Christiane Amanpour's God's Warriors, "the Jews," and "the Occupied Territories": Is this for Real?

Christiane Amanpour in her "God's Warriors: The Jews" broadcast on CNN this weekend - aside from giving voice to as many anti-Israel and anti-"settlement" critics as one might imagine and almost no "Jewish" (really?) God's Warriors, except to portray them in the most trivialized manner - must have used the term "Occupied Territories" an endless number of times at every juncture in her narrative from start to finish, so much so that one could be left in no doubt that this was a critique of Israel's or "the Jews"' pre-sence in them (whatever one might mean by "them") and not about supposedly "Jewish" "Warriors for God" at all.

But it was an altogether too-easy victory. If you start by assuming what in the end you wish to prove, then you have really only indulged in an endless propaganda exercise ostensibly dealing with concepts you haven't really seriously investigated at all. A case in point - the highpoint of her investigation was clearly a revelation of a supposedly secret Israeli legal memorandum written by someone identified as a "legal adviser" alerting the then 1967 Government to the "illegality" of settlements and their potential violation of the Geneva Conventions and an actual interview (on the streets of London) with the now evidently-retired lawyerly Jewish author some forty years later (had he retired to London?) verifying, though a little more hesitatingly, that he still held the same view today.

That was all Amanpour needed. She then proceeded to run on with a series of cut-ins from a Jimmy Carter interview - as if he with his callow sophistries about Israeli "Apartheid" were some sort of expert too - interspersed with some "B-roll" of shots of James Baker and his Carlyle Group partner George Bush Sr., even the long-vanished Chuck Percy of Illinois! But where was the counter-indicative position stated in any depth to what was after all just another "legal opinion" (though in the sensationalist manner in which she was presenting it to a presumably legally-unsophisticated and unsuspecting public it was being given the appearance of the force of "a finding" or "a legal fact")? There was none.

Nor was there any serious background to how one came to the Six-Day War as if that was the be-all and end-all of the political situation. History began in 1967 - period. Or, for instance, of the Ottoman Empire previously or the British Mandate, or even the results of the Jordanian Annexation of the West Bank in the early 1950's, transforming what was once the British-named "Transjordan" (with obvious implications) into "The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan," i.e., "Jordan" on both sides of the River. No nothing - just bald statements nurturing present propagandistic fantasies.

"The Occupied Territories" -- let us start with that. When was the legal status of the territory in between the present territory of Jordan (now back on the other side of the River where it began) ever resolved? This is a good term for popular journalism or congenial conversation. Afterall, people must communicate, but it has no real presence in legal fact. That is what we meant by saying Ms. Amanpour achieved an all-too-easy victory on this point - from the beginning assuming what she had set out to prove, but the language you use from the beginning and throughout cannot contain the seeds of what you are going to conclude. You must give all sides to an argument or legal discussion a hearing.

In the first place, in Ottoman times, this whole area was part of the "Wilayet" or "Province of Damascus." There was never a "Province" called "Palestine," a name which like "Iraq" (i.e., the newly-discovered archaeological "Uruk") came from the British love of classics - in this instance, their love of classical literature which their professional bureaucrats learned at elite "Public Schools" and which was the legally-designated Roman term for the area after the Jewish presence had been largely eradicated following two Uprisings in 66-70 and 136 CE (interestingly enough, this was based on the Biblical term "Philistia" - the "Mycenaean" or "Greek" area of the Coast occupied by "the Philistines" which even modern Arabic has picked up for the name for its present-day extension - "the Philistinin"/"the Palestinians", the implications of which should be clear even though these aren't "Philistines," or are they?).

Jerusalem only became a separate quasi-administrative entity within this 'Wilayet" as Western Christian tourism and pilgrimage picked up during the Nineteenth Century and the Ottomans had to deal with Western Consulates that had started to grow up in it. There was never a "Palestine" per se except in late Roman times and there was never one again until the British came in 1917-18.

