Theological Fantasies aren’t Realities: A Reply to Bill Benton
I recently saw a letter from one Bill Benton published in the Delaware State News (1) and as is my want I thought I’d reply.
To wit:
‘Can you imagine the emotions of a young Jewish man when his plane landed in Israel, and he put his foot down on the same piece of land where his people had left 2000 years earlier?’
No, I can’t, but since your people are currently trying to drive my people out of land that we have lived in for many thousands of years more than the jews ever lived in Israel.
‘Of course, he knew the story of how his forefathers had tried to drive the Roman rulers out of their country and failed.’
You forgot to mention that they said jew’s forefathers spent a good deal of time rebelling because the Romans weren’t descended from the tribes of Israel and were thus evil goyim as well as pagan idolaters.
You also failed to mention that this wasn’t a noble ‘struggle for freedom’ against the Romans, but rather a dream of world conquest based on religious and ethnic hatred that also demanded the extermination of non-jews as the eternal enemies of Israel.
Perhaps you should spend more time reading Cassius Dio rather than Alan Dershowitz?
‘Many lost their lives; their temple was destroyed, and a harsher rule began.’
I wonder why…
I mean the jews rose up and massacred any non-jewish soldier or civilian they could find as well as those jews who had taken up the more civilised ways of the Romans and Greeks (i.e., the Hellenizers) in addition to trying to do the same in numerous other cities outside of Palestine such as Alexandria, Cyrene and Tarsus.
I mean who can possibly object to the jews rising up and trying to murder them and their families?
They are the chosen people… right?
‘Many sought refuge in other countries and did something no other people have ever done; they hold tenaciously to their religion and culture.’
The fact is though that they didn’t actually do this. If you know anything about the early years of the exile then you should know that the jews lost nearly all their knowledge of their religion and only one school of thought – that of Hillel – survived out of the many that existed at the time.
Jewish culture such as it is also differs drastically from that of Palestine fairly quickly. Indeed was there even a unified jewish culture at any time? I don’t think so personally, because the ‘jewish cultures’ had little in common, spent most of their time fighting among themselves as well as engaging in intra-community xenophobia and were (often bad) attempts to mirror their host cultures.
This is incidentally indicated by the fact that Ashkenazim, Sephardim and Mizrahim have had so much difficulty getting on historically as well as integrating with each other even to this day in Israel.
‘Because of this, they were subject to constant threats.’
This is nonsense.
They were subject to ‘constant threats’, because of the things they got up to like exterminating the Christian men, women and children of Jerusalem in 614 A.D. in the massacre of Mamilla Pool.
Did the jews exterminate the Christians of Jerusalem because the jews held ‘tenaciously to their religion and culture’?
No, of course not.
‘No group of people on the planet has endured more systematic, heavily resourced attempts to wipe them out than the Jews.’
You appear to have forgotten things like the Holodomor, the Asharshylyk, the Morgenthau Plan, the Stalinist systematic war on the Germans of the Soviet Union from 1933 onwards and the Armenian Genocide.
‘Not only is it a miracle that Jews exist today, but to think that their nation was re-established as modern Israel in 1948.’
Why is it a miracle?
I could point out that it is miracle that Europeans survived their long and turbulent history of attempts to invade and subjugate Europe by forces like the forces of Islam and the Mongols.
Were they ‘miracles’ too?
‘That, however, did not come cheap; as soon as the Israelis began to form a government, the Arabs attacked. Five Arab nations (Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Lebanon and Iraq) joined forces and attacked on a wide front. The Israelis were being pushed into the sea. They knew it was a matter of life or death. Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League, declared, “It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a monstrous massacre in history that will be talked about like massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.”’
So would you if a bunch of people turned up after two thousand years, kicked out your people without their consent and often committed genocide when doing so.
Try not to be so disingenuous in future.
‘After a year and a half of fighting, at great cost in lives,’
Err… no.
Israel incurred circa 6,000 casualties between 1920 and 1948.
Of these circa 2,000 occurred during the 1947-1948 civil war that you are referring to.
That is not a ‘great cost in lives’ compared to the 50 to 80 million that were lost during the Second World War that ended just two to three years earlier.
So apparently tens of millions of goyim are worth far less than 2,000 members of Yahweh’s holy tribe.
‘The defenders finally pushed the Arabs out of their land.’
You mean the invaders finally pushed the Arabs out of their land.
‘People never seem to learn, as Israel was attacked two more times, once in 1967, which was called the “Six Day War,” and the “Yom Kippur War” in 1973. They were victorious each time and gained a little more land.’
Ah yes Israel is invincible, because… well… it is Israel.
Nothing to do with the huge amount of aid – financial, military and diplomatic – provided by the United States and other countries?
Apparently not.
Maybe we should cut Israel’s aid and let the angelic hosts of Yahweh defend it rather than an IDF heavily subsidised for no apparent reason by American taxpayers.
‘When Israel started, there were about 600,000 people in the country; today, there are 7 million. They are cramped into a tiny piece of real estate you can hardly find on a map.
They have flown in from all over the world, to find a place to call home.’
And often flown back soon after as you’d know if you’d bothered to read Israeli demographic studies.
‘Today, Israel has no standing army,’
Yes: it does. It is called the IDF or are you claiming there are no career soldiers in Israel?
‘But everyone, male or female, must sign up for two years of service in the army.’
Which is hardly unique to Israel nor a jewish innovation.
‘While you are there, you will be required to learn Hebrew, a language that was already dead at the time of Jesus.’
Well you aren’t learning Hebrew. You are learning modern Hebrew which is a new language created from the corpse of ancient Hebrew. Claiming otherwise is like claiming that Italian is in fact Roman Latin.
‘Their logic was very simple: The returnees came from all parts of the world and spoke different languages. A nation should have a common language.’
Yes and Esperanto was invented for the same purpose.
‘What would be more appropriate than the language of Moses?’
Hebrew wouldn’t have been the language of Moses you dolt. That would likely been Egyptian or one of the Nilotic languages.
Remember that Moses is by all accounts an Egyptian name or are you so dippy that you don’t know that?
‘No dead language has ever come back to life.’
Modern Hebrew isn’t a revival of ancient Hebrew any more than Arabic is a revival of Akkadian.
‘Latin, once the universal language, is now spoken by a few scholars.’
Yet the comparison wouldn’t be simply Latin, but rather Italian that is derived from Latin and Italian is rather more widely spoken than modern Hebrew.
‘If Moses returned to Israel today, he could enter a restaurant and order a meal. Of course, he might get a little confused when he saw pizza and Pepsi.’
Except he couldn’t since he wouldn’t have spoken, read or understood ancient Hebrew let alone modern Hebrew.
‘That young man that came to Israel by plane is now 80 years old. He has witnessed all three wars and the emergence of a new and strong nation. Today, Israel’s air force is larger than that of England or France. It has tanks and field equipment sufficient for its reserve army. However, I believe they also know that there was something more involved in their survival than their own strength. Some might even say it was a miracle.’
This is a ‘miracle’ that only exists because the United States taxpayer sends billions of dollars every year to Israel to pay for the ‘power’ of the IDF.
‘Miracles’ aren’t free.
References
(1) http://delawarestatenews.net/opinion/letter-editor-israel-modern-miracle/