Ray

The sentence "The only option for survival in such a culture is to always deny wrongdoing and tell yourself “you did not do it” until you believe it" is indeed very telling.

Unfortunately, it is a truism that Jews are always used as the whipping boy for all the ills of the world!

__________________


"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

TopHatter

That's only because they control the international banking cartels.

__________________
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
~John Quincy Adams

smilingassassin

...don't forget the U.S. govt.!!!

Heres more fuel for the fire...

http://entertainment.sympatico.msn.c...s/1372069.armx

Movie on Jewish-Muslim love challenges taboos, provokes ire
JOHN THORNE
May 12, 2006


CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) - In a darkened lane the young lovers crouch and caress. The girl leans to kiss the boy, then hesitates. He removes the Star of David pendant hanging from his neck and fastens it around hers, where she can no longer see it.

"This way, you'll think of other things," he says gently. The scene is just one of many provocative moments in the movie Marock, a story of Jewish-Muslim love challenging taboos in this traditional Muslim society and provoking the ire of Islamic politicians.

The movie only won general release on screens here this week - nearly a year after it showed at the Cannes Film Festival in 2005 - following a long vetting by government censors.

The Justice and Development Party, Morocco's increasingly popular Islamist political party, claims that Marock breaks a Moroccan law forbidding offence to Islam.

"It's a mockery of Moroccan spiritual life," said Abdelkader Amara, a member of the PJD's general secretariat.

The film follows Rita, a rebellious daughter of Casablanca's thin upper crust, as she and her friends approach the end of high school and then adulthood. Along the way, they gulp whiskey, smoke hashish, party, eat during Ramadan and indulge in romantic intrigue.

Rita's youthful hedonism gets complicated when she falls for handsome daredevil Youri, a Jew. While her friends accept the affair, she must hide it from her tradition-bound parents and religiously conservative older brother.

"I don't care about religion," Rita tells Youri. "I just want to be able to kiss you where I want and when I want."

Director Laila Marrakchi, a Muslim married to a Sephardic Jew, grew up in the moneyed Casablanca milieu her movie depicts.

"I wanted to make an American Graffiti in Morocco, to show a certain kind of Moroccan youth who exist, even if some people would like to deny it," she said.

"I knew in making this film that some things were going to cause discomfort, notably the love relationship between a young Muslim and young Jew. But for me, it is a symbol of peace and tolerance in a complicated world."

Morocco prides itself on religious tolerance and is home to a centuries-old Jewish community. While anti-Jewish feeling has accompanied moments of political tension, and Jewish religious and community sites were targeted in bombing attacks in Casablanca in 2003, Moroccan Jews and Muslims have generally coexisted peacefully.

"We're all Moroccans, and we live together," said Mehdi Bikki, 17, who caught Marock at a Casablanca multiplex with a group of his friends.

But the symbolism of the Star of David went too far, they said.

"That the girl accepted (the necklace), that bothers me" said Amal Rohda, 17. "I would never have done that."

Amled

Sparten your correct in that no one race or religion has a copyright on suffering, injustice and persecution.
But I still maintain that if anyone deserves the epithet of “the worlds whipping boy” it must be the Jews.
For more then 2,000 years ever since the Diaspora, there probably hasn’t been one country where they settled where they haven’t been persecuted or stigmatised in one form or the other, or relegated to second-class citizens.

Beware of the Gnomes of Zurich!!!

__________________
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow. - Anais Nin

Ray

Amled,

In India, there has been no persecution of the Jews.

There was a huge population of Jews in Calcutta, Bombay and Kerala.

Amled

Thanks for the head up Ray.
I didn’t know that India has such a large community of Jews. Time for some "googling".
I do tend to go the hyperbole route when this subject comes up. Though I did kind of “weasel out” by using the adjective “probably.”

sparten

I don't doubt that Jews have seen more than their fair share of suffering, but to say they or anybody deserves the the title of "worlds whipping boy" is ridiculous (may I say a highly euro-centric version of history).

That said, it cannot be fun to be Iraq, for about the last 5000 years, its either the Assyrians or Babylonians fighting each other, or the Hittes and the Egyptians, or the Persians and the Greeks, or the Romans and the Persians, or Arabs, or the Mongols, or the Persians and the Ottomons, or the Brits and the Ottomons, or now the Yanks.

__________________
"Any relations in a social order will endure if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy, which qualifies life for immortality." ~ George William Russell

Confed999

At least with that last one they have the chance to finally be rid of being either tyrannized or caught in the middle...