So it is best to start here with the First World War and its aftermath. The "Mandate" for Palestine and other "Mandates" were awarded to Britain and France by the League of Nations (basically as spoils of war) from the decomposing Ottoman Empire and German colonial possessions in Africa after the Conference of San Remo in 1920 and the Peace Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. This has to be considered the first "legal" building block if one wants to start with anything - whether colonial-minded or non-colonially-minded depending on the observer is besides the point.

Palestine was a "Class B" Mandate meaning, unlike some others ("Iraq" and "Syria" for Instance), its eventual independence was considered to be a ways off in the future. Whether one likes it or not, the fabled "Balfour Declaration" was appended to the Mandate for Palestine as a preamble. It is too bad it was never really observed, not even in spirit, because if it had been, history's first recorded "Holocaust" (or perhaps its second if one considers the Armenians and Turks) in which some six million were systematically annihilated might never have occurred. But, never mind, this is merely 'water over the dam' as it were.

It was at this point that all these results or positions were incorporated into the Palestine-Order-in-Council of 1922, which set forth the legal structure of the new "Mandate" absorbing all previous law including the League of Nations' Mandate and its controversial rider, "The Balfour Declaration." I needn't go into the terms of these. They are pretty obvious. By contrast "Transjordan" (as it was called) received an "Organic Law" after the British unilaterally cut away about two-thirds of the Mandate which originally applied to both sides of the river and gave it, presumably for 'services rendered,' to the Hashemite family of Mecca which coincidentally or otherwise was itself being thrown out of the Arabian Peninsula by "the House of Saud" - a dislodgement which had to do with "Arabian" legal affairs and nothing to do with "Palestinian" at all.

Moreover, it is hard to say if this was ever legally recognized by anyone but it didn't matter, as legal Mandatee, Britain presumably had the right to do this. In any event this threw the whole "Jewish-Palestinian" problem onto the Western Side of the Jordan River while at the same time making the eventual emergence of "Three States" (now possibly "Four") from the old Mandated Territory inevitable. Be this as it may, events eventually overtook this as well, though the establishment of "The Kingdom of Jordan" out of the old Palestine Mandate became more-or-less an unquestioned legal "fact" over the next 80 years.

Responding to various "Arab" uprisings in the Nineteen Twenties and Thirties (to some extent themselves responding to the rise of Nazism on continental Europe and elsewhere - the Baath Party in Syria, for instance, and further East), the British Administration in Palestine ("the man on the spot" as it was often called) became more and more anti-Jewish immigration - in contradistinction to the terms of the Balfour Declaration which in the end became more or less a dead letter - and came up with various "Partition" plans and finally "The White Paper" of 1939 which cut off Jewish immigration in Palestine (of course, just when it was most needed!).

In any event, after the Second World War and all the horrific events everyone is familiar with in connection with that, the legal question of "Palestine" ( though not of "Jordan" which had become an established "fact" as already explained) was once again 'on the table' of the heir of this League of Nations - the illustrious, still-functioning "United Nations." A version of one of these "Partition" plans was eventually adopted in 1947 but was immediately rejected by all of the surrounding "Arab States" by then themselves (several formerly "Class A Mandates") all independent: Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, etc. - only Lebanon does not seem to have been legally clearly regulated, nor does it seem to be today (let's leave present-day "Iraq" aside) - who immediately invaded looking forward to an easy victory.

What followed was the so-called Israeli "War of Independence," whose "Cease-Fire Lines" became the eventually demarcations of the 20-year "Truce" that then descended - the official name of which dropped into popular parlance as "the Old Green Lines." But where was the legal or "official" regulation here? There was none. What followed too was the eventual annexation of "the West Bank" (Jordanian parlance meaning the west bank of their Jordan River) in 1951 by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan making it "Jordan" on both sides of the River. But where was the legal outcry here? There was none. But equally, where was the legal recognition or basis in international jurispru-dence? There was none - no more than the annexation by Israel of the City of Jerusalem and its surroundings after the Six-Day War in 1967 fifteen years later.

