 10:1 or larger.

It's like being surprised that your typical average Australian is a white Anglo and not a dark-skinned Aboriginal holding a spear and performing a war dance.

Israel is based on religion.

I'm afraid that ain't true either.

Amazingly enough "jew" is an English word. Not a Hebrew/Aramaic word. 

The Hebrew word for "jew" is "Yehudi". Means "of Judea".

"Jew" in Arabic is "Yahood". So Arabs acknowledge Jews are from Judea - it's why they call them what Jews call themselves.

Romans came and called "Yehudi" the Roman form - "Iudeus" - means "of Iudea". Which is what they called Judea befre changing it to "Palestine" to break the Jewish link to it.

As Jews travelled through the Roman Empire, they came to Gaul (France) where "Iudeus" became "guid" (old French - pronounced ee-uid) and then eventually "gui". Iudea became "judee".

Eventually the Jews crossed the Channel and "gui" became "jew" and "judee" became "Judea".

So when you call someone a Jew - you are merely calling them "of Judea" - you are acknowledging the national origin of Jews - Judea.

And if you think this is all biblical, here are Roman coins minted to commemorate the capture of Judea (Iudea Capta) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaea_Capta_coinage

And here are coins from the Babylonian province of Yehud prior to invasion by the Arabs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehud_coinage

Both these coin mintages predate Arab presence in the Levant.

And if you have $1.1m you can buy a Judean Shekel (same currency name as used by Israel today) from the year 66 C.E: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/world/story/2012-03-09/ancient-judean-coin-auction/53434212/1

http://www.truetorahjews.org/

For some reason someone always posts something about Neturei Karta, as if having "true torah" jews proves something.

Jews as a people/tribe are not homogenous. We. like everyone else live on the same political spectrum and religious spectrum.

Some Jews are believers. Some jew, like me are atheists. Some jews are far right. Some jews are far left. Most are in the middle.

But here's the completely baffling thing...

Every time someone needs a "useful Jew", truetorahjews come out... which is funny because they're a millenarian cult within the religion that is classically religious-nationalist - IE when they decide that the Messiah has come, they are willing to condone genocide and armageddon to establish a Tanach-compliant Talmudic state of Israel.

Their beef with Israel is that it wasn't established by God. And hence their hatred is against Israeli secular structures and perceived anti-religious valies.

Align with them by all means, but they're the Jewish ISIS. They just lack the weapons and the twitter accounts. And they're no good with hacking heads off with swords...

It is illegal for states to recognize territories acquired by war/force

It is not. Australia committed no crime when we recognized Indonesian sovereignty over E. Timor in 1975.

The problem is talknic does not understand customary International Law.

See the Montevideo Convention is a treaty between 16 nations. Article 10 states "The primary interest of states is the conservation of peace. Differences of any nature which arise between them should be settled by recognized pacific methods."

Article 11 states "The contracting states definitely establish as the rule of their conduct the precise obligation not to recognize territorial acquisitions or special advantages which have been obtained by force whether this consists in the employment of arms, in threatening diplomatic representations, or in any other effective coercive measure."

The difference should be immediately obvious.

Article 10 is general, whereas Article 11 binds the contracting states - ie the 16 states who ratified the Convention.

So while it is certainly true that the generic rule is that states should not recognise captured territory, the only law against it binds 16 states only and of those states several have recognised captured territory as sovereign to the occupier. Such as the USA's recognition of German Kaliningrad being annexed by the Soviet Union.

In fact, the USA does not generally seem to hold itself bound by Montevideo because they keep introducing bills into Congress such as the one in January - that disallow Congress or the President to recognise the Russian annexation of Crimea - these bills would be useless if America was bound by international law from doing it.