Netanyahu Turns to Bible In Tussle Over Jerusalem

By REUTERS

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Beset by questions about the future of Jerusalem in talks with the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin reached for the Bible on Wednesday to stake out the Jewish state's disputed claim on the city.

Netanyahu told a parliamentary session commemorating Israel's capture of East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 war that "Jerusalem" and its alternative Hebrew name "Zion" appear 850 times in the Old Testament, Judaism's core canon.

"As to how many times Jerusalem is mentioned in the holy scriptures of other faiths, I recommend you check," he said.

Citing such ancestry, Israel calls all of Jerusalem its "indivisible" capital -- a designation not recognised abroad, where many powers support Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Jerusalem, at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is also revered by Muslims because it houses al-Aqsa mosque, Islam's third-holiest shrine after Mecca and Medina, on a plaza Jews revere as the vestige of two biblical Jewish temples.

Heckled by a lawmaker from Israel's Arab minority, Netanyahu offered a lesson in comparative religion from the lectern.


Because you asked: Jerusalem is mentioned 142 times in the New Testament, and none of the 16 various Arabic names for Jerusalem is mentioned in the Koran. But in an expanded interpretation of the Koran from the 12th century, one passage is said to refer to Jerusalem," he said.

Asked about Netanyahu's citations, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "I find it very distasteful this use of religion to incite hatred and fear."

MANY RULERS

Destroyed as a Jewish capital by the Romans in the 1st century AD, Jerusalem was a Christian city under their Byzantine successors before falling to Muslim Arabs in the 7th. European Crusaders took it back for a century before 700 years of Muslim control until Britain defeated the Ottoman Turks in 1917.

As Britain prepared to quit, the United Nations proposed international rule for the city, along with nearby Bethlehem, in 1947 as a "corpus separatum."

That proposal was overtaken by fighting that left Israel holding West Jerusalem in 1948 and Jordanian forces in East Jerusalem. Israel then took the rest in the Six Day War of 1967.

The city, within boundaries defined by Israel but not recognized internationally, is now home to 750,000 people, two in three of them Jews and the rest mostly Muslim Palestinians.

Netanyahu did not refer in his speech to indirect peace negotiations with the Palestinians that resumed this month after 1 1/2 years of U.S. mediation. But he said Israel would retain all of Jerusalem while ensuring freedom of worship at its sites.

Such assertions are challenged by Palestinians given that Israel, over the last decade of fighting, has often banned their access to al-Aqsa. Christians in the adjacent West Bank complain of similar difficulties in reaching Jerusalem churches.

"There is no undercutting, nor do I intend to undercut, the connection of others to Jerusalem," Netanyahu said.

"But I do confront the attempt to undercut and warp or obfuscate the unique connection that we, the people of Israel, have to the capital of Israel."

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/05/12/world/international-uk-palestinians-israel-jerusalem.html

And if it takes military conquest to grab it, then so be it. After all, might makes right, and they are the chosen people of god.
/sarcasm

Is it just a coincidence that you chose a term that is often used in relation to Nazi Germany or was it chosen deliberately for that reason to make a rhetorical point?

If so, what was that point?

Zionists like the conservative's in Israel today are little different from Germans who thought Germany needed 'lebensraum'. They don't give a damn about the people who live there any more than the Germans gave a shit about the Poles or Russians they wanted to take land from. Zionists (as distinct from all Jews please) believe God has promised them the entire biblical lands of Israel, and they (and their allies in the Christian right) are determined to take it, no matter the cost.

I was at one time a pretty strong supporter of Israel. I can't justify anything they do any more.

How can we justify a country where only one religious group is allowed to have full rights? Where democracy is subservient to religion.

Personally, I think we need to go back to the drawing board. Israel should be forced to withdraw completely to it's 1967 borders. After that, any attack verified by the UN, using rockets, suicide bombs, etc, the UN should grant Israel 400 yards of territory as a border extension, as an internationally recognized new border. The Palestinians are right to hate Israel for stealing their land, but without any other recourse to regain land stolen from them, it's hard not to sympathize with them.

It was a mistake to create Israel, but it's impossible to undo now. We have to create a framework that forces Israel to follow international law but that protects Israelis from terrorists. The current situation of Israel doing whatever the hell it wants (annexing land, building settlements in occupied territory, launching attach after attack at Lebanon and Gaza, ignoring international agreements) is unacceptable.

At best, you are confusing Zionists with the religious settler movement.
'Zionism' merely means wanting a homeland for Jews - just as most national groups want their own homeland. Most do not consider that 'God has promised them the entire biblical land of Israel' and indeed most of the original Zionists were secular.

There are a significant number of Zionists who would fully support a return to the 1967 borders.

I hate Netanyahu's guts, but let's not imply that he is somehow an inevitable result of Jewish faith or culture.

I can't say I have studied it, only heard it. Frankly, I think most people who hear 'chosen people' would, like me, assume it to mean 'preferred' or special somehow.

And I think that Zionists like Netanyahu (and Pat Robertson for that matter) assume it to mean 'preferred' as well. Otherwise how could they justify the 'ethnic cleansing' of the occupied territories they are attempting to do?

As someone put it, it means 'chosen' as in 'it's your turn to wash the dishes'.

Pat Robertson, I suspect, interprets the word as in 'chosen to help fulfil the prophecies about Armageddon'

As for Netanyahu, he is a hawkish nutcase, but on the whole a secular hawkish nutcase. He is hawkish because he's a hawk, and he justifies it in terms of national security, not religion - except when he needs to pander to the religious settlers and/or the small religious-right parties on whom he depends for his coalition. At the moment, he seems to be under some threat of being the equivalent of 'teabagged' by a religious far-right-winger called Feiglin, so he is probably stepping up the religious pandering for that reason as well.

An ideology generally depends on appealing to either the universalist or the exceptionalist streak of human nature. Both have their disadvantages. Ideologies which aspire to be universal (such as Christianity or Marxism) are less insular and parochial, but on the other hand, in their demand to be universally accepted they all too often lend themselves to violent conquest.

When you challenge Jewish theologians as to what they mean by "chosen people", that's the answer you get, but if you look at how it's influenced Jewish (and in many cases right-wing American Christian) thinking vis a vis their right to Eretz Israel, it's clear that an awful lot of them interpret it as "we are God's chosen people, he gave these special priviledges and rights to us, including the right to this land" and in many cases there's an implicit "and so we are better than everyone else" tacked on the end (every ethnic group I know of believes this, though...).

Nothing disproves more the existence of GAWD than the Holocaust.