Well said

Yes you are right. Fundametalism and extremism always harmed the humanity. This world belongs to us and we all whether Jews, Muslims or Christhians have the right to live here in peace. We are human beings. This is my belief that professionalism in religion has always created war and violence in the world. I think no one in the world has the right to finish certain people without any reason. If I am a Muslim and committing no crime then I have the right to live in peace. If a Jews is a good citizen he must have the right to live in this world.

Actually the professional relgious leaders have just been issuing the statements they have no idea of the consequences. They have been using the religion for earning. These people must be discouraged whether they have been living in Iran or tribal areas of Pakistan. We are human beings. We should talk with logic. This is high time that saner elements should come farward and play a role for saving this world. We should set religion aside for a while and solve our problems in the world. According to my knowledge Islam never teaches its followers to kill other people. Islam always stresses on respecting other. All the religions in the world stress on respect for all human beings. We are brothers whether we are Muslims Christhians or Jews.

Dear Rob, you are right that we should live with peace.

by Muhammad Khurshid (286 articles, 31 quicklinks, 178 diaries, 145 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 12:03:47 AM
 

There is no substitute

for the people, most of whom are sane and want peace, to organize and take the power from the extremists -- who generally migrate towards the seats of government power and wealth, and manipulate people's fear and hatred. This is true in the Middle East, Europe, Eastern Europe, the US -- all over the world.

It's also important for the people to wake up, control their fears, and look to see through the propaganda, disinformation, and hate speech. The consciousness of people must be raised, and injustice and exploitation of anyone no longer ignored or tolerated by the average human, or this sort of thing will continue to go on as it has for so many centuries -- towards the cliff of human extinction.

by Blue Pilgrim (0 articles, 3 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 998 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 12:04:48 AM
 

The information above

is most likely true and  for no surprise.   And the point is well taken- extremism is all forms is a deadly disease. The only thing I  have to add , though, is that unfortunately, while  the Grand Mufti  did not reach his goals, other folks of such kind surely did. In  Croatia and Slovakia marionette times (1940s) the  local Catholic Chuches fully supported the extermination of the Jews. Croatian bishop Stepinatz was afterwards tried for that  and still he is considered something like a saint in the current Catholic establishment. In Lvov, Ukraine ( Germans called it Lemberd) the Greek- Catholic Church not only officially  sited with Hitler but actively instigated the horrible pogroms of the Jewish population, ghetto and death.  For that they were dismantled by the Soviet authorities after the war and now they  are considered in the West the ' victims of Communism'.  The Papacy apologized for the  apathy towards Hitler but they never openly recognized how  much did the Catholic Church benefit materially from the 'full solving of the Jewish question' especially in the Eastern Europe and Russia.  And we know that everything taken from the victims down to the underwear was recorded, transported and.. sold.

So,  what am I up to.   I guess, Grand Mufti wasnted to wet his beak and it did not work. Other ' Grand Muftis'  wet their beaks  pretty well.

by Mark Sashine (47 articles, 19 quicklinks, 236 diaries, 3362 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 6:28:09 AM
 

Extremism Comes In Many Forms

Religious extremism is only one form of extremism plaguing the world today. There is also a sort of historical and journalistic extremism, that tends to insist that the views of one group, must take precedence over those, of all others. This type of thinking is seen in the popular idea that Jews are always victims, yet never persecutors. This has become a type of orthodox dogma, extremist in sentiment, which often distorts the truth, and does much to poison human relations. The author's reference to the potential death toll of a WWII Nazi atrocity against Jews, that never occurred, emphasizes something, that could have occurred, but didn't. On the other hand, the author's downplaying of contemporary Zionist atrocities in the Middle East, against Palestinians, and Lebanese for example, deemphasizes something that actually has occurred. Such practices are common today, and illustrate thinking, that is just as closeminded, and irrational, as some of the views commonly found, among religious fundamentalists. Such views are not only extremist, but are also dead wrong, in a world populated by humans.

There is no nation, or people, on this earth, who haven't at one time or another, committed, or been victimized, by mass murders, genocides, and other horrific atrocities! Zionist atrocities against the people of the Middle East today, are therefore, just as condemnable, as any atrocities committed by the Nazis, in WWII. There is also no one atrocity, that can be truly said, to be greater, than all others. Our knowledge of history is imperfect at best, constantly evolving, and atrocities are afterall, atrocities, all equally bad, no matter who commits them, or where they're committed. The idea that one group's suffering, is somehow greater than the suffering of all other groups, is not only wrong, but also implies that one group is more important, than all others. This is essentially a form of ethnic or group supremacism, that must be seen for what it is! This type of thinking, has no place, in any discussion where truthfulness is the object. It is high time that people understand this, and stop trying to make one group, the greatest victims in history, and others, the greatest villians, in history. Nothing afterall, could be further from the truth!

by Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 10:36:48 AM
 

Are we doing ALL we can?

