[Dan Halberstein]

KAM,

Get your money back.

I kid because I love, of course. Your earlier formulation was much stronger -- between your college roommate's wisdom and "I don't see what's wrong with saying...." "most Jews" turned into "some Jews." OF COURSE you can convert to Judaism, for example, and you cannot convert to "Arabism," it has (as you point out) always possible to marry into and out of most tribal groups.

The larger "myth of race" and "myth of ethnicity" would also founder... the fuzzy edges of a group cannot be treated as explaining the bulk thereof. But that's another argument. Work now.

Dan

[Daniel Haar]

Kevin, intermarriage yes, but that doesn't mean the original stock has been wiped out. Here's some discussion of studies that have investigated the genetic history of Ashkenazi Jews (I have no idea how credible the studies are):

'A study of haplotypes of the Y chromosome, published in 2000, addressed the paternal origins of Ashkenazi Jews. Hammer et al[8] found that the Y chromosome of most Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews was of Middle Eastern origin, containing mutations that are also common among Palestinians and other Middle Eastern peoples, but uncommon in the general European population. This suggested that the male ancestors of the Ashkenazi Jews could be traced primarily to the Middle East.

The first research on Ashkenazi maternal ancestry was less conclusive. A 2002 study by Goldstein et al[9] found that "the women's origins cannot be genetically determined", but that "his own speculation" was that "most Jewish communities were formed by unions between Jewish men and local women."

More recent research indicates that a significant portion of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is also of Middle Eastern origin. A 2006 study by Behar et al[10], based on haplotype analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), suggested that about 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descended matrilineally from just four women. These four "founder lineages" were "likely from a Hebrew/Levantine mtDNA pool" originating in the Near East in the first and second centuries CE. According to the authors, "The observed global pattern of distribution renders very unlikely the possibility that the four aforementioned founder lineages entered the Ashkenazi mtDNA pool via gene flow from a European host population."' from Wikipedia .

[Dick Morgan]

Doesn't it strike anyone odd that the pictures Hezbollah allows CNN camermen to show are ALWAYS OF DEAD WOMEN AND CHILDREN--NEVER MEN?

And Mark G--based on your audition poem quite a few posts back I'd say you get the part (on the barn show I proposed)and will probably get a standing O when you pull that long barreled pistol out. However, you better bring you own bale of hay to stand on -- all the other horses.* ate theirs.

Dick


[This message has been edited by Dick Morgan (edited August 03, 2006).]

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Originally posted by Dick Morgan:
Doesn't it strike anyone odd that the pictures Hezbollah allows CNN camermen to show are ALWAYS OF DEAD WOMEN AND CHILDREN--NEVER MEN?

Actually I saw plenty of dead and wounded Lebanese men on CNN yesterday. Israeli forces had raided a hospital and shot some of the male nurses. There was also some mention of a pregnant woman being killed, but they didn't show her body on camera. Mostly it was interviews with the male nurses from their hospital beds.

[Lo]

Originally posted by Kevin Andrew Murphy:
Actually I saw plenty of dead and wounded Lebanese men on CNN yesterday. Israeli forces had raided a hospital and shot some of the male nurses. There was also some mention of a pregnant woman being killed, but they didn't show her body on camera. Mostly it was interviews with the male nurses from their hospital beds.

I guess you missed the part about the hospital being a known Hezbollah headquarters....and the part about the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being either taken or treated there after their earlier capture from the Israeli side of the border.

You also probably missed the part which explained that the men who were killed or captured were heavily armed Hezbollah "guards" as well as the fact that the Israeli's were able to seize a large cache of weapons, including the infamous Kalashnikov rifles, as well as Hezbollah computer equipment, cell phones and "huge" amounts of Hezbollah documents and Hezbollah intelligence information.
http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/
raiders_followed_trail_of_kidnapped_troops
_to_terrorists_hosp_worldnews_uri_dan
_______mideast_correspondent.htm

Does the fact that the word "Hezbollah" keeps turning up mean anything to you, Kevin? Not "doctor" not "nurses" not "sick people" not "surgical patients" but Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah" over and over again?

Even on CNN.

Strange how you can keep missing that.

Lo
**Link edited at Michael Cantor's request and with my apologies for extending the page way beyond the limits of a computer screen. I can't figure out how to shorten the link and still make it work, so I've left the main site linked and if anyone wants to read the exact article, they can cut and paste the lines that follow into their browser window.
Sorry 'bout that.

[This message has been edited by Lo (edited August 03, 2006).]

[Dan Halberstein]

Daniel,

If you want to really have fun, look up "Cohen Modal Hapolyte" and "Lemba."

