21st Century Holocaust

Did anyone hear about the Jew leader who said all Arabs should be killed?

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former Chief Rabbi of Israel's Sephardi Jews and one of the most influential religious figures in Israel, said in his pre-Pesach speech: "It is forbidden to be merciful to Arabs. You must send missiles to them and, with relish, annihilate them.

"They are evil and damnable. May the Holy Name visit retribution on the heads of the Arabs and cause their seed to be lost."

"The Lord shall return the Arabs' deeds on their own heads, waste their seed and exterminate them, devastate them and vanish them from this world,"

What an a$$hole!

[ April 11, 2001: Message edited by: Jella ]

Some people. When will everyone understand how stupid they sound? 😠

I guess we can't see it from their perspective. They feel that they are perfectly justified in their words and actions. That's not to say they are at all but it's a big difference of culture and religious beliefs. (That old chestnut)

I can't say I agree with what he's saying at all, in fact it scares me silly to even think about what might erupt in that part of the world.

I don't agree with him either and RC is right about how they feel. To qoute a wise man...

"...many of the truths we cling to rely on a certain point of view.."

Why can't we all just get along ? 😎

Lord, you give them eyes, yet they cannot see.

I guess that because in their eye the your lord didn't... I know it doesn't make sense, but then so little does in this world.

If you look hard enough you'll find the same views everywhere, just in some places they're easier to find.

You go to N.Ireland, East Germany, the Deep South - it's not hard to find. Sadly.

Unfortunately it's not too hard to find anywhere.

I don't really agree. The religious aspect of the regions is very different. I know there were religious aspects to the conflicts ion the areas you mention. But I'm not sure any of them could be called a holy war.

There's plenty of land on this planet for everybody to share. Too bad some people just can't figure that out. 🙁

Interesting little detail is that in their mosques Palestinian religious leaders tell their people to do the same thing to the Israeli's. And they have done so for several decades.

queeq, can I ask you where you got that information from?

The sad thing is, that that person is head on a national party....sadly too much influence.

If George ruled the world, it would be a totally cool place. 😮‍💨

There is no doubt that Jerusalem is a different case to anything RC mentioned. And it not that they can't find enough land, what the problem is, is that they share a holy land, and the Jews of Israel want it.

Firstly the land they claim is only one wall of the Synagogue, but they want the rest of Palestine.

They already been given a large piece of Palestine, and have access to their Holy Wall, so why do they want more. As there are more Palestinions then they are Israelis.

Greed is the only answer.

What are your views on why the Israelis want more land?

I can only discuss this from a point of view of VERY LITTLE knowledge. I only really know what we see on the news and in papers, and a few badly remembered facts from school ,history classes.

Howevcer, I can see no justification for anyone to declare to their people that the only answer is to cold bloodedly murder the opposing peoples.

War in any shape or form is bad, that's my bottom line.

RC, that's a very narrow minded view.

War is not a good thing, I will admit that, but in some cases it is necessary.

When someone attacks you, you have to defend, and the best defensive move is offence.

Don't take what I said the wrong way, war is a very last LAST resort option, only when the opposing party is violent.

In the case of Jerusalem, their is no war going on, as Palestine have no army. It is a rebellion against the oppressors.

It is a well known fact that the statutes of the PLO say one of the goals of this organisation is to drive the Israeli's into the sea. These terms were agreed upon to be stricken from the record but it has not happened until today. And even if you strike it from the piece of paper, you don't necessarily strike it from the records of the heart.

Secondly, even in school Palestinian children are taught to hate Israeli's.

Thirdly, the biggest problem is when hate get diluted with religion. Just like in the case of this rabbi. But even during the latest uproar of last week, the Palestinians were called upon during services in the mosques to go out and fight and kill.

Israel's problems are extremely complex. One of the problems of perception is that Israel is a very Western country, yet it is situated in an Arab environment where very different rules apply. We tend to look at the situation from our Western piont of view which tends to make Israel look bad. Fact is that both sides are pretty bad in this situation. IMHO though, is that Israel has no set goals to drive the Palestinians out or to destroy them. The Palestinians however do have those goals towards the Israeli's, supported by their religious leaders calling upon Jihad (the Holy War). That's where things get tricky. Personally, I see no solution to this problem. But there are many many sides to these problems.

i am a fairly religious person and so dont want to tread on anyones toes with this one. i will try to understand and respect all religions but the fact is 90% of the wars ever started are caused by religion and greed. although i will say that half of that % were started by people who use religion for an excuse to further there own greed the fact still remains. seems a shame in the world when the christian capital of the world is plauged by death and violence and this is supposed to set a example for the rest of the christian world.seems to me these days hypocrisy (spelling???) is the keyword . please dont shoot me down for this comment its just the way i feel and i know there are some deeply religous people out there in the world.

I think you are right DC. I do agree religion is often used as an excuse to expand on power and influence. But some religions DO advocate war on behalf of religion. Islam for instance knows the concept of Jihad, a Holy War on behalf of Allah. Fighting such a war does not sound like hypocrisy to me. More like... devotion.

OK Zed, I see you point. Let me rephrase what I was saying.

Rather than "War in any shape or form is bad, that's my bottom line."

I think what I meant was that to start a war is bad. To defend ones rights/soveriegnty/beliefs is a different thing. Offenmce is the best defence? Maybe but you have to be sure you are being attached first. Hard, I know, which is probably why it never works that way.

We are, supposedly, a planet of intelligent beings but when it comes down to it the only answer we have when things aren't going our way is to have a fight in the playground of life...

I marvel at just how much money the planet spends on the development of weapons. I once read somewhere that a statictic had calculkated that as a planet we spend money more on war than we do on medicine (including reserch) and education. The retio was something like 100:1. Not sure if this is accurate but it seems like it when you consider that one F-14 Tomcat costs something like $34miilion...

I don't know as much about the issues of the middle east as I should so I find it rather hard to make informed comment. Sorry.

[ April 13, 2001: Message edited by: RatCat ]