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Deuteronomy 20:10-2010. When you approach a city to wage war against it, you shall propose peace to it.
11. And it will be, if it responds to you with peace, and it opens up to you, then it will be, [that] all the people found therein shall become tributary to you, and they shall serve you.
12. But if it does not make peace with you, and it wages war against you, you shall besiege it,
13. and the Lord, your God, will deliver it into your hands, and you shall strike all its males with the edge of the sword.
14. However, the women, the children, and the livestock, and all that is in the city, all its spoils you shall take for yourself, and you shall eat the spoils of your enemies, which the Lord, your God, has given you.
15. Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not of the cities of these nations.
16. However, of these peoples' cities, which the Lord, your God, gives you as an inheritance, you shall not allow any soul to live.
17. Rather, you shall utterly destroy them: The Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivvites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord, your God, has commanded you.
Joshua 11: 10-14
10 And Joshua turned back at that time, and took Hazor, and smote the king thereof with the sword: for Hazor beforetime was the head of all those kingdoms.
11 And they smote all the souls that were therein with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them; there was none left that breathed; and he burnt Hazor with fire.
12 And all the cities of those kings, and all the kings of them, did Joshua take, and he smote them with the edge of the sword, and utterly destroyed them; as Moses the servant of the LORD commanded.
13 But as for the cities that stood on their mounds, Israel burned none of them, save Hazor only--that did Joshua burn.
14 And all the spoil of these cities, and the cattle, the children of Israel took for a prey unto themselves; but every man they smote with the edge of the sword, until they had destroyed them, neither left they any that breathed.
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As you read, keep in mind that this story is about land theft, pure and simple. The Lord is here the ultimate fall guy, the original Nuremburg excuse: "Hey, we didn't want to commit genocide; we were only following orders."
Yes, yes, this all happened a very long time ago. I understand that. I understand that no person alive today can be held responsible for things said and done then. I also understand that serious questions of historicity surround this text.
Even so, this narrative remains relevant to current debates over the Israeli/Palestinian question, because -- when the proverbial push comes to the proverbial shove -- Israel's apologists point to the Old Testament when they insist that a Jewish state must exist there and nowhere else. Few would contemplate any suggestion to purchase an equal-sized chunk of real estate in a fertile region of Africa, South America, Canada, or wherever. As several wags have noted, David Ben Gurion did not believe in God -- yet he believed that God gave Israel to the Jews.
One of my critics cast aspersions on the Koran as a "racist" book. In my youth, I tried to read (or at least sample) all the scriptures considered sacred -- the Analects of Confucius, the Upanishads, the Gita, various Mahayana texts, the Old and New Testaments. I must confess that I did not get very far into the Koran -- which is reportedly much more impressive in the original. Is that book racist? I don't know. All I can honestly say is that I found it dull.
(For some reason, I never even tried to read the Tao. My bad.)
In my explorations, I have never found any other "sacred" text dripping with the inexcusable bloodlust and hate one can find in the Old Testament. My sympathies now lie with the Gnostics, who considered much of that book evil. (Incidentally, Gnosticism originated within the Jewish community in Alexandria, a group no-one can call anti-Semitic.) Any Jews who want to insult the Islamic holy book should feel free to do so -- but they would make a more persuasive case if their own "sacred" work were not so indefensible.
No Jew ever had a right to the land now called Israel. Not Solomon, not David, not Jesus, not Ariel Sharon. None of them. Of course, as I always quickly admit, I have no particular right to park my capacious hindquarters on land that belongs to the Chumash.
9 comments:
Joe, "ownership" of land can be carried to ridiculous extremes. As in, "Who was where you are before the Chumash?"
We bought the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803. But was it France's to sell?
And, while I don't vouch for its authenticity, there's a website with dates and countries entitled
"109 Locations whence Jews have been Expelled since AD250".
Israel should turn Gaza into a desert and call it peace.
By the way, that image based on a Nazi with a Star of David IS anti-Semitic -- and that's coming from a non-Jew
You can buy the land, you can sell the land, you can not make the land. You can leave the land and take the people to sell and buy on other land where you kill the people who have the land where you sell the people you take from the land you took before. You can leave the people and the land when you take the things they make or find or took from people in other lands they either sold, bought or left depleted. If you decide to do these things you can always find some way to feel good about it. And other people who buy land from people who don't own it or kill them if they don't sell it, or take them somewhere else and sell them, or take their things, will always back you up. So will the people who benefit from what you do.
And, it's always been that way.
Turn it into a desert you say? lol it is the views of people like you, that encourage and help foster the idea of state sponsored terrorism as we have today in Israel! Stop calling anything anti Israeli as anti-semtic, speaking the truth is by no means a form of hatred, or do you happen to forget that the palestinians are Semites as well! Stop the killing, stop the murdering of innocent women and children!
You are normally pretty smart. But on this issue you are rapid and stupid. Just one question for the hell of it: Why are there Arabs and yes "Palestinians living all over Isreal? Were they ever barred? No. Was any Palestian forced into Gaza? When did Palestinians start suicide bombing Isrealis? Why are there no Jews in an Arab country. Can you show me any pattern or even numerically significant incidence of Jewish citizens murdering Paleestinians? If China was supplying weapons to Chinatown to fire rockets into Little Italy for some grievance they had, should Mayor Bloommberg care? Can you think straight when you watch someone else's wars from your living room? Do you think the warring parties are concerned with your perspective on it? Sorry but you can see how easy it is to generate questions about your olympian opinions on this issue about which you are unqualified to judge - being basically stupid about it. You draw okay. And you're a genius.
Let's just give the Israelis Wyoming. I suggested that rhetorically once, intending to make the point that the cowboys and pseudo-cowboys there would surely resent it. But the more I think about it the more sense it makes. I'd like to see what they'd do with it. We're not using it, and most of it is federal land anyway. Cut off military aid, and I wonder how many of the 7 million Israelis would move to Wyoming?
Peter of Lone Tree, the way Israel is murdering children and women in Gaza, I believe, and I'm sure, your list of '109 Locations' will soon count 110.
The 'Expulsion' you've referred to, in fact started long before AD 250, thousands of years before, when Pharoah drove the Israelis out of Egypt.
Do you ever wonder why that happened and continuous even to this age?
Try more of these keywords: Lehmann Brothers etc, Madoff, USS Liberty, Talmud, Greater Israel, Goyim...
Sorry, this is moronic tripe. It is a sorry attempt to push the square into the circular hole.
It is a twisted take on reality that takes a trip into the Twilight Zone.
Joseph...can you imagine how much more horrible this would have been if THIS had happened! http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/washington/11iran.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
Once the Changeling takes office, given all his promises to AIPAC, it still may.
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