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ytuque
Joined: 29 Jan 2008
Location: I drink therefore I am!
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 Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
You leave so much out in this post. One, the Jews, Christians, and Muslims of Iraq lived well together prior to the idea of a Jewish state where a large Arab group consisting of mainly Muslims and some Christians would be ethnic cleansed.
You said that Palestinians can speak their language while the Kurds cannot. Do the Turks seize land owned by Kurds and give them to Turkic people? No, they do not do that, but Israel does so. Are Kurds restricted from building in their villages even when they are citizens? No, they are not. True, I think it is bad that the Kurdish citizens for a long time couldn't name their children Kurdish names, could not have education in Kurdish, and what not. That's ethnic discrimination. I do not like how Turkey, in the past, has dealt with Kurds, Alevis, Greek Orthodox etc....
As far as Jews in Iran, Mike Wallace said the same thing about Syrian Jews. The Syrian government ensures Syrian Jews are protected. No one ever harms Syrian Jews. They can't simply travel to Israel like Iran lets Iranian Jews do, but they live in peace. Moroccan Jews are rather secure. I would not say the same for Yemenite Jews with its fanatical wahhabi elements creating a mess for the rest of Yemen.
You should place the context of the relations between people. Relations between Arab speaking Jews and Muslims and Christians used to be generally positive. Many Palestinians also have Jewish ancestors and they often hung out with each other until the 20th century. People began to be suspicious of Jews because of the emergence of Israel, which was unfair to the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews. It wasn't their fault Zionist leaders had a certain nationalist project in mind anymore than it's the fault of all Arabs that Al Qaeda exists. |
Interesting that you think that Muslims & Jews lived peacefully in Iraq prior to the formation of Israel in 1948. I was told of a pogrom called the Farhud in 1941 by some Iraqi Jews living in the US. Obviously, this predates the creation of Israel.
As for Syrian Jews, they are protected by a secular military dictatorship. Since this father-son regime has previously killed upwards of 20,000 Islamists in one action, I don't think the Islamists are up to challenging the regime to kill a handful of Jews.
Nice story about the Moroccan Jews being secure. Have you ever talked to Moroccan Jews? I spent 12 days in Morocco in the summer of 2003, and in that short period of time, two Jews were stabbed. There were bombings targeting Jews in 2002. The Jewish population has declined from about 300k post WW2 to less than 5k.
Your account of friendly relations between Jews & Palestinians pre-1948 is also nonsense. There were continuous attacks from the 1920's through 1948. In 1939, the Brits limited Jewish immigration into Palestine to appease the Muslims leaving European Jews to their fate.
In the Arab world before and after the creation of Israel, it sucked and continues to suck to be a Jew. The same can be said for being a Christian, Kurd, etc. Generally the only Arab regimes that can protect the religious and ethnic minorities from Islamists are military dictatorships. |
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NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
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| Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 6:43 pm Post subject: |
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Even if Jewish people are not actively persecuted by the government of some Arab countries there is still generally a very hostile population around them that is ready to blame them for the actions of the Israeli government like what has happened in Morocco. I don't know how reliable this is but according to Wikipedia there are about 25 Jews left in Syria and beginning in the 1970s a Canadian woman named Judith Field Carr helped to smuggle over 3000 Jews out of Syria.
According to this site the Jews suffered a lot of persecution in Syria, although this has changed in recent years and they're not protected. Granted this is a Jewish source.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/anti-semitism/syrianjews.html
http://articles.sfgate.com/2009-06-28/news/17209421_1_syrian-jews-jewish-syrians-wave-of-jewish-emigration
According to this site there are about 200 Jews left in Syria.
