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Jewish problems

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Re: Jewish problems

#171

Post by rubashov »

mdasen wrote: post #46
cheez wrote: post #21

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

> Jews were seen as people with divided loyalties

But they very often ARE people with divided loyalties! Several folks in the Obama and Bush administrations have had Israeli passports. To me, that's completely crazy.

Henry Kissinger, a patriotic American if nothing else, talked openly about how the US relationship with Israel makes no strategic sense. His fellow Jews viciously attacked him for the most part.

Re: Jewish problems

#172

Post by iskander »

TheDroids wrote: post #60
TheDroids wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably has a lot to do with things like AIPAC (the largest lobby in the US) and Zionism. I'm guessing this is just the tip of the iceberg though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_lobby_in_the_United_Stat...

Wow, I watched myself go from +3 to now -3 Either I made some sense (pointing out that AIPAC or Zionism could be a reason for hatred) or these guys just showed up in the thread: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Internet_Defense_Force http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Defense_League

This isn't reddit, and it definitely isn't /r/politics. Your tone is out of place on news.yc and people are downvoting you because you're diminishing the quality of the discussion.

Re: Jewish problems

#173

Post by TheDroids »

burgerbrain wrote: post #164
ericd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person you're responding to is saying that the zionist movement is a major reason for modern antisemitism. That antisemitism predates the zionist movement has no power to refute his point, unless the reasons for antisemitism have been static throughout history, which they haven't.

I don't think he's attempting to give a formal proof, he's just saying that TheDroids argument doesn't pass a basic sniff test.

This is getting a little ridiculous. Especially now that I'm at -53.

Why would I get downvoted into oblivion for merely stating two relevant reasons for modern day antisemitism? These are facts.

If you don't think AIPAC or Zionism could lead to more antisemitism, I don't know what to tell you. What are you people even arguing against? Just being pedantic? Or maybe ghostdownvoters are downvoting anything that seems critical of Israel? Wouldn't doubt it.

Re: Jewish problems

#174

Post by Tycho »

cheez wrote: post #21

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

The only convincing reason I know of is that while from the middle ages onwards, Christians (and Muslims) were banned in the bible from issuing loans with payable interest, the book of Deuteronomy had a get-out clause for Jews: they were only barred from issuing such loans to their 'brothers. ie. eachother

This would have three logical consequences: Jewish people becoming masters of finance; Jewish people helping their own community over others; and Jewish people obtaining all the disrepute that comes with being a loan shark. You can see how all 3 things would breed resentment/jealousy from other ethnic groups.

Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice cuts to the heart of the matter. Shylock offers the financing needed by the protagonists - but such financing by necessity comes with brutal collateral ('a pound of flesh'). People see the heartless lender exacting payment, but not the underlying laws of economics.

Re: Jewish problems

#175

Post by alecbenzer »

mdasen wrote: post #46
cheez wrote: post #21

Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Slightly irrelevant to the overall topic, but what is the reason for not spelling out God's name? iirc someone once told me that it was wrong to ever erase or otherwise "dispose" of God's written name, so it'd be wrong to, for example, write "God" on a whiteboard and then have to erase it later. Is this the case? (if so, it seems like writing it on HN might be okay) Or are you just not supposed to write it out at all?

Re: Jewish problems

#176

Post by alecbenzer »

johnyzee wrote: post #95
mdasen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering as someone Jewish. . . Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today an…

Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is. If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated: Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add to the mix the fact that Jews…

> the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is.

http://xkcd.com/915/ relevant?

Re: Jewish problems

#177

Post by srl »

berntb wrote: post #160
srl wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Jewish American here] From my perspective (in my ultra-liberal enclave in the east), a large part of the criticism isn't that Israel's policies are objectively bad - one can hardly expect a country surrounded by its worst enemies to have a polite attitude toward said folk. The criticism is that we, in America (and until recently, throughout much of the west) are giving them disproportionate (military and otherwise)…

>>until recently, throughout much of the west You should see my local Swedish media... The reason I follow this is not that I care about Middle East politics -- it is because I am shocked about my local media. I have compared Swedish media with BBC and NY Times since 7-8 years. Some subjects are more or less censored in Sweden. Things like torture between Palestinian groups have been cut out since the 1990s, Pallywoo…

Now very OT, but:

_I have compared Swedish media with BBC and NY Times since 7-8 years_

Neither of which is, in my experience, particularly reliable (although there's less of the blatant bias/censorship that you described). Comparing them against AJE (which has had it's own issues of late, in the /same/ direction) reveals that their reporting is severely biased toward sensational stories - every article needs a good guy, and bad guy, a winner, and a looser. And the good guy is then implied to be aligned with American interests, even if they're Al Qaeda-backed "islamists"[1] (not to say that said folk aren't aligned with American interests at times).

[1] Which can be interpreted anywhere from "Muslim" to "what Glenn Beck said".

Re: Jewish problems

#178

Post by dimitar »

sethg wrote: post #153
graupel wrote: post #144

As a Jewish American, the biggest question I have is "How does any college/institution know that I (or my children) are Jewish?" We don't have a particularly Jewish last name, have some Irish mixed in with an Eastern European background, etc - without putting "Fluent in Yiddish" and "President of Temple Beth Sholom" on a resume, I don't see how anyone would ever pick us out from the crowd as being Jewish. I can see h…

In the USSR, everyone had their ethnic identity listed on their government-issued identification.

This is true, its the infamous "Fifth point" on many different IDs (they had a system internal passports to keep people in check). It was really easy for any official to discriminate if he wanted to and hard not to when its the policy.

The USSR wasn't "politically correct" in the modern Western view of the word. The party line and the state policies were fact in fact sometimes wildly discriminatory.

Those ethnic issues are a big reason USSR broke up.

Re: Jewish problems

#179

Post by nivertech »

maxbrown wrote: post #163
jessedhillon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken like someone whose never set foot outside the Western world. The main reason this sort of attitude pisses me off is because it assumes -- arrogantly -- that hundreds of thousands of people stayed in the USSR because they were not as determined/motivated as some kid on HN. You simply have no clue how uninformed you are about the reality of that situation at that time. Hiding under a train carriage to escape the…

While your "pissed-off"-ness may be overstated for HN, I very much appreciate your comment. Thanks. My (Jewish) great-grandmother left the USSR in the late 1910's hidden in a hay cart at the bottom of a freight ship. I wouldn't be here today if not for that feat.

There wasn't USSR in 1910, it was called a Russian Empire then.

Re: Jewish problems

#180

Post by maxbrown »

nivertech wrote: post #179
maxbrown wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While your "pissed-off"-ness may be overstated for HN, I very much appreciate your comment. Thanks. My (Jewish) great-grandmother left the USSR in the late 1910's hidden in a hay cart at the bottom of a freight ship. I wouldn't be here today if not for that feat.

There wasn't USSR in 1910, it was called a Russian Empire then.

Ah, my mistake. I believe it was pre and right around the revolution, so it was certainly the Russian Empire, not the USSR.
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