Sheshbazzar

Hey, if were going to deal with the Biblical texts, we are going to have to deal with the Bible's incitations to hatred, and "ethnic cleansings" that are a part and parcel of those texts, and consider what fallout they have upon the age that we are now living in.

So we got an unsavory "hate-post" about the present ramifications of an ancient hate-text being used to justify hate-acts in the modern world.
Our purpose here is not to take sides in these religious hate-wars, but to analyse the pertinent Biblical texts to determine if they are being correctly understood.

Sheshbazzar

First off, I'll note that if there was no actual Hebrew national Exodus from Egypt, the recorded cause for the hatred and genocidal extermination policy against the Amalekites must have been fabricated to explain the animosity.

Toto

According to Finkelstein, the "genocide" was fabricated to establish the legitimacy of the government, since all legitimate governments of the time established themselves by exterminating an enemy.

I forget now how the religious liberals deal with this passage.

Sheshbazzar

I noted in Wiki under "Amalekites" that:
Seems that how the Jewish authorities interpret and choose to apply these old texts in the modern world might be good for us of this forum to become well informed about,
In that by the interpretation of one of their greatest, most revered and renowned Rabbi's, we are also to be regarded as being "Amalekites"
They might at any time shift their energies and hatred from those difficult and hard to crack Palestinian "Amalekites", to an easier and far less organized group of "Amalekites".

semiopen

There have been a couple of topics started on this subject. I'm curious if this has happenned before on this site.

This interpretation of Amelek is extreme fundamentalist, and revolting to a vast majority of even ultra-orthodox Jews. Judaism has no mechanism for holy war, which I think is called Jihad in one major religion. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can comment on that.

Really... talk about the pot calling the kettle black.

There is no doubt that the world would be a better place without religious hatred.

Sheshbazzar

Interesting, then just like with the story of The Exodus, speaking of actual history, rather than the Biblical propaganda version of "Jewish history",
it is quite possible then, that these much ballyhooed "conquests", enslavement's and mass-massacres never actually took place at all,
or at least were -much- smaller in scale than The Bible "stories" make them out to be, -(they actually only raided a small settlement killed 2 old men and their wives, a couple of cows, and a goat, and took 3 young virgins) but were only cleverly crafted stories to explain and legitimatize the expanding Hebrew presence.
And that rather than there being over 3 million Israelites schlepping around and about the Promised land, there were actually more like 3 hundred, or maybe 3 thousand, who to survive had to resort some very extreme bragging and inflated claims about their tactics, and power, and god, to try to put a scare into the other peoples of that place who really were more numerous and powerful than themselves.
Kind of like that little lizard on National Geographic that puffs up his big ruff and charges.
Certainly that would be a far more likely and benign explanation, but certainly one that fundamentalists, and hate-groupies, whether of "the pot" or of "the kettle" persuasion would be unlikely to be willing to concede to.

semiopen

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.

The conquest is pretty much accepted as not being historic. Finkelstein leans a bit to the minimalist side and is primarily an archeaologist. He regards the Israelites as native to Canaan.

The Amelekite thing that started this is obviously not taken seriously (certainly not literally) by liberal or even the great majority of Jews.

The first post is probably inaccurate though, or at least taken out of context. The extreme fundamentalist problem would be with Hamas which seeks to destroy Israel. I suspect that the word Palestinians in the "quote" is actually Hamas. This view (destruction of Hamas) is extreme, but I think understandable. If it actually says Palestinians, then this is over the line and should be condemned.

Sheshbazzar

Perhaps by educated, secular Jews.

Most of the character's that I have to deal with in real life, and here, however, tend to be uneducated fundamentalist Christians, or just average Americans who have been indoctrinated from childhood onwards to accept this nations "Christian values" and somewhat unconsciously buy into the idea that The Christian KJV Bible really is "Gods infallible word".
They do not read Finkelstein.
Thus I try to "think out loud" in my posts to help along the thought processes of some of the fundamentalist and unlearned types here, whom, unless these these things are presented, examined and spelled out plainly and clearly in front of them, continue to operate on the basic premise that most things happened, more or less, just as they were recorded in their KJV Bible's.
It is much more effective, and far less adversarial, than only waiting for them to finally post some nonsense based upon a non-critical reading of the KJV, and a Christian sermon that they recalled hearing.
This way they can read through a discussion presented on a level that they can easily understand, and have some time to actually think through a matter, and hopefully, arrive at better informed opinions and conclusions, rather than being caught up in a fray where they might think they are morally behoved to defend Mom, Pop, Baseball, Apple Pie, the American God, and the American Way.
Perhaps not, but then again, "Jews" liberal or otherwise do not comprise the majority of readers of this Forum.
And even many Atheists here -use- the "Amalekite thing" as though it were to be taken seriously, and as though those wars and mass-slaughters DID actually take place, and I am certain that many, although they professedly do not believe in god, more or less accept as fact, that these bloody massacres did actually happen, and use the stories repeatedly in their attacks on the morality of the Judeao-Christian God.

As for "Rabbi" Yisrael Rosen, I don't know what his opinions on Finkelstein are, or his opinions on the reliability of Sefer Yehoshua, but apparently he finds the methods of warfare described therein to be both instructive and useful for application to the present situation.
Much has been written both by, and about the opinions of "Rabbi" Yisrael Rosen.
As a Secular Jewish person, you are well aquainted with Rabbi Rosen's writings?
Are they being being taken out of context?
What is your opinion of Rabbi Yisrael Rosen's ideas?

Sheshbazzar

Eretz Yisrael has one of the most well trained, advanced weaponed, and heavily armed militaries in the world.
What would you guess to be the percentage of Israeli Commanding Officers that are from a Religious Jewish background?
Agreed

semiopen

I'm not familiar with this guy. If he is close to as extreme as the original post implied, I totally disagree with him. The original post is inappropriate in any case and stirs up hatred and misunderstanding. Like I said before, if he said Palestinians, this would be despicable, if he said Hamas I'd still disagree but cut him a little slack.

I don't know, my guess would be less than 25%.

My father's family moved to Palestine after WW1 but I've only been there once.

My take on the events is that Hamas made a mistake provoking Israel before the inauguration in the US. This gave Israel a rare opportunity to damage Hamas with decent justification. There may have been instances of excessive force, but personally I suspect most of the questionable incidents were caused by combatants mixed in with innocent civilians as the military has claimed.

It probably should be pointed out that rabbis don't have that much authority. One can't send you to heaven or hell for example.

That's an interesting point, but I suspect it wasn't fabricated. King Saul also was supposed to wipe out the Amelekites and showed some mercy. This suggests it was a folk memory, a fabrication is different.

Theologically, there is no requirement to execute this. In Islam for example, I think there is a reward for killing enemies (or being killed) in a Jihad, etc. There is no reward for killing someone in Judaism. Furthermore, murder is frowned on.