I realize the situation of Kurds and Palestinians is not completely analagous. I mention this because I live in Turkey and constantly hear Turks criticize other countries, especially Israel, while ignoring what has happened in their own country and the discrimination Kurds continue to face. One could say the same about Americans criticizing other countries, except that at least in America you can openly mention the genocide of Native Americans (and people often do) while in Turkey the treatment of Kurds and Armenians is largely a taboo subject. Turkey is great and blameless while other countries try to exploit it and discriminate against it. |
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NovaKart
Joined: 18 Nov 2009
Location: Iraq
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| Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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| LosSeoul wrote: |
Yeah and there was a sizable Palestinian population in what is now Israel...
People will always use politics to get what they want or impose there views on others, whatever. Politics are Politics. I lived in Lebanon for a long time. Enough to see a war or two first hand and work directly with people affected the most. In reality it's a horrible situation that sadly most people will never fully realize because they can't get passed the politics.
As for Iran being a different situation or less "fanatical" than Arabs. In my experience fanaticism is equally common across the bored, common as in it makes up the vast minority of people. Arab, Muslim "fanaticism" does however constantly receive the most exposure. Ironically the Jews living in Iran are living not in a secular state like Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan or Syria, but rather in an openly Islamic State. |
I've never claimed that I agree with Israel's actions with the Palestinians and Lebanon. What I'm saying is that it doesn't justify the fanatical hatred so many Muslims and especially Arabs have against all Jews.
I can only speak for my own experiences. I have known many Iranians and many Arabs and personally I've found Arabs to generally be more fanatical than Iranians. That doesn't mean every Arab I've met has been fanatical. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 3:43 am Post subject: |
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Of course Moslem-American radicalization is exaggerated. The number and influence of Communists was exaggerated during the Cold War. The power of the Masons was never as much as the Anti-Masons thought it was.
What doesn't get the attention it deserves is the influence of paranoia in American political life. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 7:07 am Post subject: |
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NovaKart wrote:
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I've never claimed that I agree with Israel's actions with the Palestinians and Lebanon. What I'm saying is that it doesn't justify the fanatical hatred so many Muslims and especially Arabs have against all Jews.
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This old article from Slate seems somewhat relevant to the discussion here. The writer argues that Muslim anti-semitism is not particularly inherent to the faith, but rather emerged as a result of modern history.
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Until the late 19th century, anti-Semitism as an ideology remained largely absent from Arab and Muslim culture. In the Quran and in Islamic commentary, Jews are significant not for rejecting Muhammad but for succumbing to his followers. In Arab literature, they are sometimes portrayed as hostile or vindictive, but their humility and weakness is a much more common theme. Islamic governments did not often persecute Jews either, the way European states did, and when Jews faced discrimination, it was no different from what Christians endured. Unlike in Europe, Jews in Islamic lands were not expelled or forced to convert or, with a few exceptions, consigned to ghettos.
That all started to change around 1900. First, colonialism brought a growing European influence into the region, and both political and religious authorities from Europe promoted the idea that Jews engaged in ritual murders. Second, traditional Islamic authority was under challenge from Western liberalism, and the Jews provided a convenient scapegoat. During the 1908 Turkish revolution, the so-called Young Turks seized power in the Ottoman Empire and installed a constitutional regime that expanded freedom of religion. In arguing against the revolution, Muslim conservatives latched onto anti-Semitic propaganda, claiming that secret Jewish machinations lay behind the new regime.
Finally, there was Zionism. Starting in the mid-1800s, Jews turned to Zionism�their own nationalism�as a solution to escalating European persecution. Since biblical times, Jews had maintained a small presence in the ancient kingdom of Judea (which in the late 19th century Europeans began calling Palestine), and Zionists saw the land as the ideal refuge for them, a Jewish National Home.
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I realize NovaKart wasn't neccessarily arguing that anti-semitism is inherent to Muslim culture. I just liked how the article put current Muslim anti-semitism into some historical context, and provides a counterpoint to those who argue that we can understand such anti-semitism simply by reading the Koran.
