Obama holds Netanyahu at “gunpoint”
By Ted Belman
Before forming the present government PM Netanyahu stood for the following
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- no two state solution
- no Shalit trade as was then being negotiated
- no construction freeze and
- no presentation of an Israeli plan for its borders
Since taking office he violated all these supposed red lines. He gave a speech in which he accepted “two states for two peoples”. He made the Shalit trade he previously had opposed. He imposed a 10 month freeze for nothing in return and in many ways imposed a de facto freeze.
And now, it appears he has agreed to present, “comprehensive proposals” for resolving key aspects of conflict within three months.
By agreeing to this and not rejecting the peace process, Israel is accepting negotiations which aim to bridge the gap. Netanyahu has thus crossed another red line.
Bibi had insisted on negotiations without preconditions. But with this latest report that Israel has agreed to present a Plan before negotiations can start, he has accepted the precondition of presenting a plan before negotiations start.
Netanyahu inherited the Shalit negotiations and once complained that he was dealt a lousy hand as though he couldn’t have started all over again. Similarly, he is not prepared to start all over again on peace negotiations and is prepared to play with the hand he was dealt. It too is a lousy hand.
By Netanyahu formally agreeing to present such proposals, he confirms that he is following Olmert and Barak. This is something Bibi has repeatedly said he would not do just as he has always said he is against the Shalit deal.
This goes way beyond playing rope-a-dope to buy time. This shows a seriousness about negotiations and an intention to really negotiate along the dictates of Obama and his proxy, the Quartet.
Netanyahu has to ask for more than he expects to get, yet on the other hand, if he asks for too much the Quartet will say he is not serious and penalize him/Israel for it. Not for a moment, do I believe that this was his idea or that he willingly went along.
The article Knesset visitor blasts Obama and Netanyahu advises that MK Eldad accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of buckling under intense pressure from President Barack Obama, who wants to prevent any Israeli retaliation against the Palestinian Authority in its bid to win recognition as a state from the United Nations.
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He (Eldad) charged that Obama was holding Netanyahu “at gunpoint” – the gun being the U.S. threat to go back on its promise to veto the Palestinian statehood bid in the UN Security Council.
Specifically, Obama has demanded that Netanyahu and Israel’s supporters in the United States pressure Congress to abort two pending resolutions to penalize the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it pursues its bid, Eldad claimed.
One would shut off U.S. aid funds to the Palestinians and a second would support Israel’s right to annex the West Bank. The legal justification for such actions, cited by many Israeli officials, would be that the unilateral statehood request would be a direct violation of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
The inescapable conclusion is that Bibi felt he had no choice but to agree with the Quartet’s new Plan in which they proposed that the parties meet for a month and then prepare proposals within the following three months. To my mind the Quartet would not have come out with their plan, at that time, had not Bibi agreed to it.
The Palestinian request for recognition is still with the UNSC and will not be voted on or vetoed until Bibi presents his plan. So Eldad was 100 % correct.
Diplomacy being what it is, the Quartet will do its utmost to get Bibi to better Olmert’s offer. Abbas had offered to allow Israel to keep much less land. Abbas wanted to keep Ariel and much of east Jerusalem including Maaleh Adumin. When Netanyahu formed his government he made it clear that in no way would he match Olmert’s offer. I don’t see how he can avoid it.
When the Kadimah government proposed convergence, there was great opposition to expelling 125,000 Jews. Olmert tried to lessen this number by keeping Ariel and Maaleh Adumin. If he had succeeded, I think as much as 75,000 would have needed to be expelled.
Haaretz published the details of Olmert’s Plan
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Olmert wanted to annex 6.3 percent of the West Bank to Israel, areas that are home to 75 percent of the Jewish population of the territories. His proposal would have also involved evacuation of dozens of settlements in the Jordan Valley, in the eastern Samarian hills and in the Hebron region. In return for the annexation to Israel of Ma’aleh Adumim, the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements, Ariel, Beit Aryeh and settlements adjacent to Jerusalem, Olmert proposed the transfer of territory to the Palestinians equivalent to 5.8 percent of the area of the West Bank as well as a safe-passage route from Hebron to the Gaza Strip via a highway that would remain part of the sovereign territory of Israel but where there would be no Israeli presence.
