http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/05/10/white-house-scrambles-to-contain-benghazi-gate-fallout/
Not much new on Benghazigate. Jay Carney is earning his blood money/salary by repeatedly denying that the White House (I first mistyped "Hose", or was that a Freudian slip?) engaged in the least bit of dishonest or misleading actions:
"Carney lashed out at Republicans, accusing them of leaking the emails in an effort "to politicize this."
Further, he said: "These documents bear out what we've said all along."......."
This guy must be in place to make Obama look honest by comparison.
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Added 5/11/13 - I realized that I forgot a main point that I wanted to include.
Guys like Hawking have Einstein to thank for an immeasurable amount of labor and thought without which Hawking and his superbia-driven buddies would not be able to do near what they can today.
In addition to being intelligent enough to (And sufficiently aware of man's inherent inability to know it all), steer clear of Atheism, Einstein was a staunch Zionist. He recognized that the Jews needed a homeland, that they had already purchased more than considerable amounts of property in the land of their ancestors, and that this (Israel-then Transjordan) was the only place in which there was a real chance to make such a homeland work.
By smugly denying both God and Israel's right to exist, Hawking shames himself by disdaining that what Einstein was too humble and too intelligent to do. Hawking assumes that he is far greater than his predecessor.
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Guys like Hawking have Einstein to thank for an immeasurable amount of labor and thought without which Hawking and his superbia-driven buddies would not be able to do near what they can today.
In addition to being intelligent enough to (And sufficiently aware of man's inherent inability to know it all), steer clear of Atheism, Einstein was a staunch Zionist. He recognized that the Jews needed a homeland, that they had already purchased more than considerable amounts of property in the land of their ancestors, and that this (Israel-then Transjordan) was the only place in which there was a real chance to make such a homeland work.
By smugly denying both God and Israel's right to exist, Hawking shames himself by disdaining that what Einstein was too humble and too intelligent to do. Hawking assumes that he is far greater than his predecessor.
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Stephen Hawking, in a move that as become standard procedure for the hyper-intellectual types, has opted to join in on the boycott of an academic conference in Israel. My understanding in that Shimon Peres is the official host of this event. I once had the honor of meeting the then-Deputy Prime Minister and found him to be a dignified and courteous gentleman. He has enjoyed a reputation as a fair and honest man. He is a leader in a nation that provided a forum (Unique for that region) for great minds to work together.
One can look at this from several angles.
Arabs in Israel have far more rights than their ethnic/cultural colleagues in other Muslim majority countries. (Hawking seems to be OK with this fact) Israel has very strong arguments to support their moves to protect themselves. The man who was arguably the most hawkish of Israeli leaders, Ariel Sharon, gave the Palestinians back Gaza on a silver platter, (Which included forceful removals of Jewish families from their homes) only to have rocket attacks and tunneling/kidnapping begin promptly upon the assumption of Palestinian power in the strip. As impossible as it may seem, Hamas may outdo the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank in corruption. Both organizations route the bulk of the more than substantial aid monies into private accounts and use the rest to fund terror operations rather than help their people. When Prime Minister, Ehud Barak came within a hairs breadth of giving the Palestinians all that they claimed to want, only to be snubbed by Yasser Arafat.
Western intellectuals have gone all-out to attack the very culture and societies that made their way of life possible. The West has long been the place to be if one was curious*, needed the earlier work of others on which to build, a free or almost-free environment for both their studies and the publicizing of the same.
*From ancient Greece to the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, no society approached the West in the curiosity and experimentation game. Even contemporary Chinese societies are noted for an appalling lack of curiosity; comets and other astrological events, for example, were recorded in the dutiful manner of a police blotter, never to be investigated for the causes or what indications they gave for similar events in the future. Medieval Islamic societies had a few individuals who achieved much, but many of these were not Muslims but subject people such as Christians with Arab names. And, Muslim or not (Some of course were Muslim), their work was generally held suspect and literally nothing came of their work once they passed away. The incurious societies of the Koran had no use for abstract, theoretical, or philosophical works.
The same intellectuals have also, almost to a one, abandoned God completely. Reports in the last couple of years include claims that science has now proven that matter could have come into existence by itself. This attempt was an effort to defeat the question posed by believers (Or just those with common sense) - That even, with a Big Bang (Not a problem for most of us), how did the stuff that was involved in that Bang come to be? We read all sorts of reports from Hawking and his buddies in which they claimed that they have proven that matter could come to exist by itself. Then we read the rest of the same articles and found that they were utilizing the specific definition of matter (OK fine again) but quickly noting that other phenomena (Dark matter, dark energy, etc.) reacted in whatever manner in which they theorize to create matter.
