Short lesson in archaic English verb forms:Strangelove wrote: Like OMG dude, I totally LOVETH to smiteth infidels!!
(just ask Spidey)
SMITE, present tense
1st person singular: I smite
2nd person singular: thou smitest
3rd person singular: he/she/it smiteth
1st/2nd/3rd person plural: we/you/they smite
The Swedish pop group The Ark made a song called Calleth You Cometh I.
I cringe every time I hear it. If you don’t know how to use archaic forms – stay the hell away from them!
By the way, when was the last time you heard someone use the informal second person pronoun?
Seems English speakers have been formal at all times for centuries now.
Strangelove wrote:We agree executing POWs and mass-murdering civilians is on a whole new level compared to what Israel is doing.Per wrote:Not on the same level, just as shop lifting and bank robbery are both crimes but not on the same level. It is however a war crime and a violation of the Geneva convention to forcibly remove a civilian population in an occupied territory and replace it with your own citizens.Strangelove wrote:
Is building a house on land your family has owned for hundreds (thousands?) of years on the same level as executing POWs and mass-murdering civilians by way of say, chemical weapons? Cuz that's pretty strong language there Bucko!
Good.
Point was, most civilized folk reserve the phrases "gross violation of the GC" and "war crimes" for the former.
Point taken. Strike "gross".
Strangelove wrote: BTW did you know ~100 of the ~221 settlements are NOT officially recognized by the Israeli government and are illegal under Israeli law?
Yup. I’m actually quite impressed by how the Israeli supreme court consistently tries to uphold the law in an environment where anyone who ever criticizes anything the Israeli govt says/does is either portrayed as a traitors (if they’re Israelis) or anti-semites (if they’re not Israelis).
(I’m always intrigued at how Israeli spokesmen can paint the Swedish artist Dror Feiler, who was raised on a kibbutz and whose parents were irgun members, as an anti-semite, but I guess they just never did a thorough background check on him. He favours a two state solution based on the internationally accepted pre-1967 borders, and I guess that’s enough to make most Likud members start frothing at the mouth… and yeah, he went on that Ship-to-Gaza cruise. Still.)
The Israeli supreme court even ruled parts of the “security wall” illegal. I totally agree with their ruling. The wall in itself is not illegal, and I can see that it can help improve security, but it should follow the accepted border and not cut deep into occupied territory.
As for the settler movement; some of those settlers are at least as extreme as Hamas. It was one of them who murdered Rabin, btw, and their actions jeopardize the lives of Israeli soldiers that have to step in to clear up the mess they create. From what I understand a majority of Israelis are willing to give up all the “minor” settlements if a two state solution is negotiated but want to keep some of the major ones near Jerusalem. I bet that could be easily solved by instead offering something the Palestinians want, eg compensation for properties confiscated, etc.
I know, that’s what I’ve been saying! I’m even going as far as saying that the majority of Palestinians (somewhere between 80-90% according to DNA studies) are the direct descendants of the biblical Jews.Strangelove wrote: You DO realize there has always been a population of Jews in the Holy Lands at any given point in the last 3000 years?
It wasn’t a COMPLETE diaspora I hope y’know.
The Romans are not known to ever have ethnically cleansed an area. They conquered land and subjugated people, but they did not tend to commit genocide (well, apart from the occasional village…) or forcibly exile people. They crushed a rebellion in what is now Israel and leveled the temple. They probably rounded up and executed hundreds - if not thousands - of Jewish rebels, and as a consequence a sizable chunk of the population fled for their lives, causing the diaspora. Others were enslaved as punishment for the rebellion, and some slaves were probably transported to the Roman heartland, ie Italy, but the vast majority of Jews stayed put where they were. They were first “Hellenized”, ie became part of the Greco-Roman civilization. Then hordes of them were forced to convert to Christianity by the Crusaders. Then they became swallowed first by the Caliphate, the Mamelukes and then the Ottoman Empire. After almost a millennium of Muslim rule, most of the Jews left behind in the “holy land” had converted to Islam, albeit there were still quite a few of them following Mosaic tradition and also a booming Christian community. Some 15% of Palestinians are still Christian today, and Yassir Arafat (albeit a secular muslim) made it a point to always attend mass on Xmas morning. The Ottomans btw encouraged Jews to return to the area, leading to a growing Jewish community during that period. Then the British arrived and created Palestine. The British were less inclined to accept Jewish immigrants and made that process harder. Then WWII happened, the weakened UK started to lose grip on their colonies, and Europeans with a bad conscience pressured the UN into creating a Jewish homeland in Israel. The English huffed and puffed but finally agreed. And then the whole mess we have today started.
I can certainly see the Jews yearning to finally be the majority again in a country, but the solution we ended up with failed to see that the Palestinians were not “true” Arabs that had moved into some void left behind when every single Jew left the area. In fact, the Palestinians are as much heirs of Abraham as the European Jews are*. They just switched from Arameic to Arabic in their everyday conversations and started reading the Quran. Is it right to disinherit people just because they switch church?
Pretty sure that I would. Anti-semites, racists and homophobes never seem to be able to keep their mouth shut, eh?Strangelove wrote: Hey Per, you'd tell us if you secretly hate jews, right buds?
And for the record, I have made a personal effort in bringing peace to the Middle East by teaching an Israeli soldier to slowfox! Israelis doing military service have to carry their guns with them at all times. I actually once saw a guy windsurfing with a gun strapped to his back… hope he had greased it up real good… Anyways, I was at a night club in Eilat when a group of young women with assault rifles entered. One was quite a looker, so as the music slowed down I went over and asked her up. She agreed and handed the gun to her friend, like most girls do with their handbags or purses, and then we took to the dance floor… Ah, the memories…
*in fact, Ashkenazi Jews seem to have roughly 30% “European DNA”, so their blood is more diluted than that of the Jews that turned Palestinians, who have roughly 15% “Arab DNA”…