quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Lisa, do you live in Israel or America? Forgive my confusion, but you use "we" and "us" when referring to America, Jews and Israelis. Or, do you live in one place and have dual citizenship?
I live in Chicago at the moment. My ex and two of my children live in Israel. We came to the US so that I could adopt my daughter that I live with now, and my partner doesn't want to move back. Not an excuse, really, but there it is.
And yes, I have dual citizenship, though that doesn't really matter. The Land of Israel belongs to the Jews; not to the State of Israel. That state is, on its best day, a caretaker.
You don't have to be so defensive, I was asking an honestly curious question, not attacking you.
My apologies. I didn't mean to come across as defensive. I actually do feel extremely guilty about being here rather than there. Maybe that came through.
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: StarLisa, you're scary. Scary in the way that religious fanatics everywhere are scary.
And you're offensive. Offensive in the way that bigots everywhere are offensive.
Oh come on Lisa, you aren't seriously calling him an anti-semite are you? You can't call someone an bigot just because they disagree with you. You're going to sound as silly as the Detroit City Council sounded last week when they called the white suburbs racist and said we were treating Detroit like a plantation because Detroit is mismanaging itself. Playing the race/bigot/anti-semite card should only be used in rare cases, otherwise it affects all future claims when it's thrown about so wildly.
Either I misunderstood you, or I missed a lot of what FlyingCow was saying in his posts, because I just don't see it.
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I would appreciate it if we got back on track, not that personal attacks or the perception of such is unimportant but threads that start to drone on about "he said, she said" get old and need putting down.
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: StarLisa, you're scary. Scary in the way that religious fanatics everywhere are scary.
And you're offensive. Offensive in the way that bigots everywhere are offensive.
Oh come on Lisa, you aren't seriously calling him an anti-semite are you?
Lyrhawn, this is why I refused for about a month to reply to anything you posted. You did this wrong. If you are unable to read the simple words that I wrote, and are confused, ask me if I said X. In this case, "Are you calling him an anti-semite?" See? Isn't that easy? As to what you actually did write, I'll ignore you and stick with answering people who don't try and pretend that I said something which I never said.
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The cartoon violence thing has receded somewhat in recent days. Nothing big enough to make the news anyway. Not that the argument can't continue for days and days and days afterwards, but it's less immediate now that they aren't burning KFCs anymore.
Not that the burning of KFCs ever made any sense to begin with. I'm both eternally amused and disgusted that no matter who pisses the violent muslim faction, they always take a shot at America along with it. "Damn Denmark! AND KFC!" As if we had anything to do with, and is all the more ironic seeing as how the American media has been tripping over itself to rush to the defense of Muslims, and even more so the American government.
If they're going to burn our overseas businesses and attack our embassies for totally unrelated 'crimes' we might as well show the damned cartoons anyway.
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quote:Originally posted by FlyingCow: StarLisa, you're scary. Scary in the way that religious fanatics everywhere are scary.
And you're offensive. Offensive in the way that bigots everywhere are offensive.
Oh come on Lisa, you aren't seriously calling him an anti-semite are you?
Lyrhawn, this is why I refused for about a month to reply to anything you posted.
Best month ever.
quote: You did this wrong. If you are unable to read the simple words that I wrote, and are confused, ask me if I said X. In this case, "Are you calling him an anti-semite?" See? Isn't that easy? As to what you actually did write, I'll ignore you and stick with answering people who don't try and pretend that I said something which I never said.
How am I supposed to tell the difference? You've been so fond of calling people anti-semites in the past and then taking what looks like glee in their heated defenses and your snarky replies. How is anyone to assume that when you call someone a bigot, after he's thrown down a gauntlet a Jew, that you are in fact referring to some other sort of bigotry?
Allow me to apologize however (not that I think it's deserved, but you have some delicate sensibilities for what you consider to be misworded paragraphs) for apparently misinterpreting you this time, and to ask what exactly you meant by calling FlyingCow a bigot?
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Lisa, you DID call him a "bigot," at least if we grant that he called you a "religious fanatic." (And I don't think the latter definition is one you find insulting or offensive, IIRC; you've claimed it yourself several times.) If he's not bigoted against Jews -- by definition, anti-Semitic -- in what way is he a bigot?
