Constitution
Health care law – does it discriminate?
The health care law has been in the news ever since Obama’s 2008 campaign. Of course this wasn’t the first attempt at government-run health care. Hillary Clinton’s attempt in the 1990s failed to gain public support, and her politically savvy husband ultimately abandoned any idea of a health care law. It is hard to say whether or not the man now occupying the White House is politically savvy. So much of what he has done is contrary to the public’s will. This behavior has left us with puzzling observations and many legitimate questions about his motives.
Incompetent or power-hungry?
The US Constitution. Photo: National Archives of the United States
Some speculate that he’s just not that smart. Others contend that he has been immensely successful in achieving his goal to either destroy this Republic or “change” into an unrecognizable socialistic state. Of course his power grabs and public statements leave us no doubt that he has little regard for the US Constitution and much prefers international law to our Rule of Law here in the states. Let’s not forget that he has told the world that we are not a Christian nation, nor celebrated our national day of prayer. But he has celebrated Ramadan and has stated that the sound of Muslim prayers is the most beautiful sound in the world. We should also not forget that he has not been able to find an acceptable Christian church in the entire beltway to attend.
Any man or woman living in these United States is entitled to worship as they please. That is not the point of this discussion. Bias and discrimination are.
Health care law and religion
How does all of this relate to health care? The answer is that it might more than anyone imagined.
If you compare his background and his statements to his actions, I believe it is fair to say that Barack Hussein Obama is most likely either a Muslim or at least sympathizes more with the Muslim religion than the Christian religion. Again, it is important to state loud and clear that in a country that protects our right to worship as we please, his choice of religion is not the issue. Furthermore, if you are going to ask about discrimination, you should at least ask what the person you are accusing of discrimination believes. That is why logic dictates that these anomalies between what he says he believes and what he states in various venues become part of the assessment.
Given all the above, the point I would like to draw to everyone’s attention in the health care bill is the violation of Catholic organization’s right to believe whatever they wish and their right to exercise that belief. Our Founders understood that to keep their right to worship freely, they had to protect everyone’s right to worship freely. That is a principle firmly protected in our First Amendment. The power-grabbing man who now occupies our White House apparently does not appreciate the wisdom of our Founding Fathers or of our First Amendment. He believes he has the right to dictate the limits of our freedom to worship as he sees fit. Thus the bias he has exercised has a firm base to rest upon – albeit an unconstitutional one.
I am referring to the waiver in the health care bill for Muslims based on their faith, without any request from them or any discussion by our elected officials who passed this monstrosity of a bill. This is not an administrative waiver from the HHS Secretary. (That the health care bill lets the Secretary grant such waivers, subject only to her whims, is bad enough, but beyond scope here.) FactCheck.org found that HHS had granted no such waivers to specific Muslim groups—as of two years ago. But the Senators who wrote the health care bill baked a generalized waiver into it, by borrowing key phrases from the Social Security Act. See here for how that part of the health care law reads, and here for how that works for Muslims. Any religion, like Islam, that forbids insurance, gets a pass from buying it, so long as it existed as of December 31, 1950.
No such waiver was extended to the Catholics, whose teachings forbid contraception – even after much national protest by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. This makes the waiver discriminatory. Either Mr. Obama should rescind the religious waiver he gave to the Muslims, or he should extend one to the Catholics as well – not to do so is discriminatory. Unfortunately, that’s not all that unusual a decision from a man who seems to believe all the hype that he is god-like. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised when he starts acting like a god.
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RoseAnn Salanitri is a published author and Acquisition Editor for the New Jersey Family Policy Council. She is a community activist who has founded the Sussex County Tea Party in her home state and launched a recall movement against Senator Robert Menendez. RoseAnn is also the founder of Veritas Christian Academy, as well as co-founder of Creation Science Alive, and a national creation science speaker.
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Why do you not mention that the broad exemption is not targeted at Muslims?
This post spends a lot of time talking about how Obama is “likely” Muslim or “sympathizes with” Muslims, but also tucks away a sentence and link which states that the discriminatory exemption was simply taken from older legislation and that it equally exempts Amish, American Indians, and Christian Scientists in addition to Muslims.
