----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 28 September 2001 20:45
Subject: Re: Letter to a leftist friend/the real mystics/innocents


| This is a very different question from what's been under discussion,
| Lawrence. The subject has been whether traditional Jewish law allows or
| justifies atrocities against non-Jews, which it doesn't.

It is different, yes; but it is related

Thank you for answering.

I thought after posting the message that it was rather rude, and I apologise
for that, if it came over that way. I have, as I said, been attacked before
for daring to raise the question.

| Israel was born of Romantic irridentism fueled by extreme desperation.

I am very interested in that response. It has seemed to me that the desire
to reestablish Israel was very similar to a number of other movements where
the people concerned were already in the countries and seeking liberation
from foreigners - Greece for example

| Until the 1890s almost none had actually done either, although most
Ottoman
| regimes welcomed the small numbers who did come.

ok, yes... a while ago when I was called a fool and other things for not
knowing that there had always been masses of Jews in Palestine. I did some
research to find there were about 80000 a century ago

| As far as I know, until fairly late in the pre-1948 conflict no one
| proposed that Jews had the right to oust anyone. It was only later that
the
| Biblical narrative was used as an excuse for expropriation.

That is my reading. I went through a whole pile of documents - I forget
where but all the documents relating are on one web site from the Balfour
declaration onwards. One can read a narrative through the increasingly
strident denials that the Palestine should be converted into a Jewish state

| None of this justifies what happened. No group's desperation allows it to
| impose desperation on another group. The excuses followed the behavior.
|
| This is of course not unique--there were plenty of legal and messianic
| justifications ex post facto for the destruction of most of the Amerindian
| population, and it didn't take the idea of a lost ancestral homeland.

Yes, indeed

Well... thank you is all I can say. Very clear and very helpful


Lawrence