bjbj I hate Israel.
They place jewish symbols on top of everything.
It is the only country in the world with a
jewish star on the national flag.
You are correct.
Other countries place symbols of other religions
on their flags.
For example, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland,
Switzerland, Greece and Iceland all have crosses
on their flags.
The flags of Turkey, Algeria, and Pakistan
have crescents, the symbol of Islam.
Do you hate those countries?
No, why should I hate them?
Christianity and Islam have been around for
thousands of years.
That is true.
And Judaism has been around thousands of years
longer than each of them.
What is the relevance to the religious symbol
on the country flag?
It is wrong for Israel to declare Judaism
as its official religion.
There are many people who live in Israel that
are not jewish.
You are right that Israel does have many people
who are not jewish living in the country,
but it does not have any official religion.
However, there are many countries that do
have an official state religion despite others
living in the country.
INCLUDEPICTURE "http://www.xtranormal.com/site_media/shorter/images/mm/pauses-inline.png"
\* MERGEFORMATINET There are 26 countries
with Islam as the official religion including
Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait, and Tunisia.
There are several declared catholic states
including costa rica and monaco.
Other countries with declared christian religions
include: denmark, finland and greece.
There are also half a dozen buddhist countries.
All of these countries have minorities that
do not belong to the official state religion.
How does an official state religion offend
you?
Do you feel minorities in Greece are being
antagonized?
Do you hate Denmark?
You are not listening to my point.
Those countries are entitled to have a state
religion as those are established countries
and religions for centuries.
However, Israel is a new country and Jews
just moved there recently.
They've changed the dynamic of the land and
have put jewish symbols on everything.
Even all of the signs in the country are only
in jewish.
Actually, hebrew as well as arabic are both
official languages in Israel.
But you see my point.
Jews just moved to Israel in 1948 and since
then they have been making everything jewish.
So to be clear, you would not really mind
the jewish star on the flag, if judaism were
the official national religion or hebrew were
the only official language, if it had always
been that way.
Your objection is that you think jews have
not been living in the land for 2000 years?
Yes.
Now you are starting to get my point.
The other countries with crosses on their
flags and national churches have been like
that for centuries.
Jews just arrived in Israel and are changing
the status quo.
Are you familiar with the history of the jews?
Are you familiar with the middle east history?
I think your feelings may stem from ignorance.
I know that the jews have been colonizing
Palestine with the help of the Americans,
English and French for the last 60 years.
Ah, I see.
So you are indeed uninformed.
Let me give you a very short history of the
jews and then a short history of the middle
east.
Are you going to tell me that the bible is
your excuse for colonizing Palestine?
I'll just touch on the bible briefly.
You are correct that Jews first came to Israel
about 3400 years ago and lived there for about
1500 years.
The Old testament states that God gave the
land of Israel to Abraham and promised it
to his descendents, Isaac, Jacob and the generations
afterwards.
The bible outlines many laws that jews can
keep only while living in the land.
They built two temples in Jerusalem, one destroyed
about 2600 years ago and the other about 2000
years ago.
yes! 2000 years ago! jews abadoned the country
and history has moved on! jews cannot claim
a heritage from generations ago!
There are now new people that have moved into
the land.
Let me continue.
While many jews were killed 2000 years ago
and brought as slaves to Rome, many Jews continued
to live in Israel.
They built and lived in important cities including
Tiberias, Tsfat, Tsippori, Yavne, Caesarea
and Beit She'arim.
They also continued to live in Jerusalem,
with the exception of about fifty years after
the crusaders killed all non-christians around
the year 1200.
The jewish quarter of jerusalem has been around
and housing jews since the year 1262.
I did not know that.
Many jews have also lived outside of Israel
for the past 2000 years after they were routed
by the Romans.
During this time they always prayed facing
towards Israel, prayed about Israel, and for
a day that they could return to the land.
In the year 1881, after many centuries of
abuse at the hands of various countries including
Spain, Portugal, England and Russia, Jews
decided that it was time to end the abuse
from their host countries which did not treat
them as full citizens.
They decided it was time to stop praying for
a return to Israel and actually move there.
That sounds like Zionism!
It is Zionism!
Zionism is the return of those jews that moved
from country to country for all of those centuries,
back to their homeland of Israel, once again
under jewish rule I thought Zionism was about
the colonialization of Palestine as a reaction
to the holocaust in world war 2.
The world felt bad about what happened to
the jews so they took the arab-controlled
Palestine and gave it to the jewish survivors.
Incorrect.