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Actually all Israelis are Semetic, but not all Semetic people are Israeli. Some Jews are Semitic, but not all Jews are semetic. Does your head hurt? It shouldnt Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Posted by starLisa: It's not evil to stamp out evil.
Originally posted by Juxtapose: No, but how you go about doing it might be. Displacing a massive number of people, robbing them of their possessions, and leaving them in the desert (or whereever) sounds pretty evil to me. Especially since you don't seem particularly interested in determining who's actually guilty of aiding enemy terrorists and who isn't.
Originally posted by starLisa: They're very much aware that their decentralization makes it next to impossible for anyone to fight them if they insist on trying to specify who is directly involved in the war and who isn't.
Again, these are the actions and strategies of the terrorists, and you propose punishing civilians for it. And I'm going to take it that, by your continued unwillingness to deny it, you do indeed have little or no interest in determining which civilians are actually guilty of aiding terrorism.
quote:But even aside from that, that's war. You don't have to like it, but if you start it, expect to get your a** handed to you.
Yes, that's war. And in war minimizing harm to enemy civilians is both laudable and pragmatic.
Indifference to those civilians is bordering on evil, and pretty stupid to boot. Why piss off thousands more people than you absolutely have to?
But then, you've proposed going beyond that. You've proposed holding Palestinian communities hostage against the terrorists. Which kind of sounds like something a terrorist might do. But hey, fight fire with fire, right?
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Actually all Israelis are Semetic, but not all Semetic people are Israeli. Some Jews are Semitic, but not all Jews are semetic. Does your head hurt? It shouldnt
Anti-semitism does not mean being against Semites. It means Jew-hatred. That's what the word means. You can't reduce something to etymologies. "You're pulling my leg" has nothing to do with yanking on a lower extremity. Homophobia doesn't mean fear of similarity.
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But gay does mean happy. Bigotry is bigotry no matter what direction it is in. But I'm just flapping my fingers (not gums, because I'm not talking) and I guess I'm not LITERALLY flapping my fingers...but you get the point.
posted
So, to clarify, you DO think he's an anti-Semite? That FlyingCow hates Jews because he disapproves of your proposed methods?
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Eventually, someone other than Tom is going to ask me why I called him a bigot. It may take a while, because I imagine that most people here are intelligent enough to know what I meant. But I won't respond to Tom, and I won't respond to anyone obnoxious enough to actually assert that they know what I meant when they clearly don't.
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No starLisa I am in fact saying that you can be antisemetic without hating Jews. Yes it is typically used that way but that is not a good thing as look at the group of people that all fall under the label "semite"
Semite: A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
anyway I have no interest in arguing about antisemitism (if thats the right suffix) I was only interested in discussing the anti muslim sentiment that I think is prevalent today in Europe. As nobody else seems to care, I am done with this thread unless it gets interesting again.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: No starLisa I am in fact saying that you can be antisemetic without hating Jews.
No, Blade. You can't. That's an oxymoron. You see, that's what the word means. It doesn't mean that you don't like Semites. Words mean what they mean. Not what you deduce from their etymologies.
White people are not white. It's just a word that's used. They're actually a light pink, for the most part. Black people are generally brown. When a person is horny, it doesn't mean that they have antlers coming out of their head, and the fact that you're so incredibly lame doesn't mean that you walk funny.
Though you may; who knows?
Emerson said that "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." I'd add that a foolish literalism is the hallmark of a fool and a pedant.
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quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Semite: A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.
Yeah, God forbid you deign to argue with someone who's capable of pointing out the flaws in your argument.
-----
BTW, Blade, give it a rest. Denying Lisa a special word that's commonly used to uniquely describe the act of hating her specific people doesn't actually increase conversational clarity.
That said, it's not yet clear that she was actually accusing FlyingCow of being anti-Semitic; he might simply be in her opinion some other sort of bigot.
quote:The term anti-Semitism has historically referred to prejudice towards Jews alone, and this was the only use of this word for more than a century. It does not traditionally refer to prejudice toward other people who speak Semitic languages (e.g. Arabs or Syriacs). Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University, says that "Anti-Semitism has never anywhere been concerned with anyone but Jews."[2] In recent decades some groups have argued that the term should be extended to include prejudice against Arabs, Anti-Arabism, in the context of accusations of Arab anti-Semitism; further, some, including the Islamic Association of Palestine, have argued that this implies that Arabs can not, by definition, be anti-Semitic, despite the acknowledged high level of Arab anti-Semitism. The argument for such extension comes out of the claim that since the Semitic language family includes Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic languages, and the historical term "Semite" refers to all those who consider themselves descendants of the Biblical Shem, anti-Semitism should be likewise inclusive. This usage is not generally accepted.