In other words, the status of the area in between Israel and Jordan, which had been part of the original Mandate for Palestine which had been legally recognized, was in a kind of legal limbo and was still to be regulated. This has to be done by Treaty and negotiations. Two such negotiations have occurred for better or for worse between Israel and Egypt and Jordan in the 1970's and 1990's. Ok, those situations are more or less legally defined and regulated whether rightly or wrongly.

But what of "the Occupied Territories"? These have not been defined in any legal sense and not even the famous Resolution 242 after the Six Day War in 1967 which called upon the Israelis to "withdraw from territories" in exchange for Peace drew back from doing this and did not - and this apparently purposefully - define which "territories" were to be so regarded and to what extent. This again was to be resolved by negotiations, but these "negotiations" are what are supposedly taking or not taking place; and, in any event have been marred by violence (from whatever the direction or from whosever's point-of-view) on a continuing basis.

Nevertheless, the term "Occupied Territories" itself would appear to be a misnomer, however it is used in fact, since it is difficult to "occupy" a "territory" which has no legal status to begin with - except that conferred on it perhaps by the illegal annexation by Jordan - and, therefore, it is difficult to see how the Geneva Conventions should apply to it anymore than they earlier did to Jordan (are all Jordanian-constructed buildings, et. al., therefore, "illegal"?). This is especially true in the light of a finding that "settlement" activity on the part "Jews" (if not "Israelis") in such areas was permissible - in fact, "looked upon with favor" according to the first officially-recognized legal entity, the Balfour Declaration.

However these things may be, the terms of all such legally-binding resolutions or enactments have been systematically violated by all either responsible for or a legal party to them from the beginning up to the present day. The British violated the terms of the Balfour Declaration which had been appended to their "Mandate for Palestine" from the beginning, in effect, doing away with it from two-thirds of the territory appertaining to it in a unilateral manner as early as 1920-21 or thereabouts (no protests here) and abolishing it altogether in 1939. The Jordanians also violated the terms of this Declaration, prima facie (and, as a result therefore, the Mandate for Palestine) allowing no "Jewish Settlement" - which they would have seen as a contradiction in terms - on the territory allotted to them from the beginning on up to the present day. As a footnote to this, it should be observed that even "Palestinian" groups like "Black September" opposed the kind of sovereignty these Authorities were exercising on whatever side of the Jordan.

The British also violated the terms of the Mandate for Palestine by the various unilateral actions they took already enumerated above. All so-called "Arab States," such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan (many - the last three the beneficiaries of "Class A Mandates" - whose independence had already been consolidated as already explained), absolutely rejected the internationally-adopted "Partition of Palestine," making this crystal clear by their immediate invasion. And even those who did not invade like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, etc. supported this rejection and invasion in no uncertain terms. Even the so-called "Palestinians" themselves rejected this, rendering it too a dead letter - many making this clear by their flight whether by choice or involuntary (however one views this and whatever the claims involved) and even more so by their "National Charter" which unequivocally rejects it even to the present day.

So what is, therefore, the legal status of the so-called "Occupied Territories" and what is their extent? There is none. They are in a kind of legal limbo, that is, they are, strictly speaking, legally unrecognized and who knows their extent? This has yet to be determined by negotiation and, like most of the arguments one usually hears (including those on Amanpour's program), superficial. So how can the Geneva Conventions supposedly be applied to an area whose legal status was never legally or rightfully determined in any meaningful way in the first place, except for the Mandate for Palestine in 1920-23 by the League of Nations and manhandled ever since by all legal parties concerned but still rightfully recognizing a Jewish right of settlement all the way up to the Jordan River and, if the truth were told, beyond? This is one legal nicety which has never been gainsaid, whether one likes it or does not like it.