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:10 am Post subject: |
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| ytuque wrote: |
In the Arab world before and after the creation of Israel, it sucked and continues to suck to be a Jew. |
Sucked to be a jew pretty much anywhere prior to the 20th century. And continued to suck to be a Jew in Eastern Europe until the fall of Communism.
I get your point, and am not trying to sound like an apologist. Just sayin'....
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| What doesn't get the attention it deserves is the influence of paranoia in American political life. |
But isn't this true most places? Isn't that one contributing factor to genocide? A paranoia of a minority?
And fun fact of the day: 2nd richest person in Morocco is Jewish! I'd wager that same person has Israeli citizenship too though  . |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:18 am Post subject: |
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| NovaKart wrote: |
| LosSeoul wrote: |
Yeah and there was a sizable Palestinian population in what is now Israel...
People will always use politics to get what they want or impose there views on others, whatever. Politics are Politics. I lived in Lebanon for a long time. Enough to see a war or two first hand and work directly with people affected the most. In reality it's a horrible situation that sadly most people will never fully realize because they can't get passed the politics.
As for Iran being a different situation or less "fanatical" than Arabs. In my experience fanaticism is equally common across the bored, common as in it makes up the vast minority of people. Arab, Muslim "fanaticism" does however constantly receive the most exposure. Ironically the Jews living in Iran are living not in a secular state like Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan or Syria, but rather in an openly Islamic State. |
I've never claimed that I agree with Israel's actions with the Palestinians and Lebanon. What I'm saying is that it doesn't justify the fanatical hatred so many Muslims and especially Arabs have against all Jews.
I can only speak for my own experiences. I have known many Iranians and many Arabs and personally I've found Arabs to generally be more fanatical than Iranians. That doesn't mean every Arab I've met has been fanatical. |
How many Palestinians and Jews do you know? There are so many Jews who are also fanatical and hate Arabs, and that's why there have been signs spray painted, "Arabs to the gas chamber" in Israel. Don't tell me the Arabs spray painted it themselves. I remember reading about a right wing Jew who found himself really liking a Palestinian man who was at a hospital and volunteering to help people there and reach out to them and support them. His own daughter was handicapped due to a bomb dropped near his family.
Yet, he still reached out to Jews, and, yes, he was a Palestinian. The right wing Jew said he was taught that all Arabs are out to kill them. Obviously, that's fanatacism to teach that every single Arab is out to fight you and kill you in Palestine-Israel. He said that he was living, in a way, a fantasy world. He realized that this was not true for the Israelis.
The Iranians don't have Persians under occupation by Israel. The Arabs do. I would not say it's okay for some Arabs to hate all Jews and some do, but plenty of Jews feel the same way. In polls conducted in Israel,
the Arab-Israelis seemed more likely to not mind living next to Jews whereas the Jews didn't want to live next to them.
I remember communicating with an Arab-Israeli who was a member of the Greek Catholic church (Melkite), and she told me how people often would tell her to leave the country and go abroad. There is plenty of racism and hatred for all Arabs, my friend, but you don't care to see it.
You are engaging in something you accuse Arabs of. Read what you wrote. You said that Arabs hate all Jews. You are saying all Arabs think that way by saying that. I guess Sadat hated the Jews but wanted a peace treaty? That doesn't make sense. There is a woman who lost a son in war (an Israeli woman) who adopted spiritually a Palestinian man who lost his brother. She is an Israeli, he is a Palestinian. He loves her like she is his mother.
I disagree with the persons who said it sucked to be a Jew in an Arabic country before and after the creation of Israel. That's not what an Iraqi Jewish man who was very old told me. It wasn't true for him. It wasn't true for the Egyptian Jewish mother of one of my best friends. It sucked afterwards. I think what happened to Arab speaking Jews was tragic, but to imply that it sucked for the Jews all over isn't quite true since Jews at one time were even immigrating to Egypt. This is true. Even Ashkenazi Jews from Europe immigrated there.