Jews have always lived in Israel.
Zionism and the major influx of the world
jews to Israel began 130 years ago, even before
world war one.
Zionism had a chance to flourish along with
the major changes to the middle east which
began after World War One with the Sykes-Picot
Agreement in 1916 in which the French and
English carved up the defeated Ottoman empire.
How so?
England and France each took large sections
of the middle east and began to consider how
to allocate the lands to various arab families
and tribes.
In 1917, the Balfour Declaration also stated
that part of the old Ottoman Empire was going
to be a jewish state, in the area where jews
were living in Palestine.
So you see it was colonialism!
England set up Israel.
It was after world war one, not world war
two, but still it was colonialism.
Not so.
England and France also created all of the
countries in the region at this time.
Lebanon in 1926, Saudi Arabia in 1927, Iraq
in 1932, Syria in 1936 and Jordan in 1946.
Are they colonies too?
That is different.
That was simply defining borders.
The arab people already lived there.
And jews were living and had always lived
in Israel too.
The additional waves of jews that were coming
from Europe and Russia since the 1880s were
coming on their own - not as agents of their
governments as an act of colonizing new territory.
They came fleeing their governments to their
ancestral homeland, to be united with the
jews living in Israel, and to be self-governing
and independent of all other governments.
Did you say that Israel was created in 1917.
Wasn't it created in 1948?
The decision to allocate various parts of
the old Ottoman empire began in 1916 and specifying
that it would include a jewish country was
made in 1917.
The actual vote in the United Nations took
place in 1948.
Why did it take 30 years from the initial
decision to set aside some of Palestine for
Jews, until the ultimate vote?
The arabs were all fighting over their future
borders.
Syria initially wanted all of Palestine.
Jordan laid claim to the land too.
To this day, many people feel that had Israel
been created at the same time as Lebanon,
many of the jews that died during the holocaust
in Europe would have been saved.
Thank you for the history review.
I did not appreciate that the creations of
Israel, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the whole
region were essentially a distribution of
the collapsed Ottoman empire and that jews
were already living in Palestine.
I had always been taught that the UN took
away arab land and gave it to european jews
who survived the holocaust.
What about the Palestinians?
What happened to their allocation of land?
The Palestinians - and the Kurds too - are
still part of the reallocation process of
the old Ottoman empire, 100 years later.
While the jews initially wanted the borders
of Israel to be all of their homeland as detailed
in the bible, which included much of Jordan,
Syria and Lebanon, they agreed to a much smaller
allocation of territory.
However, the not-yet created arab countries
were against ANY land for a jewish country
and lobbied and fought against it.
Syria tried to absorb all of Palestine before
world war 2.
The local arabs living in Palestine wanted
to have their own country and lobbied against
Syria absorbing Palestine ,and against the
allocation of land for a jewish nation also.
Were the arab countries against the specific
borders of Israel initially or against any
jewish country.
They were against any jewish nation at all.
The arab countries voted against UN resolution
181 which would have created a jewish state
alongside an arab state in 1947.
When the UN voted to endorse Israel in 1948,
the arab armies from Jordan, Syria, Lebanon,
Egypt and Iraq attacked Israel to wipe it
off the map.
When the war ended in 1949, Israel actually
gained more territory, Egypt took Gaza and
Jordan claimed the west bank.
Those borders lasted until 1967 when the arabs
tried to wipe Israel off of the map again,
but the war ended with them losing those territories
to Israel, as well as the Golan Heights in
the north.
So the Palestinians actually never ran the
country Palestine?
No.
The english ruled the area after World war
one and then the war in 1948 broke the land
into Israel as well as Jordan-controlled and
Egypt-controlled territories.
So it has now come to Israel to define borders
for the arabs in Palestine as the English,
French, Jordanians and Egyptians failed to
do so for the past 100 years?
Essentially.
It's ironic that Israel is working to create
a country for the Palestinians in land that
they wanted for themselves.
Well, I must say it makes sense for each of
these relatively new countries in the middle
east to have their own unique culture and
demographics.
I take back my comments on a jewish state
with a jewish flag.
It is indeed quite common around the world
for christians and muslims so there is no
reason there shouldn't be a jewish state and
flag.
With the millions of jews living in Israel
today, as well as the unique tie that jews
have to the country, I am actually dumb-founded
by my prior feeling of animosity.
It is a region that has gone through many
changes and wars.
It took time, but Egypt and Jordan made peace
with the jewish state.
Hopefully other arab countries will follow
soon too.
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