When his offer, made at the end of his term became public, the Israelis were outraged. It is for this reason that Bibi said he rejected it.
It is clear that Olmert was negotiating swaps. Swaps were first mentioned by the Saudi Government when it presented the Saudi Plan in 2002. The Bush administration insisted that this plan, as amended in the Arab Initiative, be included in the Roadmap. Olmert thus had accepted the idea of swaps even though Res 242 did not mention it or require it.
The Haaretz article indicated that Olmert’s Plan followed up on negotiations in Annapolis, though it was expressed there, that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. His plan was also discussed with the Bush administration who had agreed to finance the development of the Negev to accommodate the expelled Israelis.
And we must not forget that Res 242 allowed us to keep some of the territories and to have secure borders. Oslo was founded on it. Although Bibi flat out rejected Obama’s framework for negotiations last May, by agreeing to present his plan he is in effect accepting it in deed if not in words. It irritates me to be fighting over inches i.e. whether we give them 97.6% of the land vs 100 %. The negotiations should center on whether we give them Areas A and B representing 40% of the land or perhaps 10 or 20% more. The Obama proposal makes a mockery of Res 242.
The Atlantic Mag recently published a report Is Peace Possible and I reported on it here.
This report, like the Geneva Initiative before it, was clearly intended to narrow the gaps and produce a settlement between the Olmert and the Abbas proposals. This is what Obama and the Quartet envisage for a settlement. It most certainly will be based on the ’67 lines with swaps and will require Israel to get less land than she wants and to give more land than she wants. Amb Daniel Kurtzer was one of the advisers on this project and we all know that he is against the settlements and always has been. I believe that the Obama administration, the Israeli Left including Yossi Beilin probably had input as well.
I question some of the population numbers quoted in the Atlantic article. The 500,000 figure for settlers, quoted in the Atlantic may have been right early in the Kadima government but it no longer is. The Jewish population increases at the rate of 6% per annum in the territories and therefor would be well over 600,000 today, five years later. Recently, MK Ketzela said it was closer to 700,000.
Finally it is not by chance that just this week Abe Foxman and David Harris launched their Pledge of silence to minimize opposition to what is going on.
And I haven’t even mentioned the so called right of return and Jerusalem. Both Olmert and Barak have offered to take in a “token” number of “refugees” (perhaps as many as 100,000) and to share or internationalize Jerusalem.
Rest assured that the Golan is next.
There is no way that the Quartet would allow Bibi to get away with drawing up a plan where we get to keep Area C as our opener as an example and there is no way Bibi is going to do that with the gun to her head.
Not too sure about that “most” part, Yamit.
In the US the fastest growing segment of self-identified Christians are the Evangelicals, and they overwhelmingly reject Replacement Theology.
The RCC is the largest existing component of Christians, and their magisterium has been in the process of progressively abandoning more & more of the Supersessionist stance since Vatican Two.
Worldwide, it’s harder to tell where Christians are at (as to Replacement Theology), they’re so much in flux as a group. For example, Europe is rapidly losing its Christian persona altogether, while the African continent (subSahara) is rapidly acquiring one.
“Leaders” are typically the LAST elements of popular opinion to ever settle on a given stance or understanding. Generally they tend to adopt (or alter or abandon) a position only when it becomes politically safe (i.e., expedient) to do so — but that does not mean the ideas making up that position haven’t been percolating from below for some time BEFORE they do adopt them.
When you see a surfer skillfully riding a wave at the beach, do you say to yourself, “He certainly can push that wave around”?
– or, RATHER, do you say, “He’s very good at shifting with the wave action”?
“Leaders” rarely make the wave.
Almost always, they merely RIDE what’s there.
What we — all of us — talk about on this site contributes, in its own small (but not-inconsiderable) way, to the generating of that wave.
I told you already that I knew — and had said (loudly, bitterly, vociferously & incessantly) — that the withdrawal was most unwise, that it would most definitely embolden the enemy. What does “embolden” MEAN if not tempt the enemy to push for the same thing elsewhere?