Ytuque, talks about events in 1941. That's legitimate in being before 1948.
By that time, Jews were flooding into Palestine. Tensions were rising.
Prior to that, relations between Jews and Arabs were generally decent, but then some fanatics assumed that all Jews sided with the Zionist leadership, which was false. That thinking is the same as saying all Arabs hate Jews. Saying every person from a nation thinks a certain way is demonization. Again, in the 1920s and 1930s and 19th century and before many Jews would move safely from place to place and immigrate from Europe. No one stopped them from doing so or discouraged them.
Last edited by Adventurer on Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:01 am; edited 2 times in total |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:24 am Post subject: |
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| the whole Israel-Palestine issue is a disaster. Both sides have scum of the earth screwing everyone else over to benefit themselves. I admire anyone who can dedicate him or herself to trying to bring a resolution to the situation. I consider myself an optimistic person, but not when it comes to Israel-Palestine. Too many times both sides have shot themselves in the foot, and they keep on doing the same dumb shit! Gotta love humanity sometimes. At least the Arabs finally got a clue and stopped invading Israel (directly at least). |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 9:29 am Post subject: |
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But isn't this true most places? Isn't that one contributing factor to genocide? A paranoia of a minority?
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Well, one American PoliSci prof considered American paranoia significant enough to write a whole book about it. Of course, I don't know if Hofstadter thought Americans were more paranoid than anyone else, or if he just focussed on American paranoia because that was his area of interest.
Another writer, Barrington Moore jr. has linked paranoia about outsiders to the broader monotheisitic tradition. I haven't read his book, but apparently he sees a line running from the Old Testament all the way through the excesses of the French Revolution up to Khmer Rouge genocide. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:10 am Post subject: |
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Nonsense, pseudopsychiatry.
R. Hofstadter and others in the press and in Academe who shared his politics have become obsolete. Their predecessors, such as historian L. McGirr and many others, have expressly rejected their tendencies to unduly diagnose American conservatives with paranoia, other mental illnesses, and "antimodernism."
Social scientists are simply not qualified to reach medical or psychiatric conclusions for individual subjects, let alone entire social classes, in one broad stroke. Would any social scientist's medical and psychiatric conclusions, Kuros, be admissible as evidence in court? Why or why not?
Ya-ta Boy and others here, partly because of their age, remain entirely out of this loop and continue to rely on this much older interpretation. Why? Not only their age. It is very comforting for many liberals to label conservatives "sick." It serves as a very useful foil. If conservatives are sick, then this means that those who differ with them, especially liberals, are healthy and modern and enlightened, etc., etc., etc. It is also very predictable and appears on these threads like clockwork to anyone paying attention.
I also find it revealing that they typically apply this "exaggerated threats" and "paranoia" line of "reasoning" [it is not valid reasoning but rather rhetorics and show-politics, as I have stressed here] only to American conservatives. They ignore such patterns that appear elsewhere in world affairs, such as, say Iranians who believe Britain and/or the United States control every single thing in Iranian politics; those Pakistanis who attacked the American embassy in 1979, believing that the Americans were attacking holy sites in Mecca and Medina; or Brazilians who swear the Americans base a secret army in the Amazon region, because Americans know how rich it is with oil, gold, and other minerals, and that as soon as the Brazilians find out about the extent of it, the Americans will seize the Amazon and make it the 51st state -- Americans even have a secret satellite orbiting the Amazon so that the president and the Pentagon may receive hourly reports; and how about something less political, such as the Koreans' "fan death?" The list goes on.
And all you would-be shrinks see when you look out into the world is that American conservatives are "paranoid?" Your politics are more than easily predictable; they are childishly transparent.
