Walls of Jericho/Walls of Gaza : “And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein"

[McCamy Taylor]

And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword….

And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD.
From Joshua , King James Version

You are a resident of the oldest continually inhabited community in Asia Minor, aka the Middle East. Before the Younger Dryas brought drought, your Natufian ancestors were hunters and gatherers in a region that could easily have been the model for the Garden of Eden. Your city is the cradle of western civilization—the first with agriculture, the first with domesticated dogs, the first with a tower, the first with a city wall. From 9000 BC to 1500 BC----from PrePottery Neolithic A to the height of the Bronze Age----you have prospered thanks to your decision to locate your home on fertile land on the River Jordan. You have worked hard to achieve wealth and security for yourselves and your children.

Then, a bunch of desert nomads show up. With the help of a spy, they knock down your city walls, kill every man, woman and child within your community, loot your treasury---and declare that their God told them to do it. And, they have the nerve to brag about it in the same holy text that proclaims Thou shalt not kill and Love thy neighbor as thyself. . Did I mention that the annihilation of your community is just the start of the desert nomads’ plans to conquer the whole region? Which is celebrated as part of a divine plan to conquer the entire world, by the sword if necessary?

Welcome to the Christian Bible, which derives from Jewish teaching, which begat Islam. No wonder our Founders wrote things like

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

And

There are matters in the Bible, said to be done by the express commandment of God, that are shocking to humanity and to every idea we have of moral justice..... Thomas Paine

Shocking indeed. When your book of moral teaching is a how to pillage and slaughter for fun and profit who can be surprised at wars for oil or presidents who blame the dead for their own demise?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/59041.html

According to McClatchy today, 111 children have died so far in the Israeli invasion of Gaza. To hear our god fearing President speak, their deaths are the result of the actions of the Palestinians, even though the Israelis are the ones firing the rockets and manning the tanks and using the phosphorous in areas where civilians are present. That is because the Israeli’s are good and Hamas is bad , and the Palestinians showed their wickedness when they cast their votes for the wrong party. And, in that fine old Biblical tradition, they are being cursed unto their sons and their sons’ sons.

Since I am not a Christian, I can not help thinking that there must have been more to the story of Joshua and Jericho than the Biblical account. For instance, was Canaan a center of trade, situated as it was between Assyria, Egypt and Mesopotamia? Did the rival empires compete with each other for control of the region? Did the “desert nomads” hire themselves out as mercenaries? Maybe Joshua and his army were instructed to teach Jericho a lesson. Now, that would make sense.

Here is what makes more sense in Gaza than the Hamas bad, Israel good line that the Bush administration keeps spouting. The U.S. supplies Israel with over two billion dollars a year in aid, which it then turns around and spends on U.S. made weapons, though I am sure it keeps some of the money for itself, to cover expenses. To justify this huge military budget, Israel must have a threat, some enemy against which to defend itself. As long as the Palestinian people are deprived of food, health care, education, equal rights under the law, freedom of travel and the other basic liberties, they are angry. Their anger makes them a threat to the people of Israel. (This is the Fear the Black Man strategy recycled from the US) The state of Israel can use this threat to justify a near infinite military build up, since surrounding Muslim countries express solidarity with the Palestinians. And guess what? The US gives out almost two billion dollars a year in military aid to Arab countries, too. Best of all, from the point of view of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, the rich nations of the Middle East participate in the arms race, as well. The Middle East becomes a tinder box, full of U.S made weapons, thanks to a few billion dollars in U.S. tax payers money and the ongoing suffering of the Palestinian people. Any time the NeoCons want to declare some country “unstable” so that they can move in and steal its oil, they can cook the intelligence, and no one will call them on their lies. Hell, with all that dangerous weaponry floating around, it is a miracle the whole region does not explode.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel-United_States_military_relations
http://www.siyassa.org.eg/esiyassa/AHRAM/2003/10/1/MILI2.HTM

If President-elect Obama cares about Israel and about the Palestinian people he will cut Israel’s military aid and restore its nonmilitary aid. At the same time, he will give the Palestinians their own (nonmilitary) aid. Once the Palestinians have economic justice, they will no longer be angry. Then, they will no longer be a threat. The Arab nations surrounding Israel will be able to relax and think about more important problems, like why their leaders are spending more on military buildup than they are on health care and education (see the link above). Obama will tell the U.S. Military Industrial Complex to go fuck itself (in his own words) when it protests.

