Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Of course real actual living people take priority, but motivation can't be viewed in a vacuum. Based on your premise, does what the european settlers did to the native americans matter anymore since it was multiple hundreds of years ago? Where do you draw the line? The point is that all context matters. In any event, at least in the case of the Jews, it's not like what happened 2000 years ago is the only injustice.

Anyway, answer my last question. What if the Israelis did what everyone seems to want them to do - and frankly I as a Jew living in the diaspora desperately want them to do - and give up all of the west bank and east jerusalem. Do you think that would pacify the world? To me, that's the 64 million dollar question. I wish I knew the answer.

Doesn't everybody wish they knew the answer? I don't know either.

But yes, I think that what the European settlers did to the Native Americans still matters, given that

1. much of it was done in the name of the US, and
2. it's actually still being done in the name of the US.

When people start making arguments like "I have a right to have a country here because my ancestors used to live here 2,000 years ago, but you don't have a right to a country here because your grandparents (who were living here when my grandparents arrived) didn't think of themselves as having the national identity you think of yourself as having" -- well, no.

But that's not the argument I was making - you inferred that. My point is that now that the country exists, how the world views it need to take history in to account.

And let me ask my question another way, would it pacify you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Not justifying what they did but thought that most people did not know what the Germans were doing until after the war was over. Then they found out about the real purpose of the concentration camps and the ovens.

Well, no. Many Germans may not have known everything. But if there was a German who didn't know anything, it was only because they willfully refused to know.

Was talking about Ford Co. execs who continued to do business with Germany after the war started. They probably did not know about the holocaust at that time.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deutschland, Deutschland über alles....

Frightening.

You know that's not actually Germany's national anthem, right?

Well, you could be a little more intellectually honest and say that after WWII they no longer sing that verse.

They no longer sing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles". What's intellectually dishonest about that? I suppose that you could say that the tune is "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", but you could also say that the tune is "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," and you could also say that the Yale song is "Die Wacht am Rhein".

Weird, I just heard it when I was in Kleve last year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deutschland, Deutschland über alles....

Frightening.

You know that's not actually Germany's national anthem, right?

God bless America isn't ours, but we hear it a shitload.

Point?

Ask the next German you see how often you hear people singing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" in Germany on official or patriotic occasions.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Deutschland, Deutschland über alles....

Frightening.

You know that's not actually Germany's national anthem, right?

Well, you could be a little more intellectually honest and say that after WWII they no longer sing that verse.

They no longer sing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles". What's intellectually dishonest about that? I suppose that you could say that the tune is "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles", but you could also say that the tune is "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser," and you could also say that the Yale song is "Die Wacht am Rhein".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:An honest, serious question.

For those that criticize the Zionists for what may have happened to Palestinians when Israel became a state, what do you think about what American settlers did to the native american people? Or for that matter, the current state of many native american people?

Life, and history, is not black and white. But bigotry is.

The Palestinians and Native Americans share the common problem of occupying land more powerful people wanted. The current Palestinians suffer the same economic disadvantages as Native Americans except those tribes with casinos or cigarette stored. Both got screwed

And so did the jews when they were displaced from Israel 2000 years ago. I don't ever hear anyone bemoaning their fate though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, of course one must take history into account. But not ancient history. What the Romans and Jews did 2,000 years ago is ancient history. What King Solomon did in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago is ancient history. Real actual living people take priority.

Of course real actual living people take priority, but motivation can't be viewed in a vacuum. Based on your premise, does what the european settlers did to the native americans matter anymore since it was multiple hundreds of years ago? Where do you draw the line? The point is that all context matters. In any event, at least in the case of the Jews, it's not like what happened 2000 years ago is the only injustice.

Anyway, answer my last question. What if the Israelis did what everyone seems to want them to do - and frankly I as a Jew living in the diaspora desperately want them to do - and give up all of the west bank and east jerusalem. Do you think that would pacify the world? To me, that's the 64 million dollar question. I wish I knew the answer.

Doesn't everybody wish they knew the answer? I don't know either.

But yes, I think that what the European settlers did to the Native Americans still matters, given that

1. much of it was done in the name of the US, and
2. it's actually still being done in the name of the US.

When people start making arguments like "I have a right to have a country here because my ancestors used to live here 2,000 years ago, but you don't have a right to a country here because your grandparents (who were living here when my grandparents arrived) didn't think of themselves as having the national identity you think of yourself as having" -- well, no.

Anonymous wrote:What European Americans did to Native Americans and to African Americans in the past does matter, because it's not actually over and done with. Native Americans are still disproportionately poor and disadvantaged in other ways, as are African Americans.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yes, of course one must take history into account. But not ancient history. What the Romans and Jews did 2,000 years ago is ancient history. What King Solomon did in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago is ancient history. Real actual living people take priority.

Of course real actual living people take priority, but motivation can't be viewed in a vacuum. Based on your premise, does what the european settlers did to the native americans matter anymore since it was multiple hundreds of years ago? Where do you draw the line? The point is that all context matters. In any event, at least in the case of the Jews, it's not like what happened 2000 years ago is the only injustice.

Anyway, answer my last question. What if the Israelis did what everyone seems to want them to do - and frankly I as a Jew living in the diaspora desperately want them to do - and give up all of the west bank and east jerusalem. Do you think that would pacify the world? To me, that's the 64 million dollar question. I wish I knew the answer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
And so did the jews when they were displaced from Israel 2000 years ago. I don't ever hear anyone bemoaning their fate though.

At some point there has to be a statute of limitations.

Why? There isn't for murder.

Should it be 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? 500 years? 5000 years?

The point is that life is not black and white, but people sure love to act like it is. The truth is always, always, in the middle.

The truth is not always in the middle. For example, the Holocaust happened. If you get one person saying that the Holocaust happened, and another person saying that the Holocaust didn't happen, is the truth that the Holocaust kinda sorta happened?

I don't know what the statute of limitations should be, but it should be shorter than what the Romans (who no longer exist) and Jews (to whom a lot has happened since) did in the area around Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

For what it's worth, I also don't have much patience with arguments based on a battle that happened in 1389.

Of course the truth is not in the middle when you are talking about macro events like the holocaust, but when you're talking about whether the average German was evil, for example, it is most definitely in the middle. I'll tell you why a statute of limitations doesn't make any sense. Don't you think that the history of a people should be taken in to account when judging how some subset of those people act in the future? Isn't that what the US is all about - the revolution is and always will be at the core of who we are. Not to take history in to account, in my opinion, is short-sighted. Context, and history, matter. People make broad generalizations about Israel on the basis of certain events - like admittedly horrendous actions including the continued expansion of settlements in the west bank - but forget that Israel did not set out to conquer the West Bank, or the Golan or East Jerusalem, but ended up doing so because it was attacked. What would you say if Israel withdrew entirely from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, put up a wall, and said to the rest of the Middle, please just leave me alone? Would that do it?

Yes, of course one must take history into account. But not ancient history. What the Romans and Jews did 2,000 years ago is ancient history. What King Solomon did in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago is ancient history. Real actual living people take priority.