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Mikey Bear - Explaining Our Stance on Homosexuality – Forward.com

Mikey Bear — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 12:00:17 +0000

Please read this: http://mikeybear.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/history...

JehudaBenIsrael - Jewish Groups Express Concern Over Obama Budget – Forward.com

JehudaBenIsrael — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:04:22 +0000

...but Mr. B.H.Obama stated time and again that his commitment to Israel's security is "unshakable"..., and some of us actually read his lips...!!

JehudaBenIsrael - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

JehudaBenIsrael — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 10:25:48 +0000

And since Mr. Fein insists on injecting the Arab Israeli conflict into a purely American political/cultural matter, let us respond to him: "Israel? Gingrich: The Palestinians are “an invented people" -- Indeed, the "Palestinians" as a people is an invented concept that came to the forth only towards the late 1960s and early 1970s and done so for purely political expediency. The "Palestinians", in the past, when the territory - it is a territory, not a nationality or a state - was still in tact as a territory, all who lived in it were "Palestinians": Jews, Arabs, Armenians, Egyptians, Greeks, etc. But "Palestine" of course was partitioned in the years 1921 and 1922 between what subsequently were called Arab Jordan and Jewish Israel. Thus, "Palestinians" is indeed an invented concept. "Santorum: 'All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis. They’re not Palestinian. There [are] no Palestinians. This is Israeli land'". Indeed, the legal partition of 1921 and 1922 by the international community handed over the Arabs 77% of "Palestine" who, subsequently, renamed it Jordan, since "Palestine" is not an Arab concept. And, the rest, 23% of "Palestine", that part of the territory located between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea,, legally, was assigned to be the national home for the Jewish people. The Jews, subsequently, renamed this part Israel since "Palestine" is not a Jewish concept either. Thus, the Arabs who live between the River and the Sea do reside in what is the national home of the Jewish people: Israel. Perhaps the person who need do his homework before attempting to mock others is Mr. Fein!!

BillP51 - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism – Forward Thinking – Forward.com

BillP51 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:17:26 +0000

And I haven't even touched mundane things like what happens in some sort of shared Jerusalem shangri la. What happens there. Do Jews flee areas that are deemed "judenrein" by hamas. Police, electricity. Would you put your fate and the fate of your family in the hands of Islamic jihad. Would you really.

BillP51 - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism – Forward Thinking – Forward.com

BillP51 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:02:45 +0000

Just for the record I'm a generation behind Pearl. And I admit his outlook his colored by the fact that Islamic terrorists beheaded is son. But I digress. Part of growing up my young friend is dealing with the world has it is. Not how you would like it to be. You have hezbollah to the north running Lebanon. ( They are more an Iranian proxy ) But lets face it not a fun bunch of guys. To the northeast there is Syria. Would you come off the Golan heights in return for what, non-belligerence. And with who exactly. Assad or the other side. To the south you have an Islamic fundamentalist takeover in Egypt. What's your idea there. And I'm not even talking about the tip toe through the tulips lads of hamas. Next the west bank ridge line which overlooks all of Israels population centers. Israel simply cannot have an Iranian backed, hostile military force up there. Next, the Palestinians have shown an amazing tendency to destroy Jewish religious sites when given the opportunity. Does that bother you? Lastly, a treaty with Palestinians. Who is going to sign that. And who has the power to deliver? Unless you have some idea about handling any of this, you know, the real world. Then you should leave it to adults and go back to holding hands at interfaith gatherings and convincing your friends in college that no, your not like those evil Jews in the IDF, your one of the better ones, the good ones.

benjilachkar - Be My Israeli Valentine – Forward.com

benjilachkar — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:31:51 +0000

"Goldin offered one possible explanation of why Israelis get serious fast: “Here, there’s a constant presence of how short life can be, so if you feel something, you say it and commit.” Total bullshit. Life is more dangerous and shorter in New York than in Israel. The explanation should not be why Israelis get serious fast, this is just the normal behaviour for human beings, but why Americans have this weird and immoral "open relationship". And yes - in Israel, men are expected to pay on a date. Always.

אליהו קאן - Kosher Jesus – Forward.com

אליהו קאן — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:01:34 +0000

Just show us the tenth ossuary you say was found. But it won't have the same elemental pattern as the Yaacov and other ossuaries that were part of the Talpiot tomb. Give us the reference, please! The tomb would be close to where they lived and planned to be buried because that is how it was done. Your opinion of odd is exactly what archaeology found. Maybe you aren't following 1st century history very closely.

