Kumbaya. Let peace begin with me. Give peace a chance.
Child sacrifice is strictly forbidden by Torah. Isaac, after all was brought upon the altar and taken down. Do not harm the boy. Do not do anything to him. For now I know that you fear G-d. You have not withheld your only son from Him - Bereshis 22:12. The Jewish child is a precious, holy gift from HaShem. A parent is given a child with a holy neshama to nurture into a spiritually holy life. However, far too often, Torah truths and the political "beliefs" of the parents come into conflict, especially amongst the moonbat-left crowd. In such occasions, logic dictates that the Jew set aside "beliefs" and seek Torah guidance.
The story below is a testimony to the sickness of liberalism in the Jewish world which demands moral equivalency even to the point of denying the truth and the strengthening of the undoing of Israel's most basic right to exist. My comments to the article follow the story. For those who want to stop now before reading the account of moonbat madness, the bottom line is that Jews need to stand up and say Israel is for the Jews and that there is no such thing as palis.
Young Muslims, Jews work toward peace
February 17, 2009
Groups try to bridge gap between religions
By Bob Smietana
THE TENNESSEAN
Shoshana Jaffa sums up the conflict in the Middle East like this: "Everybody wants to meet halfway, but no one knows where halfway is."
Jaffa was one of about 45 Jewish and Muslim teens and young adults who met Sunday at Congregation Micah in Brentwood (TN) to discuss the recent fighting in Gaza.
It's part of a dialogue between local Jews and Muslims aimed at building understanding between young people of different faiths. Organizers hope that if young people can learn to discuss the Middle East civilly, perhaps their parents can, as well.
In fact, there was just one rule in place at Sunday morning's meeting — no parents allowed.
"Adults can't have this conversation," Michael Pote, a Sunday School teacher at Congregation Micah, said to the interfaith group meeting in a classroom at the Brentwood synagogue. "Things like this don't happen, and it's a shame."
Pote says that Jewish and Muslim adults rarely discuss the Middle East conflict without ending in a shouting match. He and other organizers hope that young people can show their parents and faith communities a better way.
Sunday's meeting was part of an ongoing dialogue between youth groups at the Islamic Center of Nashville and two local synagogues, Congregation Micah and West End Synagogue in Nashville.
In December, a group of Jewish high school juniors visited the Islamic center for a lesson on the basics of Islam taught by the Muslim youth group. On Sunday, the Jewish teens returned the favor, leading a class on the basics of Judaism.
After the class, Pote, along with Rabbi Flip Rice of Congregation Micah, and Rashed Fakhruddin of the Islamic Center, led an hour-long discussion of the Middle East conflict. The students quizzed one another on everything from the history of Zionism to whether a two-state solution would solve the current conflict.
Several of the Muslim students wanted to know how much Israel's claim to Palestine was religious, and how much was political.
"Most of the people in this room do not believe that Israel is mine because it says so in our sacred texts," Rice said. "That doesn't mean that we don't want Israel to be there, but it's not a deed to the land."
When Rice asked the Jewish youth if any believe that Israel belonged to the Jewish people because the Bible says so, only one student raised her hand. On the other hand, several students said that while Jews had a right to their own homeland, the country should not exclude people of other faiths.
That idea is actually found in the Israeli Declaration of Independence, says S. Ilan Troen, director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
Still, Troen says that the religious connection of Jews to Palestine remains strong.
Students discuss history
During Sunday's conversation, the students also discussed the history of Zionism, which dates back to the 1890s. Inspired by the writings of Theodor Herzl, Jews began to move back to Palestine and buy land.
At the time, Pote said, Palestine wasn't viewed as a paradise on Earth.
"At that time, it was either desert or swampland," Pote said. "This was not ground where you'd say, 'Oh I have to live there.' "
Complicating matters, both the Jewish and Muslim students admitted, is the fact that Palestine has been ruled by outside powers for more than 2,000 years. Jews were forced from the land by the Romans beginning in 70 A.D., after a failed uprising. When large groups began to return around 1900, Palestine was ruled by the Turks, and then the British after World War II, until Israel's independence in 1948.
Sabina Mohyuddin, who helps lead the Muslim youth group, said it was important for the students to get a bigger picture on the conflict on Middle East.
"In the nightly news, it's two minutes. It won't do any justice to the whole issue," she said. Mohyuddin said that she encourages her students to read news accounts and history from different perspectives.
After the meeting ended, the Muslim students took a tour of the synagogue.
Amar Razali, a 22-year-old Muslim student who spent the discussion seated in front of a stained-glass window of the Ten Commandments in Hebrew,
said that he was surprised by how much Jews and Muslims have in common.
"We should focus on our similarities, and less on our differences."
Back in December during Israel's Operation Cast Lead attack on the terrorist gang Hamas the Tennessean reported on simultaneous rallies in downtown Nashville Local Rallies Mirror Israel-Palestine Splitwhere Jews and Christians came together to support Israel's right of self-defense against random rocket fire into cities in Israel from Gaza. Local Arabs came together to complain that Israel was fighting back. Today, the Tennessean reports that children "can show their parents and faith communities a better way." Children can be taught to ignore the facts when their parents aren't around. For the Muslim side that might not be so bad. But for the Jewish side.....
This story is interesting in that we find local Jews, tied to the land of Israel by religion, by history and by law not knowing that fact. It is curious that a "dialogue between local Jews and Muslims aimed at building understanding between young people of different faiths " has any mention of international politics at all. Muslim youth, unless specifically connected to the land of Israel by all rights should merely be as connected to Israel as any youth anywhere, which should be scant to little.
Like all people, they, their families, their friends can travel to Israel as tourists and visit wherever they please. The Jewish youth on the other hand, contrary to the article's quotes are indeed, by religious obligation connected to the land of Israel and should not be afraid of saying so. Unlike the quote in the article,
"Most of the people in this room do not believe that Israel is mine because it says so in our sacred texts," Rice said. "That doesn't mean that we don't want Israel to be there, but it's not a deed to the land."even the atheist David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel testifying before the Peel Commission in 1937 said: "I say on behalf of the Jews that the Bible is our Mandate, the Bible which was written by us, in our own language, in Hebrew, in this very country. That is our Mandate. It was only recognition of this right which was expressed in the Balfour Declaration."
Ben-Gurion was only wrong in his citation of authorship but was quite correct in his logic. It is confusion over Jewish rights to the land and the pervasive liberal attitude to not say without hesitation that there is no such thing in history as an Arab Palestine which perpetuates the Arab Israel conflict. Let the youth meet, let them discuss common themes but let us not forget the truth, that Israel is the Jewish home land. Bring the kids together to feed the hungry and clean up the trash in the parks. Leave the political discussions out.
for review:
Daniel Pipes - Reader comment on article: The Forcible Removal of Israelis from Gaza
JCPA - AN ANSWER TO THE NEW ANTI-ZIONISTS:
THE RIGHTS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE TO A
SOVEREIGN STATE IN THEIR HISTORIC HOMELAND
Front Page Magazine - How 'Nakba' Proves There's No Palestinian Nation
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