While the question of if a religious exemptions contained within the PPACA as well as the Social Security Act are discrimination can still be discussed, the tying of this clause to Obama and his suspected personal beliefs feels like a stretch. There is over 50 years of precedent for these kinds of clauses in “insurance” legislation and whether good or bad they are the default and standard.
Funny. Progressives always judge a law or a practice by its effects and not its manifest intent or language. Which is what the original author did in this case.
And do you have any evidence, other than speculation, that it was intended specifically for Muslims?
For that I would have to get inside the putative President’s head, and that is not a place I would want to go, even were that technically feasible.
But it’s a very neat trick, no matter how you look at it.
So… this is pure speculation with absolutely no physical evidence (documents, whistleblowers, etc.) to back it up. It seems to me, Terry, that you just want to make Obama look bad. There are far better ways you could do that. For example: He signed an extension to the highly unpopular PATRIOT Act. Everyone was angry at that, even his staunchest supporters. Or maybe the drone strike that recently killed a 16-year-old U.S. citizen in Yemen (who just happened to be the son of ANOTHER U.S. citizen killed in Yemen a few months before). Don’t stick with conspiracy theories, Terry. Obama, like every President, has made very real and very blatant blunders. Pound him on the head with those.
Well, at least you don’t defend Obama completely. Of course, Anwar al-Awlaki was very likely guilty of subornation of mass murder, but we’ll overlook that.
It’s less that Anwar was suspected of a terrible crime, but more so that he was punished for that crime without due process. As an American citizen, he should be subject to a trial, and given the chance to be heard. And let’s not forget his son, who as far as we know, committed no crime whatsoever. The Pentagon won’t even explain what THAT strike was for. Perhaps the reason everyone over there hates us so much is because our power is going to our heads. As a famous comic book character once said: “With great power comes great responsibility”, and we’re not doing very well with the responsibility bit. It’s a pity that both of our Presidential candidates are shameless purveyors of the crony Capitalism that got us in this mess.
The reason that those people hate us is that we have thwarted their bloodthirsty aims.
You’re looking at the results, not the cause. There has been a growing hatred for the Western nations in the Middle East for a very long time. That hatred reached its boiling point in 9/11. And they certainly had every right to hate us. We’ve been screwing them over since WWII. And now they’re trying to cause WWIII just to get back at us.
And just how have we been “screwing them over”? As I see it, we’ve locked ourselves into a Faustian bargain: we use our military muscle to keep the Russians and the Chinese from seizing their oil by force, in return for them taking dollars for payment and buying US government bonds with them. The whole thing is, of course, anathema to Muslims. I imagine that the Koran forbids that just as much as it forbids insurance.
Or are you really talking about Israel? So often, it all comes back to Israel, and especially whether it should exist.
Yes, part of the problem is Israel. Look at it from the Pakistani persective: They’ve been living there for years, and suddenly, just after the most destructive war the world has ever seen, a bunch of Western countries roll they’re armies in and say this: “Hey, guys, you know this land you’ve been living in since the days of the Crusades? This is all ours now. You will be forced out of your homes and thrown into crowded and dirty slums, where your new Jewish neighbors will proceed to degrade and abuse you. Don’t fret if the new country blows up your shop or massacres a few of you every once in a while to prove who’s boss. I hope we can live in peace and prosperity.” That land did not belong to us. We took it by force, and then we make out the people who want it back as the bad guys. Are you saying that if a foreign country took your home by force and confined you to the basement, you wouldn’t be a tad bit angry?
And that’s a start. Have you even heard about the atrocities we’ve committed in Iraq and Afghanistan? Thanks to Wikileaks, we know that we’ve killed as many civilians over there as we have enemy combatants. Our presence has utterly destroyed both countries’ economies and government, with very little chance of recovery within a reasonable time frame.
And the Russians and China? They aren’t even trying to take their oil by force. The Soviets tried in the eighties, and they got their asses kicked. Besides, both countries have plenty of oil themselves. You’re just employing the tried-and-true Red Scare technique: blame the communists. Communists have no hold in the Middle East, and if they did , the natives would repel them just as vehemently as they have us.