The point is that, while withdrawal was terribly ill-advised (and you’ll have a hard time finding posters on this site who would disagree with that observation), it simply is not true to say that this means, or indicates, or proves, or implies that “Israel has no legal or moral right to build settlements in areas they have admitted are ‘negotiable’…” “Legal or moral right” is a separate matter from what may/may not embolden.
Emboldenment is purely about what somebody suspects he may be able to get away with.
That’s manifest nonsense; it is ENTIRELY about international jurisprudence.
Were it strictly between Israel & the soi-disant “Palestinians,” Israel would’ve squashed them like a bug, and long ago.
If you mean, as I said above, that having gotten away with something once may EMBOLDEN somebody to try more of the same, fine; but it will not, of itself (if at all), improve their LEGAL position — and the whole movement of the world (conscious or otherwise), where Israel is concerned, is to manoeuver Israel, by hook or by crook, into legally conceding Title to her patrimony; that’s the prize it’s got its eye on.
True Christians have discovered that Replacement Theology is a Catholic doctrine and have rejected it, just as they have rejected other Catholic doctrines such as these:
Catholicism at its foundation is not Christian. It is Babylonian and Mithraic. Early Catholics murdered true Christians. Early Christianity was Jewish. Constantine, the sun pope, required Christians to deny their Jewish roots or be murdered. The Pope may be Catholic but he is not Christian. As in other secret societies such as Freemasonry and the Illuminati, there is a small elite group at the head that knows what is going on and they deceive their followers who they regard as goyim or cattle. That is from their own Catholic documents. Think about it ~ G-d blesses His own and curses those who are false and don’t keep His commandments. The countries which have been blessed have a Protestant Christian foundation. Those who are cursed have a Catholic foundation which only enriches the few at the top. You can tell who is false by their fruit. Pedophilia identifies the Catholic Church as false.
Both of you, partly right.
Both, partly wrong.
The reality is, it isn’t the one OR the other.
It’s very definitely both.
There IS a very powerful US influence — it’s absurd to deny it — money talks, bullshit walks.
It’s EQUALLY undeniable, however, that Israeli leaders DO like to fall back on that excuse whenever it serves their own political ends.
This is, in any case, off-point, Teshuvah, as to Yamit’s comment. He wasn’t addressing the question of what is or isn’t “truly Christian,” but, rather, what he perceives the majority of self-styled “Christians” (of whatever stripe) as believing regarding God’s election of Israel, and their own ‘replacement’ of the Jews.
It’s hard to say where it’s at, where those NUMBERS are concerned.
No. Early “christians” (they wouldn’t even have known what that word was) were Jews who abandoned their Judaism for a dead dude. Kinda sucky, dontcha think?!
TO dweller: Then his perception is wrong. Most Christians support Israel and think Replacement Theology is a lie. Most Christians believe G-d is returning the Jewish people to their land, Israel, and support that. Probably most of Israel’s supporters are Christians. Many Jews do not appreciate the support of Christians and continually make unkind statements about Christians. Yeshua said, “Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Lu 13:35. He was referring to Himself but by extension to His followers. Anti-Christian behavior delays the coming of the Messiah. I know that is a red rag to a bull, but some Jews seem to support Muslims more than they do Christians who support them. They whine about antisemitism but are in fact, anti-Christian. That isn’t even logical.
Actually their mainstream, paint-by-the-numbers Jewish neighbors didn’t think they’d abandoned anything
– as the historical record pointedly & unambiguously confirms.
What’s more, they certainly did know what “that word” was
– since the broader, gentile community in Antioch, needing to distinguish them from others, used it (i.e., the Greek rendering of it) to refer to THEM for purposes of identification,
though it was not a name they originally chose for themselves.
To do so would’ve been unseemly
– and presumptuous.
Your first statement [above] is correct.
Your second is less clear, Teshuvah.
What I said to Yamit I repeat here for you:
Oh, come on, Teshuvah, to say that is to presume on the very integrity of God. You can’t force His hand
– let alone, move the hands on His clock.
He will send Mashiakh when — and only when — it suits Him (and His purpose) to do so. Not a moment earlier, not a nanosecond later.
Not especially illogical from a given point of view.
Most of those Jews you refer to are among those who have personal, or extended generational, history in the Christian world; all told, it’s not a happy history.
