Schumer's speech

Yiddish scholar Michael Wex talks about "blotting out Amalek". The very command guarantees that the memory of Amalek can never be blotted out. Amalek is in Torah and Torah text cannot be altered.

Don't be too quick to take anything in Torah literally. You don't know what the text says since you don't (probably) read it in Hebrew and even if you did read it in Hebrew you have to interpret it in light of ancient (and modern if so inclined) scholarship.

Even if you do fully understand, it's foolish and dangerous to interpret modern events in light of ancient tales.

 

This is why I read rabbinical interpretations and teachings in my time, because they dedicate their life to Torah study.
And it's they who are making these connections. There are 100s of YouTube videos of different rabbis, and Christian ministries make such connections as well.
example:


here is Muslim view of the issue

 

Foolish and dangerous.

 

I'll gladly take your word on that. Using old texts to interpret modern events is a cross-cultural folklore type of thing. Goes back forever. I can remember reading a library book back when I was a teenager, around 1958-9. The author wrote it right in the middle of World War 2 and called every turn of the conflict and what would happen in the future, according to his interpretation of Nostradamus' prophecies.

He was wrong a bunch of times - and predicted events that never happened. About the only thing he got right was that Hitler's guys would lose. I'm glad of that - but the rest of it... c'mon. I'm sure there were many preachers and lay religious folks making war-related prophecies from the Bible, too. Some folks likely attempt to predict election results that way, as well. People do what they do. They turn to whatever sources they believe.

 

The same way fanaticism gets started. Some "leader" turns to religious texts and twists them. His "disciples" follow his command. In recent years, we've all seen the results of that. The leaders know what people around them want to hear.

I'm told Martin Luther's 1543 work, "On the Jews and Their Lies" was pretty popular in Germany in the 1930s and was reprinted . That book advocated persecution and killing of Jews. Luther knew what people around him wanted to hear. So did Mr. H. apparently...

 

URBAN WARFARE EXPERT SAYS ISRAELI MILITARY TAKING UNPRECEDENTED STEPS TO PROTECT GAZA CIVILIANS

"We are now watching a black comedy scene where Israel is pleading with the Palestinian civilians to empty the areas where Hamas terrorists are hiding, so the Israeli forces can target them, while Arab states and even some Western powers and international organizations are urging and even forcing the Palestinian people to remain in a dangerous territory of war," Dalia Ziada, director of MEEM Center for Middle East and East

Mideast neighbors won't offer refuge to Palestinians stuck in Gaza war zone

Egyptian analyst Ziada said the only way to explain the indifference of Arab countries to the suffering of Palestinian civilians is that "Arab leaders do not really want to carry the burden of rescuing them."

"They only chose to curse Israel and sing love to the Palestinians to avoid doubling the outrage against them from their citizens, who are extremely depressed by the leaders’ political and economic failure," she said. "I am sad to say that it is in the best interest of Arab leaders right now for the war to keep going and for the Palestinian civilians to keep suffering, so they have a tool to distract their own people from their failures in running state affairs and as a way to solidify their positions in power for as long as they can."

 

With the notable exception of Jordan at one time, no Arab state grants its nationality to Palestinian refugees. That's odd but I imagine there's some Greater Good to justify it. The U.S. does give refugees a chance to gain our citizenship. I think many countries do.

 

The result is that most Palestinian Arabs, even those born in the camps, are stateless.

Before the "founding" of the wholly fictitious Palestinian State, non-Israeli Palestinians could receive only a "Travel Document" instead of a passport from the Government of Israel and not many countries would admit them. Statelessness is an awful thing.

 

I never researched this, but aren't West bank and East Jerusalem Arabs citizens of Jordan? I thought that, despite Arab League opposition, the inhabitants of the West Bank became citizens of Jordan. Following the 1948 War, Jordan continued to occupy East Jerusalem.
Same for Gaza when it was under Egypt, did they lose their Egyptian citizenship?
Many students, who traveled to US from West bank, have travel documents.

 

No, Lerner, they aren't and that's an excellent point. After the 1948 war, Jordan took over the West Bank and declared its residents to be Jordanian citizens. In 1988, Jordan renounced all claims to the West Bank in favor of the PLO. Palestinian Arabs who had moved outside the West Bank, to Amman, say, retained their Jordanian citizenship but the vast majority who stayed were de-naturalized so that they could become citizens of a new Palestinian State. That State never came into being (in any real sense) so those people are stateless.

I don't know why Jordan did this.

 

Smotrich just announced Israel's annexation of another chunk of the West Bank and spoke of Israel's right to possess Judea and Samaria and the government's intent to settle that land. That's the West Bank folks. Smotrich is a Religious Zionist and a Minister in the current government. There is no two state solution and the government of Israel has no intention ever to permit an effective Palestinian State. As to what Smotrich and his like have in mind for the Arab inhabitants, as far as I can see, they don't consider them to have any rights.

The story is on MSN.COM

 

A real war is coming to the Middle East. It may arrive any day now. And Israel may find herself fighting alone.

 

People have been saying that for a while. And there are plenty of articles from credible sources to support that. Here's one:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-ten-middle-east-conflicts-are-converging-into-one-big-war

 

Is Bible prophecy unfolding in our day and time?
There will be trouble like never before, and for students of prophecy, redemption will come at such troubles of Jacob.

Zechariah 12:3–4, God says, “I will make Jerusalem like an intoxicating drink that makes the nearby nations stagger when they send their armies to besiege Jerusalem and Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock. All the nations will gather against it to try to move it, but they will only hurt themselves”

 

No. It's not. That's not how Jews traditionally view the Prophets. There is no "end times" notion and most of the prophetic books were written AFTER the events they proclaim. If you absolutely insist on reading something about today in Daniel or Jeramiah or whoever you will have to deal with the lack of a messiah. That kind of thinking is mostly Christian.

 

Look, Lerner. My post #72 above is a much closer example of Jewish prophecy than end times stuff.

 

To me prophecy is word of G-d delivered by the prophet who is a spokesman of G-d. It's usually conditional with more than one outcome.
Almost like IF statement in programming.
Yes, we can make predictions based on many factors and you made a reasonable prediction.
Prophecy is not prediction.
Yet, I understand what you are saying and share some of the concerns.

 

Exactly. That's the Christian idea. Be careful about applying that idea to Jewish prophetic books. Often, very often, those books are written to express ideas in a kind of code so as to avoid irritating the authorities. You cannot take them literally!

 

I think the ideas are as Jewish as they can be. I would add that Christianity is a Jewish idea as well.
But it's another discussion.
Just like the messianic revolt that caused Roman's to name the Land of Israel as Syria Palestina in attempt to punish the Jews.