In conclusion: Our presence in the Middle East has been nothing but a massive screw-up, and we should just leave as soon as possible. Al-Qaeda have been all but destroyed and the Taliban have been routed. Our enemies lie in ashes. We have no reason to be there. We have done nothing to help the native population, and thousands of soldiers have died. We should just leave them alone.
You didn’t mean Pakistani. You meant something called “Palestinian.” But your perspective is all wrong. In fact, you have bought into a totally mendacious narrative. Not (necessarily) your fault, but the very idea of an “indigenous” Arab people called “Palestinian” is a lie many times over. No, Bdor24, they have not been living there since the Crusades. The Turks chased the Crusaders out, but they didn’t chase out the remnant of the Jews. Jews have maintained a continuous presence there since Joshua. Then in the late nineteenth century, the Turks sold land to the first kibbuzim. And they laughed themselves silly, all the way to the bank, thinking, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they really plow a field in the swamp and the desert sand?” (Cf. Nehemiah ch. 5.)
Surprise, surprise, surprise! That’s exactly what they did! They planted eucalyptus to drain the swamp, and invented new irrigation techniques to reclaim the desert. Then some Arabs started to move into that land, to work for the Jews that were relocating there.
The Ottomans treated the region with benign neglect. Then, of course, Lawrence of Arabia organized the Arab armies east of the Jordan to drive Johnny Turk out. The Arabs took over, and they didn’t know what to do.
And the abuse on the part of the Jews? Total fabrication. All the abuse has occurred on the Arab side. I cite the Hebron Massacre in 1929. I cite the riots in Jerusalem, which the Grand Mufti (Yasser Arafat’s Uncle Haj) started. And: did you know that the Grand Mufti went to work for Adolf Hitler? He even egged Hitler on. Result: the Holocaust.
You should at least read my review of Michael Curtis’ Should Israel Exist?. Then follow the Amazon Carousel link on that page and get the book.
Now I called the Petrodollar System a Faustian bargain for a reason. Of course, part of my plan to bug out of there is to drill here at home. Would you go along with that?
Finally, I’d like to see what you will have to say when the Israelis strike oil on their territory.
“As an American citizen, he should be subject to a trial, and given the chance to be heard. And let’s not forget his son, who as far as we know, committed no crime whatsoever.”
Not if he’s in an Al Qaeda training camp in Yemen. By being there he forfeited his right to the protection of the US legal system. The same goes for his son. If you don’t want a Hellfire up the bum, don’t hang around terrorist camps. It’s really not rocket science. Basically they both died of stupid.
I’m a little taken aback. Did you just say that we should NOT judge laws by what they do?
A law absolutely should be judged on its merits as a law. Do you not believe that meritocracy is a good way to evaluate things?
To say a law is bad/wrong/poor just because the author was bad/stupid/evil or was thinking bad/wrong/evil things about the general topic while writing is a gratuitous and transparent Ad Hominem fallacy.
Actually, no. All I’m saying is that you have judged laws by what they do in the past, but now you try to judge this law by what you would have me believe is its intent.
That’s a very nice history lesson Terry, and yes, I was wrong about how long they were there. However, this does not excuse the very blatant Human Rights abuses the Israeli have committed. The Palestinians are robbed, raped, and murdered daily by the Israeli, and they can’t even leave their situation because the borders are closed. This is not fabrication. The Palestinians don’t have the funds or resources to fake anything. You are simply choosing to ignore the sleights committed by the side you support (the Israeli). Don’t get me wrong. The Palestinians have done a lot of wrong too. Terrorist attacks don’t exactly add sympathy to their cause. But as long as the Israelis keep abusing those they have power over, there will always be strife in the middle east.
And what will I say if Israel has oil? “Good for you, Israel. Now what does this have to do with the Palestinians you are abusing?”
And that’s the other part of the false narrative that you have swallowed—hook, line and sinker, it seems. All those tales of “blatant human rights abuses” are lies. I challenge you to prove any of them, independently of anti-Jewish and/or pro-Arab sources.