Of course, were the usage to become generally accepted, then Lisa's argument would no longer be correct. Words' meanings can change over time. But, as of now, Lisa is right.
Attempts to extend "anti-Semitism" to cover other people considered to be descendents of Shem are often made by people seeking cover for their own hatred of Jews.
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quote:Words mean what they mean. Not what you deduce from their etymologies.
But what determines what words mean? They often don't simply mean whatever they are used to mean, as shown by the fact that words can be used wrongly. There are several factors, but to some degree, their etymologies also influence what they mean. When something is anti-X, the word can typically be used to mean against whatever X is. Words can also mean different things in different instances to different people.
In this case, I don't think it makes a difference. Whether you are someone who hates ONLY Jews, or someone who hates all Semite peoples, you'd still be bigoted and wrong. Which label you apply is arbitrary when both concepts behind the labels are equally wrong.
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Well, I certainly hope someone pops on this thread soon to explain what Lisa meant, she has apparently been rendered unable to do so herself.
I guess it's easier to type a snarky post, than to actually explain what really isn't all that clear. But hey, whatever floats your boat Lisa.
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Thanks, KarlEd. It's nice to know that some people here are capable of reading without that giant chip on their shoulder sneaking around and obscuring their eyesight. That's exactly what I was referring to.
When someone rules out a possibility because they've labeled it as "religious fanaticism", and therefore not worthy of consideration, that's bigotry, plain and simple. To bigots like FlyingCow, anyone who sees God and our relationship with God as anything real, rather than a quaint superstition, is the same. It doesn't matter whether God is telling you to help poor people or blow up journalists. It's all the same to people like FlyingCow.
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quote:It doesn't matter whether God is telling you to help poor people or blow up journalists. It's all the same to people like FlyingCow.
I don't quite understand. Isn't it the same to YOU? Because as you've pointed out, that land is yours because you believe God said so. You are willing to kill for that land. You are also willing to die for that land, help poor people for that land, etc.
In other words, what you do for that land -- provided you do not violate the laws of your hypothetical God -- doesn't matter as much as the "fact" that God gave it to you.
As far as I can tell, the fact that some people kill for their superstitions and other people heal the poor on behalf of other superstitions is, from FlyingCow's point of view, the only important distinction between those two groups (as opposed to being, as you claim, irrelevant to him). To YOU, on the other hand, the distinction is that your superstition is "correct," not that your superstition is more ethical or merciful or constructive.
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Oooh, alright. Now I see what you're saying. I still think you're wrong, and I think you're missing what FlyingCow was saying, or you caught it and are ignoring it.
You're advocating the mass expulsion of a people who've been where they are for thousands of years, and if they resist, well, you haven't really covered what you want to do if they resist, but you don't seem to have any mercy in mind for them. And all because you see Israel as the land of the Jews given by God. He's comparing that to the level of fanatacism that those who kill in the name of Allah are branded with.
While, for the moment, I think that comparison is a little extreme, because I see a distinction between a thought crime and a physical crime (a distinction YOU don't make, by the way), and I think he's off base, that doesn't mean he's bigoted towards all people of religious faith. You don't have near enough information to make that kind of assertion.
Hey, does my defense of FlyingCow make me a bigot too?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:When someone rules out a possibility because they've labeled it as "religious fanaticism", and therefore not worthy of consideration, that's bigotry, plain and simple. To bigots like FlyingCow, anyone who sees God and our relationship with God as anything real, rather than a quaint superstition, is the same. It doesn't matter whether God is telling you to help poor people or blow up journalists. It's all the same to people like FlyingCow.
See, that can also be applied to you, starLisa. You don't get to call other people bigots just because they disagree with you. Well, you can, but you'd be wrong. But you are a bigot if this fits:
quote:One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ.
Hate to tell you - again - but it fits.
Near as I can tell, the only thing Flying Cow is guilty of is disagreeing with you.
If that makes Flying Cow a bigot, that makes me one, too.
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