-So the hypothetical layman raises his hands and tries to clarify:
OK, you are telling us that matter could come into existence by itself, then you tell us that this other stuff reacted to create matter. Well and fine, but you only theorized another step and failed to tell us how the other stuff/things came to be, so what you are actually telling us is that you still have not provided anything close to proof that the universe came into existence without a Creator.
These people leave me confused and torn; not so much with their theories, but as to why they take such foolish and cynical positions. Is it pressure from their academic colleagues, intellectual hubris, or is it the the basic stereotypical problem with hyper-intelligent people - that their ability to comprehend things that boggle our minds leave them without a modicum of common sense?
I tend to go with hubris. Pride was the first sin. It is more devious and powerful than greed. It motivates peoples to control others, to belittle them, and to make oneself the supreme judge of the facts. In my mind, the latter is the motivating principle behind the denial of God. With a Creator in the picture, we are figuring out some of the details of the work or creation, but are still learning. Without Him, one can claim to be the one who "gets it" when no one else does. It is a Leftist type of mindset; the intelligentsia have it all worked out. We have made all of your silly little beliefs obsolete. You need to listen to us.We will let you know what needs to be done.
-From a previous post on the academic dog-pile on Israel
Palestine was the word that the Romans used to name the region of Judea, Later, there were two regions with the name Palestine. As this occurred under Diocletian's rule, I will avoid going into detail on that subject other than to note that the addition of Palaestina Secunda to Palaestina Prima occurred long after the Jewish revolts and included areas traditionally outside modern Israel.
The whole idea of renaming the Roman province of Judea was to remove any sense of Jewish connection, claims, or identity to that region. The Jewish revolts, to put it simply, made all the other revolts by other peoples against Roman rule look like three militia dudes in the US barricading themselves in a barn and threatening to take on the Federal government. The revolts were near catastrophes for the Roman. The amount of Legionaries (And Legions) that were lost was staggering. Although she was eventually able to viciously put down these uprisings, Rome was humiliated. Hadrian decided that the region (And Rome) would benefit from a judicious application of relabeling. Thus Judea was now to be referred to as the land of the Philistines, the old enemies of the Hebrews back in the days when they first were settled in Israel. The Philistines as an identifiable people has been long gone by that point, but Rome needed to make a point. Interestingly, there is a tremendous amount of evidence that the Philistines were largely or almost entirely composed of Achaean (Or Mycenaean if you have archaeological sympathies - my sympathies are with Homer) Greeks who had been driven out of the Balkans by the Dorian invasions after 1200BC.
Anyway, Syria Palaestina came into being due to Hadrian. Most of the Jews had been expelled, and the region remained under Roman rule (Later Eastern Roman or Byzantine) until a brief occupation by the Sassnanid Persians. After the Byzantines retook the area in the final war which had thoroughly exhausted both the Empire and the Sassanids, neither was prepared for the onslaught of Islam in the 7th century. Does the idea of fighting each other until both sides are worn out just before an full-out attack by Islam sound familiar?
From that point on, aside from another relatively brief rule by Crusader forces, that region was, until the collapse of the Ottomans and the British Mandate, always under Islamic rule after that and had no identifiable Arab population that could be considered distinct from other Arabs.
Now, back to the topic:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/03/the_one_state_conference_at_harvard_march_madness.html
Good ol' Hahvaard.
The One-State conference was a typical Leftist display of attacks on the sovereignty of the only Democratic nation in the Middle East. Again, for the sake of space please read the above post for details on that part.
A few quotes from the post concerning the responsibility of the Jews to drop the whole Jewish thing and just be Arabs like they are supposed to do:
"This concept was shared enthusiastically by the numerous Jews and Israelis, including rabbis, at the conference. Indeed, panelist Rabbi Brant Rosen of Evanston, Illinois, announced that he routinely preaches that Zionism is idolatry. "My Torah," he said, "is the Torah of universalism and humanism."
The protestors on the sidewalk outside, alarmed at the potential extinction of the Jewish state, had thus ironically nailed the precise outcome hailed by the participants. A "Jewish" state is the problem they came to solve. Indeed, the word "Israel" came up only in its context as conqueror, occupier and supremacist. Otherwise, it was supplanted in the conference vocabulary by "Palestine," which will be the name of the proposed single state.