The beauty of your response, Terry, is that you’ve made your argument bulletproof. You are now capable of dismissing all of my sources as “Anti-Israel Sources”. Conservatives are pro-Israel, so I can’t cite them, and I can’t cite the government, because as Israel’s allies, they won’t speak out against it.
In good faith, however, I will cite my best source: A documentary by Lisa Ling: link to snagfilms.com
In this documentary, Lisa Ling investigates a growing movement of female suicide bombers among the Palestinians. By actually tracing back their reasons for the bombings, Ling is able to determine what the cause is: Israel’s abuse. And she only scratches the surface with it, too. Thanks to the Internet, you can find stories of Israel’s behavior with a few clicks of a mouse.
You have got to be kidding!
Do you seriously think those women are telling the truth???
I can tell you what’s really going on. You forget that Arabs treat their women like dirt. Like property. And in this case, like the lowliest kind of throw-away. These women have suffered rape, all right—at the hands of Arab men. Then they are told either to do this thing or they’ll bury them up to their necks and throw stones at them.
This is the worst sort of atrocity. It is utterly without excuse. And that you would apologize for this sort of behavior is totally unworthy of you.
Furthermore, the Obama administration are not Israel’s friends. Obama proved that last year, with his “1967 borders” speech.
I can’t wrap my mind around this. You actually believe that you are laying a foundation for your premise that Jews are behaving, in effect, like Nazis? You have done no such thing. You have only shown how gullible you really are.
A helpful tip, Terry: study the source I give you before criticizing it. It really helps.
First, the reason the phenomena of female suicide bombers is so interesting is purely BECAUSE the women are acting so independent. There are currently terrorist cells in Israel and beyond made up ENTIRELY of women, from the lowest of grunts to the organizers of the entire operation. No man is forcing them to do these things.
Second, the Jews are not acting like Nazis. If they did, the Palestinians would already be gone. However, a government does not have to stoop to full-blown genocide to commit human rights abuses. Like many governments in the world, they received too much power over a single group and that power went to their heads. That’s how many oppressive regimes get started. And I should note: while the survivors of the Holocaust would take steps to avoid becoming an oppressive power, they are no longer in power. Their descendants, their sons and daughters, those who haven’t been under the thumb of tyranny have taken command. Taking that into account, it’s not all that surprising that they’ve become a tyrannical power in the world.
Third, if I’m so gullible, than give me actual, tangible proof that I’m being lied too. I base my arguments on the evidence provided, and on your side, I find it sorely lacking. Please, prove me wrong. Give me proof.
If what you have so far said of those female suicide bombers is true, then so much the worse for them. They have bought into a culture of death. That same culture brings death to any Arab who sells land to a Jew.
Understand this: the name Palestinian is a made-up name. On the other hand, I have visited Israeli cities that have Arab neighborhoods. Arabs have all the privileges and immunities of citizenship in Israel, so long as they’re willing to be peaceable. In fact, they get one privilege not available to Jews: they’re exempt from the draft. Of course, that’s because the Tzahal know better than to include a possible fifth column in their ranks.
It’s easy for liberals to accuse conservatives anywhere of being oppressive. Absurdity seems lost on you people.
It can never be lost on me. I’ve traveled in Israel. I’ve eaten in a cafeteria, presided over by a man who lost his arm fighting somewhere. I’ve looked those people in the eye, looking for the guilty conscience that, by your logic, they ought to have. And I never found it.
Tell you what. Why don’t you use the search field on the home page, on the word Israel? Or better yet, read this article. That about explains it all, a lot better than I can.
Yes, they have been brought up in a culture of death. That is what extremism does to a culture. But this is no excuse for the atrocities committed by the Israeli government. The thing you don’t seem to get, Terry, is that the blame for today’s violence does not rest with only one side. Both sides have done terrible, inexcusable things. I do not defend the Arabs that DO blow up hospitals and orphanages. I defend the people that have no plans to do so, but are punished for the crimes of their brethren.