And plz know that Israeli children's school books do not include Palestine!

Both sides have been unjust to the other, but by virtue of our USA TAX DOLLARS supporting a military occupation, we the people are culpable!

There is more than enough blame to go around but, "It's not a question of who's going to throw the first stone: It's a question of who's going to start building with it." -Sloan Wilson

The  more hopeless people become, the more they are attracted to militant fundamentalism.

The world is out of balance; heavy with artillery and the voices of wisdom and reason have been ignored for too long.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the world’s major sources of instability.

 Americans are directly connected to this conflict, and increasingly imperiled by its devastation.

It is the goal of "If Americans Knew" to provide full and accurate information on this critical issue with the desire to bring a resolution:   

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

PLZ check this site out, it is a gold mine of information the MSM ignores.

Silence is complicity and we the people of good will must rise up and challenge our leaders who are NOT leading us in the paths of Truth and Justice, which are the only way to peace and security.

Fax, email and make phone calls to your Congressional Reps and PLZ let President Bush know how you feel:

WHITE HOUSE COMMENTS LINE: 202-456-1111
WHITE HOUSE SWITCHBOARD: 202-456-1414
WHITE HOUSE FAX: 202-456-2461

A healthy democracy is when the politicians are afraid of the people and when the pols get the message that we the people are informed and will not back down, they will come around, for what they care most about is keeping their power.

by Eileen Fleming (140 articles, 49 quicklinks, 264 diaries, 584 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 10:37:32 AM
 

The Ultimate Absurdity of Calling Arabs and Palestinians Ant

Yes, Rob, the Grand Mufti was anti-Jewish and, yes , Hitler found him a useful tool. However, so did the British, because they were the ones who put him in power in hte first place in the 1920s. Moreover, let’s get one thing straight, that the Arab peoples are ethnically and historically Semitic themselves, cut from the same Middle Eastern cloth as the Jews. Thus the conflicts between Jews and Arabs should more properly be classified as tribalism, similar to the Biblical conflicts between Jews and Canaanites, or between Germans and Frenchmen even. That modern Arabs are attracted to anti-Semitic propaganda is more an example of the irrationality of anger and hatred, while Palestinians, meanwhile, miss the larger point that in the West, particularly in England and America, no fine distinction was ever made between Jews and other Semites until after World War II, when Israel began to serve as an appendage of the West. Semites, period, have historically been considered inferiors to be exploited, abused and mistreated. Amusingly, many modern Jews are trying to disown their Semitic past, as if they were also blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans.

So the joke is on the Arabs, who, by embracing anti-Semitic literature, are indirectly damaging themselves, because in the West today, the demonized, stereotyped Jew has merely been replaced by the demonized, stereotyped Muslim (who often isn’t even Semitic to boot, but still usually non-white), whom we are currently murdering by the tens of thousands. The hatred has merely been transferred, and this hatred, fueled by Anglo-Saxon and Nordic supremicists for centuries, is as virulent as it was in the 1920s and 1930s when Hitler rose to power. By the way, it was rampant in the United States then too, not just in Europe.

Yet before we lay all the blame for all the fanaticism on Muslim, Christian and Jewish fundamentalists, we should stop and ponder that they too are often pawns in more cynical games that dovetail with Imperialism, Capitalism and the rape of resources and labor of entire peoples and continents. We must always follow the money trail in understanding all the forces behind geopolitical conflicts. The power elitists use fundamentalism as a tool to enflame and rally the masses (jerking the chains of all the yahoos, so to speak) behind their wars of conquest and acquisition, time and time again. As a classic example of war financiers hiding behind everything, of how Anglo-Americans even financed Fascism and their brother militarists and industrialists in Germany, some of whom, like the Warburgs, were even Jewish, I am inserting a section from the well-documented book on George Bush Senior, entitled George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin (see Chapter 2, the Hitler Project at http://www.tarpley.net/bush2.htm -You can download the whole book for free)

From the book:

An Important Historical Note:

How the Harrimans Hired Hitler

It was not inevitable that millions would be slaughtered under fascism and in World War II. At certain moments of crisis, crucial pro-Nazi decisions were made outside of Germany. These decisions for pro-Nazi actions were more aggressive than the mere '' appeasement '' which Anglo-American historians later preferred to discuss.