In any event, "Settlement" has to do with 'Lands" - "Dead Lands" as they were called in the Ottoman Empire previously, "Mewat." As in the American West and something in the manner of "Homesteading," these were and are (Ottoman Land Law having been absorbed into both Israel and Jordan Law) lands outside of cities and public spaces connected to cities whose title according to the Ottoman Land Law of 1856 (and, in fact, strict Islamic legal theory and customary practice upon which it was based) had never either been determined or registered by anyone, but which carried with it a right of "Vivification," that is, if you fenced off an uninhabited area of this kind with no registered legal title and cultivated it for three years continuously, you had the right to register it as "mulk" - freehold property. Anyhow, these are legal complexities for which the reader might wish to look at my book: Islamic Law in Palestine and Israel: A History of the Survival of Tanzimat and Shari'a in the British Mandate and the Jewish State, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1978.

Another point, which perhaps should be emphasized for the unsuspecting reader - to call these "towns" or 'bedroom suburbs," which have been founded or mainly grown up on such lands ("Palestine," "the Wilayet of Damascus," "Transjordan," or whatever you want to call it being comprised of large swaths of such lands), "Settlements" at this point is also a misnomer - as any clear-eyed observer who has seen them might be able to understand - of immense and tendentious proportions whose basic purpose is to delegitimatize them (as clearly Christiane Amanpour was intent upon doing whether intentionally or otherwise) before their legal status even comes under consideration or is negotiated. She like many of her colleagues and confreres just seem to facilely assume these things are obvious without any in-depth examination - forgetting the ancient proverb that "the unexamined life is not worth living."

Comments

[plutorage]

I don't know why we are blaming CNN, or Israelis, or Palestinians, or Soviets, etc. ad nauseam, when the blame - AT THIS PARTICULAR TIME, I.E. TODAY - lies squarely with the United States of America.

The fact is that a window for peace opened when Carter facilitated Sadat/Begin understanding which led to tangible understandings, albeit of a limited extent.

A window again opened with the fall of the Berlin Wall but this time there was no Carter. Instead there was only corruption, weakness, lack of leadership in the United States which continues to this day.

When the US public demands results there will be results. As long as the US public remains ignorant of their loss there will be war in perpetuity. At some stage it will be too late. The US will become too weak to do what it can do, but refuses to do, today.

[elghergo]

Israel was the last, or one of the last, colonial dreams of Western Europe, and now the day approaches to wake up and face reality. Which has very little to do with that dream of the few chosen ones and too much to do with the true nightmare of others.

[Yukon Jack]

Anything Christiene Annanpour produces is every bit as phoney as her artificial accent.

[VetMichael]

way less phony as any "information" you operate on.

[leduck]

wow..., ok..., my brother in law is jewish. so i'm not antisemitc but call a spade a spade. Have the palestinians behaved badly -- yes. What they really needed to do was take the high road. They needed a Ghandi. Then they wouldn't be in this mess.
Isreal is involved in a land grab. Think of the palestinians as indians. Some people want them on reservations, and some just want them out all together "transfer."
The settlers do not play with a full deck.
There's enough blame to go around.

[Egyptsteve]

No such thing as the "occupied territories"?? What does that mean, exactly, that they are not territories, or that they are not occupied?? If not occupied, why are they not independent, since obviously without a heavy presence of Israeli soldiers, that would have happened decades ago?? what do you call a bunch of soldiers keeping territory under control against the will of the population, if not an "occupation"???

[incinerate]

Thanks for your review. I have these three episodes burnt to DVD. I was very reluctant to watch them, knowing CNN's longstanding kiss-ass servitude to AIPAC and the Israeli lobby of Zionist American Jews. I had previous noted how the Iranian born Christiane Amanpour frequently had to lie about the Palestinian plight in order to keep her job at CNN. Now I can actually watch these (albeit I am sure still pro Israeli) pieces in order to find some real facts about Jews, Christians and Moslems.

[EspressoAtNoon]

Don't forget that CNN's Wolf Blitzer used to work for AIPAC as Publicity Editor.