What do you mean, Palestinian is a made up name? All names are made up! Your parents made up the name ‘Terry A. Hurlbut’ for you, didn’t they? The name wasn’t just floating up in space, waiting for you to claim it. It was created by another human being. In this case, the name ‘Palestinian’ refers to the Arab ethnic group that currently inhabits the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and none more than that.
The ‘Arab neighborhoods’ argument is a fallacious argument that I have heard before. Those aren’t actual Palestinians, the people that lived in Israel before it was taken; they are immigrants that have moved in from other countries. Like in Chinatown, New York City, the people belonging to a single ethnic group tend to come together, forming their own pseudo-society. They are exempt from the draft because they were not born in Israel, instead having moved there later in life, and the Israeli don’t want immigrants in their army.
I never once said that Israel was a conservative nation. I never once said that conservatives are oppressive. I said that Israel was oppressive, regardless of political affiliation. Please don’t put words in my mouth.
Two things wrong with your next paragraph: A. Those that oppress and belittle others tend to, over time, lose their empathy for others and become desensitized to their conscience. That’s one reason you don’t see it. B. They have been raised from birth to believe that the Palestinians are scum. Both sides of this culture war (Palestinian and Israeli) constantly demonize each other, allowing for them to do terrible things to each other. The second reason you don’t see a spark of guilt is because they view those they oppress as beasts, not deserving of the slightest bit of dignity or respect.
The article you gave me, Terry, is actually part of the problem. It glorifies one culture (the Israeli), feeding their ego and pride, while demonizing the other (the Palestinians), giving the Israeli an excuse to do all sorts of nasty things. Yes, the Palestinians have done terrible things, but that does not make every one of them terrible. The Israeli have also done terrible things, but that does not make every one of them terrible either. You need to stop looking at the world in black and white. The whole situation is very gray.
“The atrocities…[of] the Israeli government.” What atrocities? Where are you getting this line of propaganda? If Israel were half as cynical as you suppose, my tour group would have had an armed Tzahal escort to make sure that no dissident Israeli, Jew or Arab, got close to us to say, “Help us, please! Netanyahu is a monster!” or some such thing. I never saw that. We did have a tour guide from the Ministry of Tourism, but she never carried a gun.
But I saw a youth group on a field trip to the Golan Heights, to the precipice that overlooks the Damascus Road. They did have an armed escort: a militiaman carrying a WWII-era carbine. And I saw two Tzahal soldiers walking around near the trading post, laughing and carrying on the way any two buddies might do. And the distinct impression I got was that they were there to protect against any sneak attack from Syria, or to make sure that Bashar al-Assad wouldn’t even think about it.
That’s not to say that dissent never raises a voice. The Hebrew daily Ha’aretz (“The Land”), or at least its editorial page, is that voice. Plain foolishness, if you ask me, but Israel respects freedom of speech and of the press just as much as we do.
Didn’t I tell you about the history of the region? Here’s something else you have forgotten. After the 1949 Armistice, the Kingdom of Jordan unilaterally annexed Judea and Samaria. That was the only time that Jordan ever had any territory west of the Jordan River. And the old PLO said as recently as 1964 that “Palestine,” to them, meant the region west of the Green Line, not east. Then came the Six-day War. Jordan had the bad sense to mix it up on the side of the Egyptians, and paid for that error when the Tzahal kicked them out of Judea and Samaria. So now, all of a sudden, “Palestine” becomes “the West Bank and Gaza.”
Or does it? The uniforms of the PA “police” (let’s not kid ourselves: an armed militia) have a shoulder patch that represents the entire area of Israel west of the Green Line, and Judea and Samaria.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again: there is no such thing as an indigenous Arab people called “Palestinian.” Never was. Those people you’re talking about, were squatters who came in after the earliest kibbutzniks reclaimed the desert and the swamp. And right now, those Arabs are raised to believe that the Jews descend from pigs and monkeys and need to be stood up against a wall.
In other words, you’ve bought into a propaganda campaign that throws off on the Jews the thing that describes Arabs, not Jews.
I love how you think that citing all these random things makes you somehow right. Just because they aren’t blatant about it doesn’t mean there isn’t abuse happening. The world isn’t one giant conspiracy, Terry. The terrorists aren’t smart enough to pull the wool over the eyes of so many very smart people. Villagers in the Middle East are one thing, but in the Western world, we actually get an education.