Published long before the Holocaust, indeed a dozen years before the opening shots of the Second World War, Harry Emerson Fosdick’s Pilgrimage to Palestine (Macmillan, NY, 1927) observed that “the treatment of Jews in Christendom makes one of the most appalling stories of truculence and bigotry that history knows.” [p. 275]
It’s left those Jews gun-shy as to self-styled Christians.
If they appear to support Muslims more than they do Christians, it’s probably more a matter of not having the same kind of concrete family history in the Muslim world that they do in the Christian world. So for them, Islam is more an idea than something they relate materially to, in memory.
For Mizrakhi Jews, however, as well as North African & Turkish, Sephardic Jews (viz., those whose family history IS in the Islamic world), the attitude is likely to be quite the reverse — and for the same reason.
Try reading your own gibberish in Acts 4, 5,7 8, 12, 21, 24 and many more texts therein for what the tales are worth.
Josephus tells us of James and others trials and executions by Ananus, the Saducee High Priest, in around 62.
Read “From Jesus to Christ”, by Professor Paula Fredriksen (herself a convert to Judaism, if I’m not mistaken), Chapter 8: Responses to the Resurrection.
Greece is the word.
I’m not talking about people having enough of a Greek vocabulary to know what the Greek word for “mashiach” – “anointed one” – is. The use of the term in reference to your dead guy and the people who believed in him is an adaption/adoption which took place decades after the story tales were supposed to have taken place.
Nonsense. The potential to expedite the redemption up to us Jews. We wear the Ruby Slippers. We just don’t want to click.
The Christian Cult and it’s Deceptions
The Catholic Church’s Response to Our Critique of Christian Credibility
ENJOY!!
Not for “abandoning their Judaism.”
As I understand, James the Just [brother of Christ] was condemned by Ananus II, who simply took advantage of the lack of imperial oversight (the procurator, Porcius Festus, had died & not yet been replaced) to assemble a council of judges who condemned James “on the charge of breaking the law” (without ever specifying WHAT ‘law’), then had him executed.
Even so, a Jew may break a law (even a Jewish law) and still be a Jew.
And actually Josephus reports that Ananus’ act was widely viewed as little more than judicial murder, and that it offended a number of “those who were considered the most fair-minded people in the City, and strict in their observance of the Law,” who went as far as meeting Albinus as he entered the province to petition him about the matter. Their agitations led to Ananus being deposed as high priest.
In any case, though, I was talking about the Jewish people when I said their “Jewish neighbors didn’t think [the Nazarene Jews] had abandoned anything…” I wasn’t referring to a crew of phony, Zadokite ["Sadducee"] priests: stuffed-shirt, ruler-up-their-ass, Roman appointees, whose objection to Christ had been more political than religious.
The Jews of Judea considered the Nazarene Jews to be Jews
– weird Jews perhaps. But Jews.
Provide the actual, specific quotations/excerpts that you believe support your contentions — not just the citations — and I’ll respond.
I’m more than happy to take you on, Shy — any time — but I will not expend unnecessary chunks of time (which, regrettably, is a luxury for me & quite limited) on a wild goose chase. You’ve done this before, and I wouldn’t accommodate you then either, for precisely the same reason.
Really? — What’s your evidence for that?
And if that were so, why WOULDN’T Jews “want to click”? Every Shabbat service (and some others as well) includes a prayer of supplication for the coming of Mashiakh; it’s absurd to say Jews wouldn’t “want” it.
But we’ve been over this ground before, Shy. Jews are no more capable of ‘forcing’ the hand of God than anybody else is, and it’s the height of presumption to suggest otherwise.
See :” “The King Messiah”
See: my links #32
What you offer is no more of a response to the above request, Yamit, than what Shy threw at me.
Quote the actual, specific excerpt that you believe shows that my response to Shy’s assertion is wrong. Don’t just hand me a cite or a link to an essay which may-or-may-not contain your evidence. I haven’t the time to wade thru it; that’s YOUR job (if you want to make your point).
Shy had said, “Early ‘christians’ (they wouldn’t even have known what that word was) were Jews who abandoned their Judaism for a dead dude.”