A couple of ironies suggested to me in this particular discussion are just delightful.

First of all, there's the spectacle of Jews being kicked out of Europe for being "Semitic," and then having neighbors who want them dead because they're "European." I can't think of a better example to point out the necessity of having a Jewish state.

Secondly, the interesting phenomenon of the same people saying "Jews are not a racial [sic] (or ethnic)group," declaring Israel racist because it is a Jewish state.

I think a lot of confusion about and hostility toward Jews comes from an inherent cultural bias in the West, which seeks to push other groups into its own models (Islam faces the same dilemma.)

During the renaissance, it became popular to come up with new and different forms of Anti-Semitism (toward Jews,) to replace theological Anti-Semitism on the part of the Church, which could only lose potency as the nation-state became more powerful.

One argument brought forward was that Judaism is not, in fact, a religion, because it had no Church. At that point, there was a great deal of interest in establishing Jews to be a sort of devolved tribe of mumbling, half-religified oddities, related by race but not by any faith to speak of.

The basic issue is that the Jewish people share kinship, but is not based solely on kinship; the Jewish people share history, but are not a historical society. The Jewish people share a religion, but even that is not the totality of Jewish "peoplehood." In the West, you can be a Catholic, but you would also be Irish, or German, or African-American. My parents are from England and Austria, but I don't identify as being of Austrian or English Stock. In fact, the Austrians and English identified my parents not as fully Austrian or English, but as Jewish. I identify as a Jew - and as an American first, so don't even bother with that one. America, to my mind, is the one place outside of Israel this denial of "autocthonous" citizenship has not been repeated.

Not fitting the categories infuriates one's detractors. They believe you to be slippery and tricky, when in truth, you simply come from a long history, with a lot of twists and turns, by comparison with historical youngsters like the European nation-states.

I think this aids in the simultaneous categorization of Jews as being behind International Capitalism and International Communism; being too European for the Middle East, and too Middle Eastern for Europe; being entirely a racial group with no church, and entirely a religion without common kinship; being simultaneously cowardly and warlike; etc.

Anti-Semitism is unlike other forms of prejudice in this regard, because you can accuse a Jew of being anything you want. Perhaps because Judaism has had such a long history, you can find the germ of a theory for anything. Simply declare your distaste for one or another trait, find this trait among Jews in some guise, and voila!

Side-road over... we now return to our actual subject of debate, Israel and Lebanon.

Dan

[Daniel Haar]

Dan,

I truly hope that one day the Jews are welcomed as a vital and integral part of the Middle East. A far off dream? Maybe, but nothing happens in the world without dreams. I think the ultimate answer lies, at least partly, in the direction of people seeing Europe and the Middle East as part of one greater civilization. One reason that the continual fighting between Lebanon and Israel is so sad in my mind is that much of Lebanon is very modern and sees nothing contradictory in being both in the Western and Middle Eastern world, like Israel I guess in that way.

- Daniel

[Dan Halberstein]

Daniel,

From your lips to God's ears (and I'll throw in an Inshallah.)

The peoples of the Middle East could interact with each other to obvious mutual benefit... sadly, as you say, it now seems a far-off dream.

Maybe our granchildren will discuss it beneath their respective vines and fig trees. I just hope they don't damn the whole project by naming it the "Greater West Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere."

Dan

[Kevin Andrew Murphy]

Originally posted by Lo:

I guess you missed the part about the hospital being a known Hezbollah headquarters....and the part about the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being either taken or treated there after their earlier capture from the Israeli side of the border.

You also probably missed the part which explained that the men who were killed or captured were heavily armed Hezbollah "guards" as well as the fact that the Israeli's were able to seize a large cache of weapons, including the infamous Kalashnikov rifles, as well as Hezbollah computer equipment, cell phones and "huge" amounts of Hezbollah documents and Hezbollah intelligence information.
<A HREF="http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/raiders_followed_trail_of_kidnapped_troops_to_terr orists_hosp_worldnews_uri_dan_______mideast_corres pondent.htm" TARGET=_blank>http://www.nypost.com/news
/worldnews/raiders_followed_trail_of_
kidnapped_troops_to_terrorists_hosp_
worldnews_uri_dan_______mideast_correspondent.htm</A>

Does the fact that the word "Hezbollah" keeps turning up mean anything to you, Kevin? Not "doctor" not "nurses" not "sick people" not "surgical patients" but Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah" over and over again?

Even on CNN.

Strange how you can keep missing that.

Lo

Well, CNN did note that Israel had claimed it was a Hezbollah stronghold, but what sort of "stronghold" has only four "heavily armed" guards? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like them just going in and shooting hospital security? CNN also questioned whether the men captured were high-ranking Hezbollah members or simply five guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And get this quote from the NYPost article you linked:

When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was asked whether any of the five men seized were "big fish," he replied, "They are tasty fishes."