[dragonswizardz]

Damn straight Ms Amanpour is spot on! Israel has historically been an outsider occupying land legally, culturally & historically bound to the Palestinian people. That nation is just much an illegal occupier as America is an illegal occupier in Iraq. You can't hide behind religion. There are, as Ms Amanpour quickly notes, Israelis who are strict to their religion but adamant that their countrymen have no right to occupy Palestinian lands let alone forcibly remove them from their established homes. And those Israelis also want peace with their neighbors instead of the continual hostility exhibited by their nation.

[sneezeguard]

God bless you.

[Hattie]

Exactly. Plenty of Jews and many many Israelis want justice and equality for the Palestinians.

[Bees]

Amanpour's piece is written off as "a critique of Israel's or "the Jews"' pre-sence in them [the Occupied Territories]". This is the heart and soul of all Zionist rejoinders: any criticism of the Israeli genocide (and its resulting damage to the US) is anti-Semitic.
Say it loud and say it proud: No more US aid to Israel! AIPAC out of US Congress!

[gakabani]

Amen!

[Eric2]

I am sick of America being a poodle for Israel. Every leading presidential candidate is on their knees to AIPAC.

[Yukon Jack]

So, I guess you would rather see America being a poodle for the Islamists.

According to you, every leading presidential candidate should be on their knees to CAIR and Al-Qaida (one and the same) begging forgiveness for being Americans.

Eric2, are you ready to convert to Islam? Pardon me, maybe you already are one.

[Spaldeen]

This trash was an example of advocacy journalism, the premise that is unfortunately too often taught in j-schools today. Christiane's "documentary" simply advocated rehashed left-wing arguments.

Because this year is the 40th anniversary of the six-day war, some of the coverage reminded us that forty years ago Israel was widely supported both in Europe and by the left. After the war, however, the Soviet propaganda machine sought to portray the Palestinians as victims of Western imperialism and demonize Israel. To a large extent they succeeded since the left today echo these Soviet arguments.

Moreover, any program that relies on Jimmy Carter to further its point of view has serious credibility issues.

What is troubling is that CNN must have spent millions on this three-part, six-hour exercise in masturbation. No wonder FOX is winning the cable wars.

[avergejoe]

So the Palestinians are not victims?
BBC 8/24/07:

Paralysed Gaza girl faces uncertain future

Maria was paralysed from the neck down by an Israeli rocket attack in May 2006.

The missile was aimed at a leader of the armed Islamic Jihad movement, who was killed outright.

So were Maria's mother, her grandmother and seven-year-old brother, who were driving past at the time. Maria was blown through the car window, suffering severe injuries.

Israeli law denies compensation to victims of what it calls its "acts of war", but Maria's story was taken up by local as well as foreign press.

Under pressure, Israel's Defence Ministry has been paying for her rehabilitation treatment at the specialist hospital in Jerusalem.

But now it wants to deport Maria to a Palestinian clinic in the West Bank.

The head of the hospital, Shirley Meyer, doesn't want to let Maria go.

If the country's Defence Ministry gets its way, Maria will be sent to the Abu Raya Rehabilitation Centre in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

In a statement, the ministry said Maria would fare better in her "natural environment".

Her father Hamdi is fighting to keep her in Jerusalem.

"It's a matter of life and death for Maria. She can only survive 50 seconds without the ventilator and there are often complications. Here they are experts. In Ramallah they are not," he says.

"Israel's air strike killed my son and my wife. All I ask is that they look after my daughter."

Frequent hold-ups at checkpoints between Ramallah and Jerusalem could cost Maria her life. She would not be the first Palestinian to die that way.

Israel's Defence Ministry has offered to send staff from Abu Raya to Jerusalem for training. It says it will pay for some of Maria's medical equipment and for her father's rent in Ramallah for a year.

"But then what?" asks her lawyer. Maria's paralysis, her frequent infections and fevers, her need for new medical equipment as she gets bigger, are all ongoing.

