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American Jews abandoning Israel

Darth Rotor said:
Actually, if you replace the term "conspiracy" with "plan" you'd be pretty accurate in terms of the ultimate objective of the Catholic Church. It's desire is to spread Christianity to all nations, with Christianity in the RCC's view being "that which acknowledges the Pope as Christs' vicar on Earth" and all of that.
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Ah, c'mon, that's cheating. The Jews think that when the messiah comes everybody will convert to Judaism. The Muslims that eventually everybody will acknowledge the truth of Islam. Practically every religion thinks eventually the entire world will agree with it. But in itself that's meaningless.

ETA: for the OP, the "abandonment" of Israel has been a topic of discussion among American Jews for over a generation. I am mildly familiar with the issue, thanks to a couple of schoolmates of mine who returned from Israel in the 1970s, all of the shine rubbed off the Kibbutz system for them.
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It's the same sort of "reality bites" moment one gets when one actually joins the army, for example, finding out that there's more to it than walking around in shiny uniform. Waking up to milk the cows at 4:30 or so doesn't make into the advertisement brochures for some reason.
 
I am only loyal to the country I am a citizen of, and that is the USA.
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You are confusing dual loyalty with treasonous dual loyalty. An Italian-American has dual loyalty in the sense that he has loyalty to both his country and his people's homeland. That is not only legitimate, but unremarkable. It's true for everybody to one degree or another -- we all have multiple loyalties to multiple groups, from our immediate family to the planet as a whole.

What an Italian-American does not have a right to do is the right to commit treason -- to, say, spy for Italy against the USA and to claim that it is an act of loyalty, or to broadcast propaganda for Italy during a war with the USA (as Ezra Pound did, though not an Italian-American).

The problem is that some people confuse the two types of loyalty. They are so fearful somebody will accuse them of "dual loyalty" and doubt their patriotism, that they go out of their way to dump on, unfairly criticize, and on the whole be obsessed with pointing out real or imagined flaws of their homeland, with the forlorn hope that this will, somehow, make those who accuse them of "dual loyalty" satisfied.

They won't. Those who accuse American Jews of being "doubly loyal" for being sympathetic to Israel will not be satisfied because the motive for their accusation is hatred of Jews because they are Jews, not anything illegitimate American Jews did. This is much the same situation as those who accused Italian-Americans of being "doubly loyal" to the pope over the USA were simply haters of Italians, and couldn't care less if the man they accuse of such "double loyalty" was actually excommunicated or never went to church.

They Jew-haters will just find some other excuse to hate, and they will simply add contempt at Jews to their reason to hate Jews. They will sneer, justifiably I must say, at the lack of spine and groveling by those Jews who bend over backwards to be "good Jews" they have no rational reason to hate; at the naifs who actually took the excuse du jour for Jew-hatred as if it had anything to do with the real reason for their hatred.

We've seen this before, numerous times. Remember the Jews who, in the 1920s, went out of their way to show they are good Jews, that is, part of the then-fashionable communist movement, and not in any way related to those silly, outdated, dark-coat-wearing, superstition-believing "bad" Jews? Now, surely, these "good Jews" said to themselves, we will not be hated.

Bad idea: as could be expected, the only result was that the "good Jews" were, if anything, hated all the more -- and there was the additional excuse, the "Jews are all commies" one.

Examples could be multiplied.
 
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Eddie Dane said:
Many countries have policies that cultivate a connection to the "homeland".
Turkey still calls up Turks from the Netherlands and Germany for army service. (You can get out of it by sending some money to the Turkish government).
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This is quite different from what I'm talking about. Israeli policies extend to Jews who have no connection with the country.

What you're describing sounds like policies directed at people who emigrate from Turkey.
 
Skeptic said:
Ah, c'mon, that's cheating. The Jews think that when the messiah comes everybody will convert to Judaism. The Muslims that eventually everybody will acknowledge the truth of Islam. Practically every religion thinks eventually the entire world will agree with it. But in itself that's meaningless.
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FWIW, and I admit to a touch of thread drift here, the Muslims and the Christians have figured out how to spread their religion far better than their Abrahamic uncles in this matter, for better and worse. Put another way, the Muslims and Christians are a lot closer to their goal, using predominantly mundane means to get everyone on board.

Then again, within each big religion is enough quarreling and squabbling to ensure they'll never agree ... :D
 
Judaism used to be a proselyting religion. It stopped for various complicated reasons ca. 150 AD.
 
The Fallen Serpent said:
In the context of a primary or decently mixed Yiddish environment Goy/Goyim is not offensive. Completely anecdotal, so proper salt taking here, in my experience in a primary English environment using Goy/Goyim is intended to be discriminatory. Just how the N word is a completely innocent term in the proper language context but is usually offensive or an attempt at destroying the offensivenss of the word in English.
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Much of the Black population in America finds offense in the use of the N word by anyone, including themselves, despite the stereotype that most or all Blacks use it.