My response to that had been, “Actually their mainstream, paint-by-the-numbers Jewish neighbors didn’t think they’d abandoned anything…”
If you think you have evidence that refutes my response, fine: quote me the actual words, THEN add the cite or link, so I can follow up & verify or clarify, if I want to.
While I don’t personally subscribe to the Jesus myth for the sake of argument I submit that the Hebrews of that period where versed enough in the theology and traditions of Judaism to recognize a fraud and charlatan.
some examples: From the links you refused to read!!!
Can a hypocrite be a “messiah”? Yéshu was a hypocrite, and a particularly nasty, vicious-tongued one too. It is obvious to anyone reading the “gospels” that he did not get along at all with the “Rabbis” of his period, who were known as P’rushim at that time. The authority of the “Rabbis” came from God Himself, who ordained that anyone deviating from their judgements and enactments in even the slightest detail should suffer the Death Penalty (D’varim 17:10-12), and the first Synhedrion (Supreme Court of 70 Rabbinic judges) was convened by Mosheh himself, again on God’s instructions (B’midbar 11:16). Yéshu acknowledges the Divine authority of the “Rabbis” in Mattai 23:2-3…
“The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Mosheh’s seat; therefore you must do and observe all that they tell you.”
…but this is followed immediately by a vicious attack on them, and just a few verses later (23:23-33) we read this:
What a vicious, totally unjustified attack! And how dishonest, because he makes no specific charge against any named individual, just a vague, generalised attack on an entire class of people. This is prejudiced stereotyping of the worst kind and, after he has himself acknowledged that the “Rabbis” (or “Pharisees”) “sit in Mosheh’s seat”, exposes him for the hypocrite he was. And that was a “messiah”?
More to follow:
There is an incident in Yéshu’s life that gives a glimpse of his true character, for those whose eyes are not blinded by “faith”; it is reported by Mattai at chapter 15, verses 22ff.
22 Just then a Canaanitish woman who was from that region cried out to him “Take pity on me, master, David’s son! my daughter is mentally ill, and she is suffering terribly!”—
23 but he completely ignored her. His students came and begged him “Get rid of her—she keeps pestering us”,
24 and he replied “I was only sent to the house of Yisraél’s lost sheep”.
25 Then she came again and bowed in front of him, saying “Please help me, master!”—
26 but all he said was “It’s wrong to take the food from one’s own children and throw it to dogs”…..
The poor woman came to him begging for help, and he at first ignored her and then, when his followers begged him to do something for her just to get rid of her, he called her and her sick daughter dogs! This disgusting, appalling show of racism against a Canaanitish woman who was from that region is in stark contrast to what the Torah teaches, which is that the “foreigner who lives among us” is to be treated with exactly the same respect, and love, as any native Yisraélite (Vayikra 19:34). As always, Christians try to “explain away” this glaring character-flaw in their hero, but the facts speak for themselves: he was a narrow-minded, cruel bigoted racist.
More to follow:
Postscript: The significance of the “heart” in the Scriptural context
One of the many accusations frequently made by christians about Hebrews is that we have book knowledge but do not understand “with our hearts”. We do not have “circumcised hearts”, they sneeringly mock (a crude misrepresentation D’varim 10:16 and other passages). But christians who say this are falling into a trap of their own making: they assume that references to the “heart” in Scripture refer to the seat of the emotions, just because the heart is seen as the seat of the emotions in their culture.
But in ancient Hebrew culture—and, hence, in the Scriptures—the heart was not seen as the seat of the emotions… it was seen as the seat of wisdom and the intellect. There are so many verses that demonstrate this; here are just a few—
“…speak to every wise-hearted man…” (Sh’mot 28:3)
“…Adonai never gave you a heart to know, eyes to see or ears to hear until today…” (D’varim 29:3)
“…please grant to Your servant an understanding heart so I can judge Your people and distinguish right from wrong…” (M’lachim Alef 3:9)
By contrast, in ancient Hebrew culture—and, hence, in the Scriptures—the seat of the emotions was considered to be the liver. This is evidenced by the prophet Yirmyahu’s tragic poems lamenting the calamitous events that occurred when the Babylonian armies over-ran Y’rushalayim in 587/586BCE—
“…my eyes are blocked with tears and my stomach churns—my liver is poured out onto the ground—because of the rape of my people’s daughter; because children and suckling-babes are dying of hunger in the city’s streets…” (Eichah 2:11)
So christians who claim Scripture has to be read “with the heart” are completely missing the point: in the Scriptures, the expression “the heart” doesn’t mean “the emotions”, rather it means using your brain—your intellect—in other words, thinking and reasoning rationally and logically. What they need to do is what God commanded Yisraél to do in D’varim 10:16—”circumcise” their “hearts’ foreskins”. To “circumcise” means to cut away something that is unwanted or undesirable, and the “heart’s foreskin” are the unwanted and undesirable parts of their minds that incline them to “believe” that God has a “son”, leading them to worship their three worthless idols papa, junior, and casper “the friendly ghost”.