And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that the terrorists don’t care what we think. If they were trying to fool us into believing them the docile victims, they wouldn’t have killed thousands of us on 9/11, and thousands more with IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. If makes absolutely no sense to try to fool us into thinking that after they declared war on us. They might not be the brightest, but they know how to plan things, and I’m pretty sure that even Bin Laden would have called that plan stupid.
So, following that, what’s the logical conclusion? The logical conclusion is that there is no massive conspiracy, and the Israeli are abusing the people they forced into slums in the first place. Which isn’t really all that ridiculous.
But, to be fair, let’s look at your evidence and see your line of thought. You claim that if Israel was abusive, they would have made sure no one told you about it. What you fail to realize is: they are. They don’t let those that are getting abused (the Palestinians) out of the slums. And if you did go to Gaza or West Bank, I can pretty safely assume that guards were present. After all, they’re basically warzones with the fighting going on, thus the Israeli would give you an escort for protection, and what Palestinian would try to talk with an armed guard listening to everything he’s saying? And even if guards were not present, the Palestinians wouldn’t talk to you. They’ve been raised to hate Westerners and shun them, not appeal to them for help.
The free press card is a good one to play. But just because a country is free doesn’t mean the press is. Haven’t you yourself written articles about how the ‘mainstream media’ has been corrupted by the government? All the Tzahal have to do is bribe them. An unfortunate fact of life is that most men have a price. He’aretz can certainly put on the charade that they’re against the government, but they’ll never support the Palestinians. Cultural divides and government bribes ensure that.
Once again, that’s a nice history lesson, but I fail to see what that has to do with Israeli abuse.
Really? A shoulder patch? That just signifies that Israel owns West Bank and Gaza, not that they don’t abuse the people there. Very shaky.
I never said that Palestinians were indigenous. I said they were there before modern-day Israel, which is true. And yes, the Arabs are being raised to believe exactly that. But the reason they are is because the Arabs and Jews keep killing each other. If they all sat down, negotiated, shared their respective viewpoints, there would be far less violence in the Middle East. But they don’t, and now Israel is considering a war with Iran, a war we will inevitably be dragged into should it come to happen.
As a conclusion to this wall of text (sorry about that), we should stop demonizing the other side and look at things from a neutral, unbiased point of view. The Palestinians are not blameless, but neither is Israel. The sooner we all realize that, the sooner the conflict can be resolved as a whole
Saying that “human rights abuses are going on in Judea and Samaria” (or “The West Bank,” as the Jordanians called it) doesn’t make it so. And it would be totally incongruous with the spectacle of Arabs living “West of the Green Line” actually running for office, winning, and serving in the Knesset!
The terrorists don’t have to pull the wool over people’s eyes. They have help. Whether from dupes like you, or from Big Players who see Israel as a threat to them, they have a ready-made narrative.
I have to remind you, obviously, of how much I know. For one thing, Israel pulled out of Gaza ten years ago. One of the bitterest debates in Israeli politics is whether the Tzahal should take it back, and how soon they’re going to wind up doing that anyway. When I got home from my return flight, and greeted those I had left behind, what do you suppose was playing on the cable channels? A sabotage team had blasted an Israeli school bus in the western Negev with an anti-tank missile. The town of Sderot gets missiles lobbed onto it all the time, and they have only fifteen seconds’ warning before they have to take shelter. Now that’s reality.
The shoulder patch on those PA police uniforms signifies that they won’t be satisfied until they have it all.
You have not shown one scintilla of evidence that the Israelis abuse anybody in Judea or Samaria. And as for “they won’t let them out of the slums,” well, if you can show me a link in Ha’aretz that alleges any such thing, I might look into that. Right now, I’m sure that Ha’aretz and The Jerusalem Post would be having an even more bitter debate than they already have about journalistic standards, if Ha’aretz ran a story like that. That they don’t suggests strongly that even they have no evidence, and they won’t risk losing all the rest of their circulation to The JP. (By the way: when I speak of corruption, I speak of a press whose members want an activist government, and feel great about working for an organ that they might as well call “The American Truth” or “Labor Times” or “The Telegraph Agency of the United (Soviet) States of Amerika.”)