Grow up, please. And learn to exchange views with those who see things differently than you without so quickly resorting to pseudopsychiatry and show-politics. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:37 am Post subject: |
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| I also find it revealing that they typically apply this "exaggerated threats" and "paranoia" line of "reasoning" [it is not valid reasoning but rather rhetorics and show-politics, as I have stressed here] only to American conservatives. |
Well, Hofstatder himself, it seems, did not say that the "paranoid style" only exists in America. And neither does at least one of his contemporary followers...
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�The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time,� Hofstadter writes. �It is an international phenomenon . . . more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population.�
I first read Hofstadter in my college years in the seventies. Traveling and working abroad I had occasion to think about his theories. In Russia in the early nineties, for instance, I found that the rise of Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his efforts to craft a political movement followed a pattern close to the one that Hofstadter described. It was successful, but only within bounds.
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Gopher wrote:
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They ignore such patterns that appear elsewhere in world affairs, such as, say Iranians who believe Britain and/or the United States control every single thing in Iranian politics; those Pakistanis who attacked the American embassy in 1979, believing that the Americans were attacking holy sites in Mecca and Medina; or Brazilians who swear the Americans base a secret army in the Amazon region, because Americans know how rich it is with oil, gold, and other minerals, and that as soon as the Brazilians find out about the extent of it, the Americans will seize the Amazon and make it the 51st state -- Americans even have a secret satellite orbiting the Amazon so that the president and the Pentagon may receive hourly reports; and how about something less political, such as the Koreans' "fan death?" The list goes on.
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But you yourseld don't ignore those international patterns, Gopher, as exemplified by the bulk of the quote above. So does that mean you're guilty of the same thing as Hofstadter?
Or is your objection simply that Hofstader and Company frame the paranoid style as being literally a medical condition? Because if that's what they were saying, I'd agree that that is wrong. But I never quite took them as promoting an actual psychiatric diagnosis; I just thought they were kind of using the word the way most of us do in everyday life, sort of how we do with things like "passive aggressive" and "-phobic".
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:40 am Post subject: |
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Do you see me playing the pseudopsychiatrist here, On the Other Hand?
Sure, I find new and improved ways of calling many here "stupid" all the time. But do you see me dismissing people by assigning them mental illness? Do not cite the two or three here who seem to actually suffer from mental illness, starting with Igotthisguitar, as proof, please.
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Are these people qualified, say as cultural anthropologists or trained ethnographers, to go out into the world and apply western psychiatry to Russians and others, On the Other Hand? Have they even read the psychiatric community's qualifications re: cross-cultural diagnoses?
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As far as your last lines: that is correct. They are using psychiatric language for rhetorics and show-politics. But it goes much further than that, especially when one appreciates how they are Othering their subjects, and using them as a foil for a more comfortable self-identity. E. Said would have had these people for breakfast if he had not been a leftist himself and had bigger fish to fry... |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:50 am Post subject: |
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| Sure, I find new and improved ways of calling many here "stupid" all the time. But do you see me dismissing people by assigning them mental illness? Do not cite the two or three here who seem to actually suffer from mental illness, starting with Igotthisguitar, as proof, please. |
No, but if you had described that guy as "paranoid", I wouldn't have automatically assumed that you were intending that as a literal diagnosis of mental illness. I would probably use that word myself to describe much of his writing, without meaning that he had an actual psychiatric disorder. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:53 am Post subject: |
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On the Other Hand: s/he alleged, and repeatedly, that Joo and I worked for secret intelligence services and that we had come here because our government was obsessed with her/his writing on ths board and we had been charged to discredit her/him to prevent her/him from succeeding, etc.
I would say that that suggests medical paranoia, to say the least. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:53 am Post subject: |
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| As far as your last lines: that is correct. They are using psychiatric language for rhetorics and show-politics. |
Well, what do you think about this writer's use of the term Anglophobia? I think it's a pretty useful term for what he's trying to describe, even if I don't take it as a medical diagnosis. Do you think he is "Othering" American isolationists?
Last edited by On the other hand on Sun Jan 10, 2010 10:59 am; edited 1 time in total |
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