Private armies of 300,000 to 400,000 terrorists aided the Nazis' rise to power. W.A. Harriman's Hamburg-Amerika Line intervened against Germany's 1932 attempt to break them up.

The 1929-31 economic collapse bankrupted the Wall-Street-backed German Steel Trust. When the German government took over the Trust's stock shares, interests associated with Konrad Adenauer and the anti-Nazi Catholic Center Party attempted to acquire the shares. But the Anglo-Americans--Montagu Norman, and the Harriman-Bush bank--made sure that their Nazi puppet Fritz Thyssen regained control over the shares and the Trust. Thyssen's bankrolling of Hitler could then continue unhindered.

 Unpayable debts crushed Germany in the 1920s, reparations required by the Versailles agreements. Germany was looted by the London-New York banking system, and Hitler's propaganda exploited this German debt burden.

But immediately after Germany came under Hitler's dictatorship, the Anglo-American financiers granted debt relief, which freed funds to be used for arming the Nazi state.

Kuhn Loeb and Co.'s Felix Warburg carried out the Hitler finance plan in New York. Kuhn Loeb asked North German Lloyd bondholders to accept new lower interest steamship bonds, issued by Kuhn Loeb, in place of the better pre-Hitler bonds.

The Opposition

New York attorney Jacob Chaitkin, father of coauthor Anton Chaitkin, took the cases of many different bondholders who rejected the swindle by Harriman, Bush, Warburg, and Hitler. Representing a women who was owed $30 on an old steamship bond--and opposing John Foster Dulles in New York municipal court--Chaitkin threatened a writ from the sheriff, tying up the 30,000 ton transatlantic liner Europa until the client received her $30. (New York Times, January 10, 1934, p. 31 col. 3).

The American Jewish Congress hired Jacob Chaitkin as the legal director of the boycott against Nazi Germany. The American Federation of Labor cooperated with Jewish and other groups in the anti-import boycott. On the other side, virtually all the Nazi trade with the United States was under the supervision of the Harriman interests and functionaries such as Prescott Bush, father of President George Bush.

 Meanwhile, the Warburgs demanded that American Jews not '' agitate '' against the Hitler government, or join the organized boycott. The Warburgs' decision was carried out by the American Jewish Committee and the B'nai B'rith, who opposed the boycott as the Nazi military state grew increasingly powerful.

The historical coverup on these events is so tight that virtually the only expose of the Warburgs came in journalist John L. Spivak's '' Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy, '' in the pro-communist New Masses periodical (Jan. 29 and Feb. 5, 1934). Spivak pointed out that the Warburgs controlled the American Jewish Committee, which opposed the anti-Nazi boycott, while their Kuhn Loeb and Co. had underwritten Nazi shipping; and he exposed the financing of pro-fascist political activities by the Warburgs and their partners and allies, many of whom were bigwigs in the American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith.  

Given where the Spivak piece appeared, it is not surprising that Spivak called Warburg an ally of the Morgan Bank, but made no mention of Averell Harriman. Mr. Harriman, after all, was a permanent hero of the Soviet Union.

John L. Spivak later underwent a curious transformation, himself joining the coverup. In 1967, he wrote an autobiography (A Man in His Time, New York: Horizon Press), which praises the American Jewish Committee. The pro-fascism of the Warburgs does not appear in the book. The former '' rebel '' Spivak also praises the action arm of the B'nai B'rith, the Anti-Defamation League. Pathetically, he comments favorably that the League has spy files on the American populace which it shares with government agencies.

by Mac McKinney (42 articles, 62 quicklinks, 147 diaries, 988 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 11:31:06 AM
 

Title Correction for Above Comment

The title to my comment above got truncated. It should have read, "The Ultimate Absurdity of Calling Arabs and Palestinians Anti-Semitic".

by Mac McKinney (42 articles, 62 quicklinks, 147 diaries, 988 comments) on Wednesday, June 13, 2007 at 11:34:59 AM
 

Good article

Rob,

Historical context determines the definition of words. Anti-Semitic was defined centuries ago in the west as being anti-Jewish. Technically, all descendents from Noah's oldest son, Shem, Shemites or spelled with a sin and not the Shin, Semites, but that is a technicality. I worry like that the comment above is to detract us from staying on course about the systematic extermination of Jews for two thousand years.