Tasty? That's not a word I want to hear out of the lips of any world leader. It sounds, how should I put this? Ah yes, ghoulish. Also, likely an overstatement, since he could hardly say, "Well, it was a raid, what do you expect? We didn't have time for lengthy interviews. We think we've got one big fish, one vaguely appetizing fish, somebody's brother-in-law, the janitor, and some guy waiting for his wife to deliver. If it's any consolation, I heard we shot the wife."

Since the NYPost article doesn't even mention that nurses were shot--and they were interviewing the injured nurses live on CNN--one can only assume that the NYPost is pandering to the pro-Israel side and doesn't want to report on anything even possibly disquieting, including the fact that if you kill "at least ten others" and only enumerate four "heavily armed guards," it can be guessed that the other six plus were unarmed (elsewise the NYPost would be bragging about their armed-ness) and were likely doctors, nurses, patients and visitors, as one might expect at any working hospital.

As for the "treasure trove" of intelligence information, from the sound of it they grabbed a bunch of papers, computers and cell phones and are busy trumpeting DA-style the significanse of these things, despite the fact that it's going to take time to analyze them and figure out whether what they found behind Door Number 2 was the crown jewels or a can of SPAM. Likely somewhere in between, but not yet cause to brag except for propaganda purposes.

Anyway, CNN's coverage yesterday was not an interview with the soldiers who had done this "daring raid" but an interview with a couple nurses they'd shot. A detail the NYPost evidently felt irrelevant or inconsequential, or at best not likely to sell papers to its regular readership.

[This message has been edited by Kevin Andrew Murphy (edited August 04, 2006).]

[Lo]

Originally posted by Kevin Andrew Murphy:
Well, CNN did note that Israel had claimed it was a Hezbollah stronghold, but what sort of "stronghold" has only four "heavily armed" guards? Doesn't that sound an awful lot like them just going in and hitting hospital security? CNN also questioned whether the men captured were high-ranking Hezbollah members or simply five guys in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Since the NYPost article doesn't even mention that nurses were shot--and they were interviewing the injured nurses live on CNN--one can only assume that the NYPost is pandering to the pro-Israel side and doesn't want to report on anything even possibly disquieting, including the fact that if you kill "at least ten others" and only enumerate four "heavily armed guards," it can be guessed that the other six plus were unarmed (elsewise the NYPost would be bragging about their armed-ness) and were likely doctors, nurses, patients and visitors, as one might expect at any working hospital.


Anyway, CNN's coverage yesterday was not an interview with the soldiers who had done this "daring raid" but an interview with a couple nurses they'd shot. A detail the NYPost evidently felt irrelevant or inconsequential, or at best not likely to sell papers to its regular readership.

You're entirely right, Kevin, one WOULD expect to find doctors, nurses, patients and visitors at any "working hospital." And one would hardly expect to find "four heavily armed guards" at a "working hospital." One would expect to find a few moonlighting off-duty cops with service revolvers on their belts hanging around the nurses station in the emergency room in the middle of the night.

Thing is - the hospital at Baalbek was NOT a "working hospital" - and that comes straight from the horse's mouth.

"Hezbollah fighters prohibited reporters from approaching the hospital, which they said had been emptied of patients at the beginning of the war. Local officials said a number of Hezbollah fighters and guards were inside."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...0200370_4.html

"The Israelis entered the hospital and were starting to leave when a larger force of Hezbollah fighters showed up and started a heavy firefight. Ali and his friends said that three fighters had been killed in the hospital battle, but a spokesman for the Israeli military said soldiers had killed at least 10 fighters there.

Ali was still sweaty and shaken on Wednesday as he talked about the fight. Though he dodged questions about his role, there were signs that he had been involved. His head was scratched and bruised, and several machine guns lay in the car he had pulled up in with two other young men. He walked around the hospital and grounds, working to clear traces of the battle. “They hit a civilian institution, and there was no one even inside it,” he insisted."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/wo...=1&oref=slogin

So honestly, Kevin, I don't know where CNN got it's "nurses." I've literally spent the last two hours online searching various news sources and web sites and I can't find one single reference to any civilians being present in the hospital at the time of the Israeli raid.

If you can help me out here, I'd truly appreciate it. I really don't like getting just one side of a story, and I've been follwing all of this with great interest, but I like for the things I'm reading to be backed up with something and so far, I can't find anything to back up your contention that there were nurses wounded or even that there were nurses present at the time of the attack.

Help me out here, ok?

Lo