Addendum: “Mister Sayten”
Like all control cults, christianity needs its fear-element, which takes the form of the “devil” or “Mister Sayten”. This character is totally fictitious and does not get even a single mention in the Hebrew Scriptures. I am sure that this statement will make christians start jumping excitedly up and down and feverishly turning up their perverted “translations” of the writings of the prophet Z’charyah and the Parable of Iyov, but those two isolated passages refer to an Angel that is called by the title “THE satan” (pronounced with both A’s rhyming with “cup” and the emphasis on the second syllable), not to a person or entity named “Sayten” who spends his/its time going around “deceiving” people. It is also evident from both of those passages that “the satan” has no authority to take any action against a human being without God’s express command or permission. It also appears from the passage in chapter 3 of Z’charyah, incidentally, that “the satan” was very much a part of God’s Heavenly “Court” at that time, and Z’charyah’s writings are dated “in the 2nd year of Darius I” (Z’charyah 1:1), i.e. about 520 BCE; which is imposible to reconcile with the christian nonsense about “Mister Sayten” having been “cast out” of Heaven because he/it “rebelled” against God.
The truth is that, in common with its pagan roots, christianity promulgates the pagan notion of two “warring” gods… a “good” one and a “bad” one. Obviously they deny this and, while it is true that they never call Mister Sayten a “god”, that’s just a matter of semantics… “Power of Light” and “Power of Darkness”… “good god” and “bad god”—what’s the difference? Hebrew culture does not have a “bad god” or a “Power of Darkness”; as strange an idea as it might be to grasp, Y’shayahu says this:
“I form Light and I create Darkness, I make Peace and I create Evil: I am Adonai and I do all these things” (Y’shayahu 45:7)
ON THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY
http://mordochai.tripod.com/WHY.html#top
The christianity cult first appeared in the early part of the 4th century CE. That remark may well raise some eyebrows, because it differs markedly from what you have almost certainly always believed to be the case. All the history books say the earliest christians were 1st century Hebrews, don’t they? Well they would say that, though: this is what the churches want everyone to think. And never forget, the churches controlled all publishing and printing for centuries: even into the early 20th century in some countries. But, like so much else about christianity, it just ain’t true.
Let me enlighten you about the real origins of the cult. To understand how, when, and why the new “religion” was created, a little knowledge of Roman history is needed. In the year 306CE, the emperor Constantius I (“Constantius Chlorus”) was on campaign in Britain, but he fell ill and died at Eboracum (modern York). His son, Constantine I, was proclaimed emperor by the army, but there were many other contenders competing for the Throne and it was a long time before he was established as sole ruler. The link just given describes the political situation in some detail and, although it embraces the usual christian myths about how Constantine was “miraculously converted to christianity”, the historical details are reasonably accurate
http://mordochai.tripod.com/yeshu.html#top
A “messiah” is someone who has been “anointed” (and this word does NOT have a double-n). “Anointment”, or smearing with the “Oil of Sacred Anointment” (see Sh’mot 30:22-33), was the ceremony that took place at the coronation (or enthronement) of a Hebrew king; this compound of spices and olive oil cannot be separated from “anointing” because even its name—??????? ???????????????? shemen mish’h?at kodesh (by which the oil is called twice in Sh’mot 30:25 and again in 30:31, and also with slight variations in Vayikra 10:7 and 21:12) uses the word ???????? mish’h?ah, which is effectively the same Hebrew word as ????????? mashiyah?, a “Messiah”. The new testament writers are strangely silent on this point, not even trying to pretend that it was ever done to their Yéshu character. So christianity’s “anointed person” never was actually “anointed”… in other words he was not, in fact, an “anointed person” at all—christians get around this inconvenience by simply inventing different “definitions” of what the words “messiah” and “anoint” mean—but they are hard-pressed to supply Scriptural texts to support their phony, artificial “definitions”.