As for the term Goy/Goyim, it can be used factually or derogatorily. Like someone else said, it depends on how it's used and/or the spirit in which it's used.
 
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Skeptic said:
Judaism used to be a proselyting religion. It stopped for various complicated reasons ca. 150 AD.
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Just to ask, wasn't there a conversion in the region just north of the black sea in the 600-800 AD period? :confused:

Or was that a different style of a religion spreading?

DR
 
It's not clear what, if any, historical basis the story about the Jewish Khazarite kingdom has in fact.

The Khazars, if they in fact ever converted to Judaism as legend has it, probably did it for political reasons -- not wishing to affiliate themselves with either of the two warring factions (Islam and Christianity) then fighting in the area (I can just see the head adviser: "Sire, why don't we convert to Judaism? Nobody will have a reason to hate us THEN!").

But it wasn't due to Jews sending proselytes there. Conversion, even in theory mass conversion, is allowed in Judaism; but the Jews do not actively encourage it.
 
Goy or Goyim (the plural) is one of those words which can be used either in a derogatory or a neutral way.

In biblical Hebrew, or in the Jewish prayer book, the term simply means "other nations" or "non-Jews", and has no derogatory connotations.

In Yiddish, however, the word is derogatory, meaning (roughly) someone who'se stupid or ignorant, as in Goysche kopf -- "a gentile's head" -- that is, stupid.

However, today, the word is so commonly used and well-known that today it's almost invariably used tongue-in-cheek, not intended as an insult, at least not a serious one.

So while it would be impolite to call a non-Jew a goy to his face, a Jew using the term to refer to a non-Jews today is probably using it as an ironic reminder to other Jews of how their actions look from the outside, not meaning it as some sort of insult to non-Jews.

E.g., when a commentator in a well-known Hebrew paper called the Madoff affair using the Yiddish expression a shande [shame] for the goyim, the point was "will make Jews in general look bad", not any commentary on non-Jews as such.
 
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DC said:
still a problem, especialy for Kurds i know that have to serv in the Turkish army.
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Still not talking about Kurds serving in the Turkish army, but I admire your persistance in the deflection...
 
does anyone here agree, that Jewish-Americans who do not support the settements, do so not out of honest belief, but in order to defeat possible charges of "dual-loyalty"?
 
bigjelmapro said:
In regards to Eddie Dane's post. I highly doubt that there's a strong correlation to the trivial cases of Dutch Moroccans naming their children Dutch names, Dutch Turks filling the ranks in the Turkish army, and that of American Jewish support of solving an ongoing ME conflict.

I don't really want to minimize how this Turkish/Moroccan issues, but are you seriously trying to imply that there's a strong correlation to that of this ME conflict?
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My only point was that many states cultivate ties to the "homeland".
Israel tries to get support from it's diaspora, sometimes through emotional blackmail.
To underscore my point that Israel is not unique in this regard, I named some examples that I'm familiar with and that that show that some countries cultivate ties in ways that much more extreme than Israel's policies.

That's all. I'm actually completely confused about what you read into my post and what you're challenging me about.

Probably my mistake to begin with. I posted from work and I don't read or write very carefully when I'm in a hurry.



Sidenote:
Regarding my Moroccan example: The Moroccan policy on names does not exist to stop Dutch-Moroccans from giving their kids Dutch names.
It started because the Moroccan government does not want it's Berber population to give their kids Berber names, thus undercutting Berber nationalism. The policy comes from the Arab "ruling class".
Now that it is implemented, the Moroccans are probably happy that it works for Dutch names too.
 
Eddie Dane said:
My only point was that many states cultivate ties to the "homeland".
Israel tries to get support from it's diaspora, sometimes through emotional blackmail.
To underscore my point that Israel is not unique in this regard, I named some examples that I'm familiar with and that that show that some countries cultivate ties in ways that much more extreme than Israel's policies.
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Wouldn't call it blackmail. There do exist elements within Israel that invoke an emotional response of its diaspora living overseas by various means, but calling this blackmail is quite a stretch. That would require some sort of leverage, which personally, I don't presume one's religious affiliation to be one of them.

That's all. I'm actually completely confused about what you read into my post and what you're challenging me about.
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Not really challenging you, just confused (likewise) of how this strongly correlates with with the current state of affairs with Israel. I do understand your position and how you're going about it. Your emotive and sensitivity to what I said, not really. I assume that you interpreted what I wrote as judgmental, which I can assure you, it isn't.
 
Italy is the clear homeland..of Italians.

Ireland is the clear homeland..of the Irish.

Germany is the clear homeland..of the Germans.

Is Israel the clear homeland..of all Jews? No it is not. It is only a spiritual and cultural homeland. But it is not the place of origin of all Jews.
 
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