Maria will turn six next week.

[Hattie]

Why the sexual remark?

[maddogbitesback]

Roman Catholics consider masturbation to be sin. Do you. Or do you think that a woman must go through a cleansing period after menstruation? Jimmy Carter is right. It is exactly like apartheid. The land grab, the rationalization, the belief that "they are unworthy.

[sonofloud]

She must have forgotten it's a crime to criticize Jews or Israel in the US!

[gakabani]

I paid dearly for doing that!

[mediamarv]

Typical response to any criticism of israel. More long winded than most but still "israel can do no wrong" mentality that has not helped the situation over the years.

[Hope42]

"Typical response to any criticism of israel. More long winded than most but still "israel can do no wrong" mentality that has not helped the situation over the years."

So true. There is a REASON the Palistinians resort to suicide bombing. The Israelis have never been interested in really having peace. They have behaved incredibly stupidly from the beginning in dealing with the situation in which they found themselves.

They also sadly have behaved like "abused children" who tend to abuse others when they grow up. (The ghetto treatment they received during WWII, they are now joyfully inflicting on others.)

It's very sad considering they are fairly intelligent as a whole but cannot see the forest for the trees.

[spaceknife]

"They also sadly have behaved like "abused children" who tend to abuse others when they grow up. (The ghetto treatment they received during WWII, they are now joyfully inflicting on others.)"
Right to the point,It is really incredible to me how we can allow such a small dot on the world map to take so much space in world politics and endanger the whole world.
I surely dont wish it, but I am afraid history might repeat itself.

[mommamia526]

Jews have lived in ghettos in Europe for centuries, but during WWII they were in concentrationcamps, getting gassed. So, how did they get into these ghettos for centuries? They were driven out of Palestine (Israel) by the Romans. Jews have lived in the Middle East, however, and in what is now Israel, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon even until the formation of the state of Israel, and they are STILL living in the other Middle Eastern countries. Many jews, also, were driven out from those countries and are now, for generations, in Israel. Yes, like *abused children* we have been quiet and accomodating, up to and including letting ourselves be gassed in concentrationcamps. But Israel is there with the consent of the UN, and being in our own country we have the right, as any other nation, to defend ourselves. Now, how about THAT? Now, what about all those muslims overrunning Europe, from everywhere, if they have built up property and businesses there should they also leave those for the Europeans and go back to where they came from as Israelis did just recently in Gaza? There are jews having title to property in Jerusalem in which Arabs are squatting without paying rent. How about that?

[Tellmethetruth]

It seemed the goal of the program was the "blame" the radical elements of all three religions, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity that claims a right to kill and do violence in the name of God. It is an effort to "blame" this element which voted for Bush and he clearly started a violent war in the middle east through a deliberate act of aggression even though all mainstream Christian religions opposed this war. Equally the radical Islams under Bid Laden, and the radical Jews that have no interest in co-habitating Isreal with the Palestinians.

No where is there an appeal to the peace loving, humanitarian, charity, non-violent, and tolerant sects of all of the above religions to begin to take back the power lost to them by the radical elements that are creating and maintaining perpetual war, thrilled by the idea that the more of a bloodbath that is created, the more violence works out in some madmen's idea of a divine plan.

It is an unbalanced report on religion, without the similiar light shed on any peace making activities or any charity carried out in the name of God.

I can't get into some splitting hair legal rationalization of why settlements make some kind of sense, as Eisenman does. It seems like greed and trickery that will ultimately cost Isreal it's existence if not stopped which is the point of the series.

But, that makes me wonder -- are the people who we regard as illegal aliens actually decendents of Commanche, Apache, Aztecs, and other native Americans? Where they here first?????

[mrman]

as it is unbalanced because it did not represent the "good" believers...it is unbalanced because the non-believers, atheists, and agnostics are never represented and we tend to bring the most reason and logic to the table. It is impossible to have a reasonable discussion on such unreasonable, dated, ancient text. Any real discussion must deal with the myths of religion..­.otherwise we're all just feeding the BEAST.