And someone needs to rewrite the Bible if they are really serious about the Christian religion. Stories like the one about Joshua and Jericho set a bad example.

[Sanctified]

1. This is about a little more than just an economic issue for Palestinians.

They want their land back not money and to get the land back the Israelis have to leave, so unless you got some extra land laying around to migrate the nation of Israel too I highly doubt giving money to either side is going to solve the problem.

[Wiley50]

2. OK, they can have NY and South Florida

Oh wait.........

But, seriously,
I'm sure if they just returned to the 1967 borders that would be just fine

[Behind the Aegis]

3. " they just returned to the 1967 borders "

Sure. It has worked so well with Gaza and Lebanon.

[Sanctified]

4. Fatah may have accepted a deal with the 1967 boarders Hamas however has always said no

to a nation of Israel being in the Middle East period.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. And yet some here just don't get that little fact.

[SoCalDem]

6. The "borders" have been BS since...FOREVER

They have never been contiguous, and with equal access to W A T E R .. google "water + Gaza + West Bank", and you'll notice that MOST of the water projects constructed (mainly with US help) skirt AROUND the Palestinian exile areas..

Israel will NEVER allow the palestinians "in" because they might want to vote, and there are a LOT more of them. Israel insists on keeping it a Jewish state, and to do that automatically means exclusion.. and therin is the problem.. They was their own private enclave, but they also want to control the neighborhood outside their own.. and the neighbors are still jonesing for the land that was taken from them...

The maps show how idiotic the original "plan" was.. Perhaps in 1917 or even in 1946, the arabic population was nomadic, and the British & the UN thought "one place is as good as another" for them, but that's not the case now..and probably never was..

[Mosby]

9. That map is BS

The first frame is labeled incorrectly, there was no specific Palestinian land in '46.

The fourth frame is showing the PA areas of control, not Palestinian land. The entire West Bank outlined with a black line is Palestinian.

[SoCalDem]

11. Here's a helpful link for you

Apparently there are a lot of people who seem to think there WAS a Palestine.....long before 1946, and they have maps galore showing just such a place.. a little brush up on history might help you.:hi:

http://israelipalestinian.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=637&gclid=COn17daa_ZcCFQ4NDQodb0t1DA

[Mosby]

12. A link for you!

http://www.mideastweb.org/briefhistory.htm

Note the country in quotes. Maps from this period use the place name "Palestine" as a geographic term, it does not refer to Palestinians per se.

[SoCalDem]

14. potato-potahto

there were people there who did not like being forced out in favor of "other people" ..It was NOT some abandoned, barren place, devoid of human inhabitants.. the Britsh Empire created this monster. Their Empire Building was easier than the dismantlement.

Foreigners drawing lines on pieces of paper & "moving" indigenous populations, without the approval of the people living within/outside those lines, has created most of the "problems" we have today..just ask India, Kashmir, Pakistan,The Timors, Sri Lanka, our own Native Americans..

[BlueMTexpat]

7. It is interesting that because of the German Reich's

horrific actions, Palestinians have paid a higher price than did the Nazis. Palestine was an easy giveaway for the US and the UK (and yes, I know all about the Balfour Declaration and all that ... still easy; it is likely that Balfour would never have come to fruition without the horrors perpetrated by Nazi Germany).

Had true restitution been the goal, perhaps it would have been more fitting to "give away" West Germany as a Jewish homeland. Can you imagine the outcry that would have resulted?

But that would also have defied the basis of Zionism. And yes, I know all the Biblical arguments for the establishment of the State of Israel where it is geographically. But I frankly don't believe in any religion created by man since each one seems to have its own man-made agenda and, if that agenda conflicts with the precepts or man-made agenda of another man-created religion, then religious wars result. A pox on them all, imo! In the end, it was simply the geopolitical and military interests of the West, not guilt, goodwill or religious considerations, that were the final deciders for the West's support ... and those facts should never be forgotten.