There is also not a single prophecy that uses the word “messiah”. There are numerous prophecies of the restoration of the Hebrew kingdom, and of the king who will reign at that time—who will be a blood-descendant in the male line of the ancient Royal Family—but none of these actually call him a “messiah”. It is to be assumed that when God revives the Hebrew kingdom, the ancient practise of “anointing” the king will also be revived, so that the king who reigns at that time will be a “messiah” (in the true sense), but none of the Prophets calls him explicitly by that title.
Well, you did at least provide the specific words for attention this time (and for which I thank you), but as I suspected would be the case, Yamit, they fail to adddress the specific issue in contention at the point-of-departure noted in the exchange you blockquoted above:
[S]: “Early ‘christians’… were Jews who abandoned their Judaism for a dead dude.”
[D]: “Actually their mainstream, paint-by-the-numbers Jewish neighbors didn’t think they’d abandoned anything…”
So far, neither you nor Shy have offerred any evidence to explicitly refute my response.
Certainly not with a lot of them, apparently not with most of those of his day. He regarded them as largely phony & superficial, but not because they were “Pharisees” [peroushim], rather because they failed to live up to the high calling that the people were entitled to expect of them.
Nicodemus & Joseph of Arimathea (both Peroushim) were notable exceptions, among other, less prominent ones.
Oh, sweet Jesus!
(excuse the expression. . . .)
There’s no mention of “Rabbis” in scripture — and even if there were, I hardly think that God would have established anything on the order of an “apostolic succession.” It’s a dumb, myopic proposition when the RCC does it. And it would’ve been infinitely dumber had the Almighty himself ordained it. The potential for abuse; the instrumentality for rigid social control (to say nothing of mind control); corruption etc. Look at what became of Eli’s sons. And Samuel’s. Don’t even go there, Yamit, you’re stepping off of a cliff.
He was saying they know what’s right — but they fail to do it. Hence, as role models, they tend to suck.
Not at all ‘prejudiced’ or ‘stereotypical’ if in fact most of them were as he asserted.
Quite the contrary, exposes THEM for the hypocrites they were: they talked a good game.
Gotta run. Library’s closing. Tomorrow’s another day.
Shavua tov, one and all.
What they say in this regard is often true, but hardly peculiar to JEWS.
Quite the contrary, in fact, it’s common to all men — and it sure-as-blazes applies to self-styled “Christians” as much as to anybody else. In fact, in a sense, it’s the price that any scripturally-grounded faith pays for survival beyond the first generation or two after its founding. As a means of dealing with their religious obligations amid the pressures of life swirling around them, people tend to relate to the printed word in a rote, routine, non-conscious way — as if they were dealing with the items on their grocery shopping list — which takes them out of the eternal Present.
No Yamit, I know this is a favorite trope of yours, one which you revisit from time-to-time; but you (and apparently Prof. ben-Tzion) are barking up the wrong tree.
It’s true that the “heart” doesn’t refer to the emotions; you got that right.
But it doesn’t specifically have to do with the intellect (or any other faculty) EITHER.
A reference to the “heart” is a reference to sincerity; it’s not about ANY particular faculty, per se). Your (or ben-Tzion’s) three quotes –
– are, each of them, about WISDOM (not about intellect), as wisdom is the natural fruit of consistent sincerity.
After today’s comments from Barry Soetoro and the French Midget, what other proof do you need that Israel is hated by this administration? Today’s comments about Obama’s disdain for Netanyahu should be evidence enough for American Jews that their president has no interest in helping Israel.
What surprises me is the number of self-hating Jews who continue to support a president and his party who has the interest of the Palestinians at heart and who hold Israel in such low regard. It’s time for American Jews to walk away from the democrat party.