[Rowland]

In the course of his investigation for writing his book, Mr. Eisenman should have looked at the western and increasingly common understanding that land rights belong to the person who has continuously made use of the property and those rights continue for the lives of a reasonable group of “measuring lives” plus twenty-one years following the death of the last of the group of measuring lives. This is the basis for civil law and of quiet possession.

Perhaps there are unsuspecting readers but to Mr. Eisenman’s consternation it is likely that there are fewer and fewer. Perhaps too, there are as he says, no “Settlements.” Perhaps there are only military outposts. More likely, Israel is about to learn that creating facts on the ground may not be as easy in the twenty-first century as in less interrelated times. Certainly it is incumbent upon people everywhere to reject the attempts to create rights by settlers by deriding attempts to “delegitimatizing” them. And Mr. Eisenman’s concerns that the Palestinian’s forgetting the ancient proverb that "the unexamined life is not worth living." might be superceded by the more modern take, “How can the people of Israel and friends look themselves in the mirror?”

[MrLiberal53]

The problem with this argument is it ignores historical fact. First, there has always been a Jewish presence in the region. Palestine was never without a Jewish presence. And the number of Arbas living in Palestine was on the decline prior to WWI and the first wave of Jewish immigrants.

[Boobaloo]

mrliberal53, you need go back to the top and read the history lesson provided by several of us. The Palestinians were the original Jews and did have a presence in Palestine, the European jews never had a presence of any king in Palestine except to colonize.

The number of Arabs was never declining, however the number of Jews was increasing as part of the longterm Zionist plan to buy property in Palestine inorder to stage a coup and create Israel.

You are the one ignoring historical fact.

[WOLFWARRIOR]

Robert Eisenman
Christiane Amanpour's God's Warriors, "the Jews," and "the
Occupied Territories": Is this for Real?


Socrates "the unexamined life is not worth living."

First: I highly doubt any Bible thumper would agree
that this statement is a ancient proverb.

Second: The greek's were redused to any writtings - are
basically mythology - Through the propoganda of the church.

Third: AS with any other saying - greedyfest destiny - the
unexamined life is not worth living - Blessed are those who
bless certian people - All have one thing in common - They can
be used for propoganda.

And last but not least - Socrates was simply trying to invoke a
awakening among those who heard him - and those who would read his
works - To a greater understanding of one's self.

But as we see here Mr Eisenman - You are using Socrates to reduce
people to a form of lower life and or basically cattle - To justify
what has happened too them.

[Boobaloo]

wow. that is a great comment wolfwarrior.

[JudyGee]

As Charlie Parker was fond of saying about describing Jazz, if you have to explain it, they won't understand it.
Europe is, and always has been, with the exception of a few countries like Denmark, jew haters. Ex-president Carter, is eiher deranged or has always held his twisted historical fantasies vis a vis Isreal silently, when it was not politically expedient to be yapping and flapping about.
It's sad and more than a bit weird, but that's the way it has always been about Jews. FDR said that getting us into ww11 would have been impossible if it were presumed to be about the Jews.
History shows us that some tribes are envied and hated. Remember the Ibos of Africa? I doubt if there is anyone who can explain that any other way.
Give it up with the explanations, facts and analysis. Just keep the TV cameras on, the Jewish philanthropies going and suck up to the media like the suicide bombers and the virulently insane hate groups. It works for them.

[Hattie]

This grinds me. As long as the right wing conservative Jewish community insists on its special persecution rights we will get nowhere. I very much resent the idea that there is something about my background that makes me anti-Semitic by definition, and other non-Jews should be similarly offended by this libel.

[mommamia526]

Most jews are, and have always been, Democrats.

[Macready]

Well put Hattie .. . don't forget lots of Jews are anti-Zionist . . . israel is not a jewish state it is a zionist state . . . and there is a big difference . . .