Nonetheless, Israel is where it is now and the situation must be dealt with as it exists. Unlike most but in realistic consideration of the geographical realities illustrated by the maps above, I favor either a one-state solution with full rights for all citizens of all religions (many Palestinians are Christian, which is conveniently forgotten in the general demonization of Muslims) or a confederation of two states with common interests, again with full rights for all citizens of the confederation anywhere in the confederation. While I am in the minority of those who expound most publicly, I am not alone in these views. After all, Israel and Palestine have much more in common than they do separately. But such solutions have too much common sense and would defy the conventional wisdom so they are more likely than not non-starters. Unfortunately. So the slaughter and justifications for it continue.

What most who have been raised in the West do not understand is that hyperbole is a function of ME cultures and often hyperbole is all they have. It takes even-handed negotiation and genuine goodwill to talk people down to common interests, but it can be and has been done before. Because we and thus Israel have refused even to talk to Hamas, however, the hyperbolic rhetoric on the other side is ratcheted ever higher and then used against Hamas to justify not negotiating with them.

x( :banghead:

[Igel]

15. The German's lost a bit of land, you know.

Poland was moved over a hundred miles west; all the Germans living in the new borders of Poland were exiled. Of course, Poles living in what became part of Belorussia also had to pick up and move.

Koeningsberg, I think it was, is now Kaliningrad and Russian. All the Germans living there were expelled.

And a fair number of Germans were forced out of the Czech lands.

All of those Germans were somehow assimilated into what remained of Germany, many poor, many missing their homelands, but still they were relocated.

Then there was the occupation, which led to the Soviet vs. the western zones being separated.

The Slovenes/Italians had the same kind of thing worked out, but, of course, while the Slovenes assimilated those forced out of Italy, Italy wasn't so nice so the new immigrants even in the '90s were complaining about being dispossessed. The amount of property/people transferred were about equal. And Tito got control over Slovenia, courtesy of the Allies and Soviets, and the deal essentially giving the Russians the Poles, Czechs, Slovenes, and other peoples and their lands.

Now, the original partition of Palestine in '47/'48 wasn't planned as it went. The Arab populations in the Jewish area--like the Jewish population in the Arab area--would continue, it was assumed, to live there. No forced relocations planned by the British, no confiscation of privately held lands planned: Just sovereignty, and state-owned property, would be in either Jewish or Palestinian hands. This, of course, was a problem: waqf had been held by the Ottomans, and then the British, but continued to be administered by the local ulema and powers that be. In Jewish hands the waqf would have--and did--become Jewish. The fighting in '46 and '47 and '48, however, didn't allow that--once the war was over, the state of affairs from the '30s and early '40s reasserted itself.

[Supersedeas]

8. the big Network coverage has been interesting...and ONE sided

[McCamy Taylor]

10. The MSM will back the MIC. Israel attacking the Palestinians means $$$ for Boeing and Lockheed.

And more potential profit for Exxon, Chevron too. It is that simple.

Money is the new Jehovah in America---and Israel. And Saudi Arabia. All hail the high holy dollar!

[Junkdrawer]

13. I've been rereading my H.G. Wells "Outline of History"....

(actually it's a looong audiobook I got at Audible)...

Something like your post came to mind.....

As Wells points out, nomads invading settled folks was a common theme in early history. And more often than not, the invaders merged their culture with those they invaded with the invaders becoming the aristocracy.

[McCamy Taylor]

16. That is the whole history of the English language.

[CubicleGuy]

17. Rewrite the Bible?

someone needs to rewrite the Bible if they are really serious about the Christian religion. Stories like the one about Joshua and Jericho set a bad example.

I don't think that Christians (whose religion dates back to about 33 AD) have any real part of the blame for what took place in Old Testament times.

And one doesn't rewrite history because it sets a bad example. One leaves history alone so that one can learn from prior bad examples.

Or was Orwell's Ministry of Truth on the right path after all?

[McCamy Taylor]

18. Christians selected what would go into the Bible. Each sect wrote their own. Why put this crap in?

Because the Church in Rome has always thought of itself as the natural heir to the Roman Empire and it wanted a Biblical precedent it could cite when it launched holy wars---often against rival Christian sects.

There is nothing sacred about any version of the Bible except for the words of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson made a Bible that was made up only of Christ's words. Nothing else.