I have a book I loaned to college professor at OU which traces pogroms for each day of the year for the last two thousand years (70 CE) beginning January first and ending December first. There is no logical reason for anti-Semitism (the hatred of Jews and their systematic destruction). It is one of those aberrations or mysteries of human nature that no one really understands. I think part of it is their religion, part of it is their avid commitment to education, part of it is that they were the only ones who could lend money for interest to members of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, part of it is their unwillingness to assimilate into the greater society; whatever causes the evil hate against Jews, it is a fact that whenever a convenient scapegoat is needed to shoulder the blame for things that are painful in society, the Jew has always been the one to blame.

by pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 948 comments) on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 5:05:07 PM
 

Hatred is Hatred, All Men are Equally Quilty of it!

What you call "anti-semitism", is no different, than "anti-gentilism", that is hatred of other groups, by Jews. Anyone unaware of "anti-gentilism", need only look at the long running situation, in Palestine! While you appear only concerned about anti-semitism, you're clearly unconcerned, about "anti-gentilism"! Therein, lies the problem with your line of thinking! Such thinking is a clear example of the same type of irrational hatred, you're blaming others for! All humans are equally capable of , and quilty of, committing atrocities. Jews are just as quilty as other groups, of such crimes. While you adhere to the erroneous belief, that Jews have been only victims, over the last "two thousand years", the facts of our common history, actually tells a completely different story! A look at the situation in the Middle East today, is quite indicative of Jewish hatred, and their propensity to act upon such hatred, by committing atrocities, against those they hate. History is replete with cases of Jewish hatred and atrocities against non-Jews, just as it is replete, with cases of hatred by other groups, against Jews. This has been the truth of the matter, over the last "two thousand years". Any attempt to downplay, or ignore this, essentially ignores the truth! Hatred no matter whose involved, is the problem, not antisemitism nor antigentilism, in and of themselves. The fact that all men appear to be incapable of living with each other without hate, is the issue. This has been at the root of poisoned human relations, far longer, than the "last two thousand years". There is no mystery why Jews are hated, just as there is no mystery why Jews hate others! Humanity needs to quit lying to itself, and making excuses for our universal propensity to hate, those who may be different, or who may not agree with our views. In this vice, all men equally share. There are no quiltless groups among mankind, only the quilty, all bent on playing the blame game, for all it's worth!

by Rasoul Acheh (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 122 comments) on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 1:45:42 PM
 

Historical Basis of Semitic Peoples

There is semantic confusion over the term "Semitic", with some people arguing that it is a derogatory term used only against Jews, but in reality it is an anthropologic term referring to the peoples of an entire region of the Middle East over a long period of time. "Anti-Semitism" as a cliche more narrowly fits the former paradigm, but because in reality the ancient Hebrew tribes shared much in common with all the other Semitic tribes, they do have some common anthropological characteristics, which have been caricatured in the West for hundreds of years, which caricatures are easily transferable to Arabs, even Persians today, now that racism against Jews is more taboo. The West is still deeply riddled with anti-Semitism and has only transferred this irrational hatred, which also dovetails with sexual repression and the projection of perversions and libidinous impulses, onto the "other Jews" or Semites. That is why we are slaughtering them by the thousands right now and reveling in it in high places. Arabian peoples and Muslims are now officially the new scapegoats in the West, although sometimes the classic Jewish target is still resurrected in certain corners.

If the current level of slaughter against the new scapegoats keeps up or is exceeded for, say, another decade, the West, especially if Cheney gets his WW IV, will possibly surpass the number of Jews that Hitler killed. It is possible that a figure approaching a million war dead is being approached in Iraq as I write, if not already exceeded. And then there are the hidden numbers in Afghanistan, which likely number in the tens of thousands, if not higher still.

Anyway, below I have pasted a good commentary on Semites from Wikipedia:

Origin (of term Semite)

The term Semite was proposed at first to refer to the languages related to Hebrew by Ludwig Schlözer, in Eichhorn's "Repertorium", vol. VIII (Leipzig, 1781), p. 161. Through Eichhorn the name then came into general usage (cf. his "Einleitung in das Alte Testament" (Leipzig, 1787), I, p. 45. In his "Gesch. der neuen Sprachenkunde", pt. I (Göttingen, 1807) it had already become a fixed technical term. (The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIII)

The word "Semitic" is an adjective derived from Shem, one of the three sons of Noah in the Bible (Genesis 5.32, 6.10, 10.21), or more precisely from the Greek derivative of that name, namely Σημ (Sēm); the noun form referring to a person is Semite. The negative form of the adjective, anti-Semitic, is almost always used to mean "anti-Jewish" specifically.