One questioner, a rabbi without a congregation, asked a panel member whether "Jews, even Lefties like me, will be able to live in Palestine." After the desired approbatory chuckle, the participants were unanimous in emphasizing the absolute equality of Palestinians and Jews in the coming state. This sentiment was repeated in every panel, but the quid pro quo would of course be a "voluntary" dismantling of all the modalities of Israeli power and identity. Everyone agreed this won't be easy for the Jewish Israelis, which is why they also stated repeatedly that change must come from the bottom. The Occupy movement was suggested as a model. Incidentals such as Article 7 of the Hamas Charter ("The Day of Judgment will not come until Muslims fight Jews and kill them") were not considered, perhaps because of time constraints.
One possibility for the newly disempowered Israeli Jews, said Leila Farsakh, associate professor in political science at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, would be to"reconnect with their Arabism." Indeed, the term "Arab Jew" became ubiquitous toward the end of the conference. Or, as Marc Ellis, director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University, himself a Jew, said, "Becoming un-Jewish is the first step." After that would come, in his words, "revolutionary forgiveness." [All Italics were added]
So we get the idea- Jews are really just Arabs, and if they can get it through their thick skulls that a Jewish identity is the core cause of all of the problems in that region, everything would be OK.
Now a brief lesson on the Semitic peoples is appropriate:
Semitic peoples were the inhabitants of all of Arabia, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, almost from the dawn of history (Aside from the northern areas peopled by the Sumerians, Kassites, Hurrians, etc). There was no clearly defined Semitic groups at the time. After the Chacolithic age got into full swing in all of the Semitic-speaking regions, many moved North and West to populate the regions named above. These were the nascent groups from which all Semitic peoples were to develop ( Hebrews, Syrians (Who are not Arabs but Arabized), Edomites, Moabites, Canaanites, Arabs, etc.) Many of these people also had admixtures from the Arameans, also Semites who started from the Northern limits of Semitic-speaking regions such as modern-day Iraq and moved westward around the time of the arrival of the Dorian Greeks into Greece proper. (By 1200BC)
Earlier, by 1600BC, Amorite (Probably the source of Abraham's clan) tribes had moved West from the Northernmost (Not Arabia proper) reaches of Semitic speakers and inhabited Lebanon, Syria and parts of Israel. That region itself was ruled on and off by the Egyptians but not colonized by them to any appreciable extent.
As I mentioned, the Philistines, very possibly the "Sea Peoples" that also attacked Egypt came into the picture (That whole tumultuous 1200BC thing). They were likely Greeks displaced by the Dorians and may well have included Luvians and Phrygians of modern-day Turkey (Thraco-Cimmerian origin - not Turks who were a long way off) who also were affected by the turmoil of Achaean Greek movements, such as the sack of Troy and the natural push of hard-pressed Achaeans as they fled Greece.
Aside from expulsions of tribes by the conquering Assyrians and Babylonians (Not permanent for Jews expelled by Babylon), who were also Semitic but not Arabs, the ethnic and cultural situation in the Levant was fairly static for some time after that. The Macedonian Greeks (I hold the the position that Macedonians were mostly ethnically Greek) Roman, Byzantine, and Persian rulers did not push any people out of the region.
Other than the first southern Arabian cities of Sheba, Maan, Qataban, and Hadramut, the first Arab state at the Northern limits of Arab/Arabic peoples was the Nabatean kingdom, which can be positively identified after the arrival of Alexander. They inhabited the areas south and southwest of the Levant (Modern-day Israel, Lebanon, and some of Syria) and about a third of the way down the western Arabian coast. These Arabs are not the same ones that inhabited Mecca, Medina, etc.They slowly moved northward along the Roman frontier (After they arrived of course) through the years but were kept out of the region. The Nabatean Kingdom fell to the status of a province during Trajan's reign. After that, especially following the advance of Islam, Arabs sort of cease to have markedly different groups.
Again, the region's ethnic makeup is static until the arrival of the Islamized Arabs from Southern Arabia. The floodgates were then open for all sorts of movements of Arabs, both southern and northern.
I know that this post was too long, but I had to dispel the absolute falsehood that Jews are Arabs. Jews/Hebrews never were Arabs. Jews, Arabs, Syrians, Canaanites, and others were Semites/Semitic-speakers. This does not mean that all Semites are Arabs. That would be like saying that, since Italics or Germanics* were descended from the same Indo-European body/groups of peoples from which the Greeks or Iranians sprung (As noted in earlier posts, modern-day Iran is peopled by those Iranians descended from the Medes, Parthians and Persians - the Iranian/Iranic group was huge and included the Scythians, Aryans, and others), Italics, Germanics, and others of Western Europe should drop the whole identity thing and just admit that they are Iranians. Lumping ethnic/cultural groups of distant cousins into one group was exactly what Hitler did when he claimed that Germans were Aryans.
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