Neutrality? If you want neutrality, you have to look at all the history, ancient and modern. I have. You couldn’t have; you didn’t even know it, by your own admission. And history is on the side of a land, and a Republic, called Israel.
You claim I had not shown you a ‘scintilla’ of evidence, but that is not true. You still haven’t watched that documentary, have you? Or even done a Google search on the matter? And if that wasn’t enough, I shall include this handy bar graph for the amount of deaths on both sides in 2008. Blue is Israelites killed by Palestinians, red is Palestinians killed by Israelites.
link to en.wikipedia.org
See the difference?
Ah, not the conspiracy thing again. Do you know why people don’t pay attention to conspiracy theorists, Terry? It’s because they make an unfalsifiable claim. It is impossible to disprove a conspiracy, because any evidence I bring up on the issue can be shrugged off as having been planted as part of said conspiracy. So, as it is impossible for me to disprove it, it is up to you to do the opposite, prove it. Because, as Watergate has shown us, conspiracies do happen and can be proved. So I’m listening.
Yes, Israel pulled out of Gaza ten years ago… officially. Every time something bad happens (an extremist attack, for example), the Israeli use that as an excuse to go through there and knock some skulls together to remind them that they’re still the boss. The Israelis have still killed hundreds of people over there, despite having supposedly given up their claim on the land.
I admit, the Ha’aretz accusation is unfounded. There is no evidence to support it. However, just because there isn’t a link now does not mean a link will surface in the future, and trusting any source complacently is a very bad idea.
The ‘ancient history’ you cite, Terry, is very, very shaky. Most of what we know of the region in ancient times comes from the Bible, something I believe to be a very debatable source of information. I, and plenty of others, do not believe that Israel belongs to the Jews by divine right. Taking divine right out of the equation, and we get just that: an equation. This is land that both ethnic groups have been fighting over for a very long time, to the point that no side is on the high ground, moral or lawful. And with that, I reiterate: Nobody’s perfect and that includes both ethnic groups, no matter whose side you’re on. But the Palestinians are more than squatters, and even if they were, that’s no excuse for killing them by the dozen.
You’re the one making an “unfalsifiable” claim. That bar graph is just someone’s opinion. I see no raw data, no trustworthy sources behind that graph. Any tin-pot propagandist can make a graph. What matters is where he gets the information that goes into the graph, or whether he has any information at all.
Now it’s up to you. But I say that the Bible passes many tests of quality control and truthfulness. For instance, the Bible correctly predicted the discovery of an entire civilization that mankind had totally forgotten, i.e., the Assyrian civilization.
Recently, honest archaeologists have developed solid evidence for the Old Testament narrative about the Israelite presence in the region long before Christ was born (what I suppose you call “The Common Era”). In contrast, the Arab organization, called “Waqf”, that operates on the Temple Mount, have sought to destroy any Jewish antiquities that might be found in that spot. They are trying a big “memory-wash,” just like those for which Egypt is infamous. But it’s not working. The Arabs lost the memory-wash battle when an inquisitive little boy throw a stone into a cave near the Jordan River’s outlet into the Dead Sea, heard the stone strike an earthenware pot, went in, pulled out a very ancient-looking scroll, and excitedly made his way to Jerusalem and started hawking “Antiqas! Antiqas!” to anyone who would listen. That scroll found its way to Harry S. Truman’s desk. That’s the biggest reason why the United States was “proud to recognize the Republic of Israel and welcome it into the community of nations.” And that scroll was only the beginning. And now the Israel Museum is making high-quality images of those scrolls available for anyone to see. Those scrolls predate the Koran, and the insane general named Muhammad, by several centuries.
I categorically reject that graph. I categorically reject your story. I warn you to abandon your course, and repeat the warning that God gave to everyone:
The case of User Bdor24 against the Republic of Israel is now closed. I dismiss it with prejudice. Which means that this is the last comment of yours on this subject that I will load.