Michael K. - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism – Forward Thinking – Forward.com

Michael K. — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 07:01:13 +0000

Israel, an apartheid state! Get real! How many times do we need to rehash, retrace and remind that the "Palestinians" could have had their own state in 2000 & 2008 when both Barak and Omert offered them pretty much everything they wanted and they walked away! Is Knetzes that naive to think that if the Palestinians got their own state tomorrow they would feel any different about Israel? Is he even more naive to think that their is any real difference between Anti Zionism and Anti Semitism simply because a handful of demented Jews on both the far left and far right despise Israel for their own narrow self serving purposes? We need to take our hats of to Dr. Pearl for having the courage to stand up and condemn this insanity. While Israel is far from perfect it is still among the last hopes of mankind.

Knetzes - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism – Forward Thinking – Forward.com

Knetzes — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:53:52 +0000

Bill, I simply disagree with the premise of your question. By standing by Israel no matter what it does, means that you're essentially willing to let it become an undemocratic Apartheid state, if I read you correctly, if that is the trend as long as one condition is fulfilled: It's still an overwhelmingly Jewish state. Being a Zionist is about being for a state that is both Jewish, and just as important, if not more, a state that is democratic too. The longer the occupation continues, the more entrenched it becomes in Israel's character, the less democratic it becomes. And you're right, for your generation, with the Holocaust still fresh in mind and you remember a time when there was deep and rife anti-Semitism in America, it's easier to support Israel-right-or-wrong because your background was a much more hostile world to Jews. But my generation see America as the most welcoming place in the history of the world for Jews. In every field, in every discipline, Jews have an outsized influence and perhaps no more so than in American culture. Both as news owners, publishers, editors, movie directors, authors, artists, journalists, writers and intellectuals. American culture the last 50 years is heavily Jewish in many ways, it has merged with us, which is why we see America in a special light, because we've never been safer. And an honest comparison simply cannot and will not stand between America today and Europe in the 1920s/early 1930s. It's not even close. So I look at Israel in glasses that I admit are favourable and biased, but not blindly so like Jews of your generation. And I am motivated not by animus or hostility but by concern. I care about the Jewish state, but I do not idealize it. And the way to strengthen, indeed even save it, is by making sure it is also democratic. These efforts are derided by you and those who think like you as disloyal, which I find offensive and frankly poisonous to the debate. By constantly shutting down debate by either implying disloyalty or even self-hatred when someone's concerned with Israel's unsustainable occupation of a foreign people, then you are protecting the status quo, Bill. And the status quo is not favourable to Israel, so I would say that the Zionist among us is actually me, not the Israel-right-or-wrong type that you represent. I have very few characters left to write, and "what would you do" is a very complex subject so I won't have space to delve it into deeply, but in short(as an American president): pressure both the PA and Israel in meaningful ways. Israel has to break the occupation anyway, in order to salvage it's democratic character, but break the occupation in a way that's consistent with it's security needs. Threaten aid to both Israel and the PA, and take on parts of the Jewish establishment if you have to if they object. Peace won't come in a year or two, but the trend of peace is more important, as opposed to the trend (today) which is deeper, continued occupation.

levinjf - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

levinjf — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:53:10 +0000

I wonder if the brilliant Mr. Fein still believes, as he assured Forward readers several years ago, that Social Security is so well-funded that the idea there might be some problem with paying for it is ridiculous. He is right about one thing, there is a vast and growing gulf between two Americas. The division is greater than any time in my memory, maybe since the Civil War. One one side are the young people cheering God and guns and Constitution at the CPA meeting. On the other side are Mr. Fein, the president and his administration, and the young people occupying Wall Street and burning Oakland, and Athens, for that matter. I know what side of the barricades I will be on.

JehudaBenIsrael - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

JehudaBenIsrael — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:33:16 +0000

"CPAC is as non biased as Haaretz. The left and the right are both parasites feeding off each other with any attempt at moderation..." How true!! Indeed, why even attempt to divide the world around us to "left" vs. "right" instead of dealing with issues at hand based on facts and through the use of reason, while taking into consideration elements of time, place, circumstances, etc? One can certainly be a "rightist" patriot who thinks that "leftist" liberal economic approach is the best way to govern a society, and still thinks that women must be empowered over their own bodies, and at the same time object to the approach of appeasement of the present administration to Islamism. The simplistic shallowness of dividing everything into two,.e.g. "good and bad"; "there are two sides to the coin"; "balanced picture"; and, "there are two sides to every situation", limit our ways of facing the much more complex world in which we live in which there are many aspects to every issue, and issues are related in various ways to other issues. It is time to shell off the "left" vs. "right" slogans and face the world around us in a bit more mature fashion.