The concept of a "Semitic" peoples is derived from Biblical accounts of the origins of the cultures known to the ancient Hebrews. Those closest to them in culture and language were generally deemed to be descended from their forefather Shem. Enemies were often said to be descendants of his cursed brother Ham. In Genesis 10:21-31 Shem is described as the father of Aram, Asshur, and others: the Biblical ancestors of the Arabs, Aramaeans, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Sabaeans, and Hebrews, etc., all of whose languages are closely related; the language family containing them was therefore named Semitic by linguists. However, the Canaanites and Amorites also spoke a language belonging to this family, and are therefore also termed Semitic in linguistics despite being described in Genesis as sons of Ham (See Sons of Noah). Shem is also described in Genesis as the father of the Elamites and the descendants of Lud, whose languages were not Semitic.

The hypothetical Proto-Semitic people, ancestral to the speakers of the historical Semitic languages in the Middle East are thought to have been originally from either the Arabian Peninsula (particularly around Yemen) or the adjacent Ethiopian highlands, but its homeland is still much debated and uncertain. The Semitic language family is also considered a component of the larger Afro-Asiatic macro-family of languages. Identification of the hypothetical proto-Semitic homeland is therefore dependent on the larger geographic distributions of the other language families within Afro-Asiatic.

The following is a list of ancient peoples generally characterised as "Semitic" by modern authors (including some stated in Genesis to be descendants of Ham):

• Akkadians - appear ca. 2500 BC and amalgamate with Mesopotamian populations into the Assyrians of the late Bronze Age
  • Assyrians - 20th century BC
  • Babylonians - 18th century BC
  • Chaldeans - 6th century BC
• Eblaites - 23rd century BC
  • Egyptians - from the 40th century BC to 6th century BC
• Aramaeans - from the 14th century BC, evolve into the Syriacs of the early centuries AD
• Ugarites, 14th to 12th centuries BC
• Canaanite nations of the early Iron Age:
  • Amorites (Amurru, Sumerian MAR.TU) - invade Sumer in the 20th century BC
  • Ammonites
  • Edomites
  • Everites (Hebrews) - founded the kingdom of Israel and Judah, the remnants of which became the Jews
  • Moabites
  • Phoenicians
• Sabaeans of Yemen, Eritrea and Ethiopia, from ca. the 9th century BC evolve into the Semitic Ethiopian peoples from the 5th century BC
  • Aksumites - spoke Ge'ez, later evolved into the Habeshas
• Nabataeans - 5th century BC*
• Arabs (Saracens) - first appeared in 9th century BC, and rose to prominence in late antiquity

by Mac McKinney (42 articles, 62 quicklinks, 147 diaries, 988 comments) on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 9:30:37 PM
 

Religion has no place in Politics

...too bad it always creeps in there... the big question is why people allow PSYCHOS to become World Leaders. We never learn, even though history repeats and repeats and repeats and...

When it comes to Warmongering, it's never the PEOPLE who want it, but it's always the PEOPLE who suffer. Wouldn't you think that after so many hundreds of years someone would figure out a way to line up the Leaders and let them shoot at each other!?!

As far as the Israel/Palestine problems go, I SUPPOSE you could say that it depends upon whose shoes you stand in... but I can find no justification for imprisoning Palestinians in their own land or claims that Israel is an 'Innocent Victim', whom everyone wants to 'wipe out' when she so busily attempts to drive Palestinians into the sea --- with AmericanZionists endorsement and money? (by the way why in the dickens ARE we still be giving OUR tax dollars to them?) 

video: Video  

article: Article

 unbunche 

http://www.mideastweb.org/maps.htm 

Interesting that so many American-Zionists have German and Jewish surnames and links to Nazi's? Check the names of members at PNAC & AEI and in Bush's administration. Geo W H Bush was referred to as "more Zionist than Israeli's are". Geo W is even more than that. Many Dems as well as Repubs such as Hillary & Pelosi & Leiberman are downright suckups to AIPAC and Israel at the expense of American Citizen's interests.

BUSHBOOK INDEX 

sooo many parallels between 1939 and Bush's administration, including the monopoly of "news"... when viewed side by side, it certainly appears that BushCo has taken up Adolf's plans for World Domination and has shifted into high gear, with the Super Military Bases strategically placed thoughout the planet, replacing the Constitution and Bill of Rights with 'patriot' acts and homeland 'security', all the not-so-subtle changes....  but the public sleeps on........ 

Secret Armies    NEW: Super Secret 'SSB'   Bush signs a SECRET directive

I don't blame Jews. I blame "Zionists" - those fanatics who are equal to ALL The Other Fanatics, including 'ours'

by mary-ann (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 55 comments) on Thursday, June 14, 2007 at 10:18:45 PM