deliaruhe - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

deliaruhe — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:28:02 +0000

Sorry, America, there is no longer a rational conservative party to rally around -- and certainly no willing conservative politician worth trusting with political power. Virtually everything that happened during the reign of Geo. W. Bush brought down everything for which Americans turned Ronald Reagan into a saint. Conservatives need to understand that Reaganism was the problem, not the solution. The political system is deeply corrupt. Neither politicians nor the people who elect them know how to hold America's famous criminals to account -- how to impeach a president for waging illegal wars, how to indite bankers for bankrupting their own banks and their country into bankruptcy. Unfortunately, conservatives still believe in the ideology that drove that war and that broke those banks and the economy. Republicans thought they could overcome the disease of the Bush years simply by not mentioning his name. That's like curing AIDS simply by ignoring the symptoms. Conservatives need to ask what it is they're so hell-bent on "conserving," and if there is another definition of conservatism they should be embracing instead.

Geylem - Yiddish Stories Not Lost in Translation – The Arty Semite – Forward.com

Geylem — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:14:22 +0000

Amazingly enough, short stories are still being written in Yiddish today. See Di Anishinaber Khasidim in Afn Shvel, #342-343, Autumn-Winter 2008.

PJK01 - Obama Wrong on Birth Control Coverage – Forward.com

PJK01 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:01:56 +0000

You say: "All he is asking is that private groups which are tax-funded and tax-exempt obey the laws everyone else obeys." But, no law was passed which required Catholic (or other) institutions to provide contraception and sterilization services as part of health care. Those little details were filled in by Pres. Obama's health secretary, one Pope Kathleen Sibelius. We've reached a state in which Congress thinks it's passing laws-- but what those laws mean, what they really require, is decided by executive branch officials or bureaucrats! Is that democratic government?

WarpedMirrorPMB - Judea Pearl: Anti-Zionism is Racism – Forward Thinking – Forward.com

WarpedMirrorPMB — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:15:58 +0000

Nu, Bill, if Knetzes were PM of Israel, most Israelis would frantically try to emigrate...

hcunn - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

hcunn — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 03:01:23 +0000

Partly it is the Dan Quayle effect, being bounced ahead too fast without any warning. Quayle was not as dumb as his reputation, but that kind of reputation, once made, is indelible. Palin had no experience or interest in foreign affairs, and it showed. That is one reason, I gather, that Gov. Chris Christie is sitting out this Presidential round-- he has his plate full now with New Jersay issues. Four years from now, he can master national issues if he wishes. Alaska is a small State (one Congressional district), so being a first term governor there is not very impressive on a Presidential resume. I must admit also to political bias, disliking the religious Right.

Matt613 - Obama Wrong on Birth Control Coverage – Forward.com

Matt613 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:25:04 +0000

Apparently from the research a doctrine is a doctrine. Are you suggesting a matter of faith for the institution, which is both immutable and infalible can be violated on the say so of a government agency? Where does that leave the free exercise clause? To force a person or an institution to violate its deeply held beliefs destroys religious liberty.

Hacoah - Cultural Divide on Display at CPAC – Forward.com

Hacoah — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:13:03 +0000

I wasn't characterizing you. I was referring to the deplorable race for the lowest common conservative values among the Republican candidates and their constituency. However, if you identify with their values, then so be it.

Moe

Jack - Obama Wrong on Birth Control Coverage – Forward.com

Jack — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 02:02:17 +0000

"When are you going to provide evidence that the above messages are in errorr?" Kinda ironic, ain't it? What do I mean exactly? Did you follow the link? That's why the letters are blue. Way back at the beginning, you wrote: "Forcing a religious institution to violate its basic doctrines, is a violation of the first amendment...." I'm not challenging that the avoidance of contraception is Catholic doctrine—which your above messages have provided evidence thereof—but rather that this avoidance is a basic doctrine, like the Doctrine of the Trinity or transubstantiation, which are very basic Catholic doctrines.

Jazzymom23 - Mormons Apologize for Wiesenthal Baptism – Forward.com

Jazzymom23 — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 01:58:43 +0000

Thoughtless behavior on the part of Christians. They ought to be ashamed!