__________________
No man is free until all men are free - John Hossack
I agree completely with this Administration’s goal of a regime change in Iraq-John Kerry
even if that enforcement is mostly at the hands of the United States, a right we retain even if the Security Council fails to act-John Kerry
He may even miscalculate and slide these weapons off to terrorist groups to invite them to be a surrogate to use them against the United States. It’s the miscalculation that poses the greatest threat-John Kerry

sparten

Lets no think too much of oneself.

Ray

http://www.haruth.com/AsianIndia.html

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/...m/indians.html

"Perhaps the most unique aspect of the Indian Jewish experience is the complete absence of discrimination by a host majority. The secret of India's tolerance is the Hindu belief which confers legitimacy on a wide diversity of cultural and religious groups even as it forbids movement from one group to another." - Raphael Meyer
http://www.the-south-asian.com/March...ndia-Intro.htm

Indian Jews are a religious minority, living among India's predominantly Hindu populace. However, Judaism was one of the first religions to arrive in India and assimilate with local traditions through cultural diffusion. The Jewish population in India is hard to estimate since each Jewish community is distinct with different origins; some arrived during the time of the Kingdom of Judah, others are descendants of Israel's Lost Ten Tribes. Of the total Jewish population in India, about half live in Mizoram and a quarter live in the city of Mumbai. Unlike many parts of the world, Jews have historically lived in India without anti-Semitism. However, Jews in India have recently suffered from terrorist attacks by Lashkar-e-Toiba, which has declared Jews and Hindus to be enemies of Islam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_in_India

There are host of sites to check from.

Hardly "weaseling out" with "probably".

Ray

whipping boy

1 orig., a boy brought up together with a young prince and required to take the punishment for the latter‘s misdeeds

2 SCAPEGOAT (sense 2)

***************
Meaning

A scapegoat. One who is singled out for blame or punishment.

Origin

It seems an odd notion to us now that a royal court would have kept a child for the purpose of beating him when the crown prince did wrong. That's just what did happen though. Whipping Boy was an established position at the English court during the Tudor and Stuart monarchies of the 15th and 16th centuries. This may not have been quite as bad as it sounds. The whipping boys weren't hapless street urchins living a life of torment, but high-born companions to the royal princes. They were educated with the princes and shared many of the privileges of royalty. The downside was that, if the prince did wrong, the whipping boy was punished. It was considered a form of punishment to the prince that someone he cared about was made to suffer.

The strangeness of the concept is a little easier to understand when put into context. The Divine Right of Kings was the belief that legitimate kings were appointed by God and so were answerable to God alone. James I (a.k.a. 'The Wisest Fool in Christendom'), in his 'Speech Before Parliament', 1609, declared:

"The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods."

That belief, although widely disputed and a root cause of the English Civil War, was accepted at court at the time. Even touching the monarch was, and still is, considered improper. It's not surprising then that James's son and heir Charles was not considered someone whom his tutors could flog. Charles's whipping boy was his close friend William Murray, so recorded in 1715 by Gilbert Burnet in 'History of his own time':

"William Murray of the bed-chamber, that had been whipping boy to King Charles the first."

hamIn later life Murray may well have considered the beatings worthwhile. In 1626, he moved into the palatial Ham House. In 1643, Charles made him the 1st. Earl of Dysart.



The term 'whipping boy' is first recorded in print in Charles I's reign, by John Trapp, in his 'A commentary or exposition upon the five books of Moses':

" Rebuke before all: yet not as if they were whipping boyes."

It isn't until much later that the term is used allusively, i.e. referring to a scapegoat but with no actual whipping. In The Times, Oct 1857, we have:

"Or will the public have still reason to say that M. Migdeon, even supposing all that has been brought against him true, is merely the whipping boy?"

The word 'scapegoat' is interesting in itself and has a similar derivation to 'whipping boy'. It is Biblical in origin and is recorded by 1530 in Tyndale's Bible. In the Mosaic ritual of the Day of Atonement, one of two goats was sent alive into the wilderness, the sins of the people having been symbolically laid upon it, while the other was sacrificed.

These verses are from Leviticus XVI (King James Version):

And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation.
And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat

Ray

Top Hatter,

This is with reference to Mahathir's speech where he blamed the Jews for controlling the world.

It is worth wondering that if the Jews did control the world, then how come they are the whipping boy for the UN?

If the controlled the world,shouldn't they also be controlling the UN, which represents the world!

Parihaka

A good friend of mine was born an Iraqi Jew. Of course his family had all their possessions and land confiscated, of course they were all forcibly evicted and made to walk to Israel, of course some of his family (he was 6) died on the way. He grew up in Israel and then emmigrated here. Even with such a put upon place as Iraq, a special level of persecution was reserved for the Jews.....

sparten

Really, tell me was this pre or post 1948?

Parihaka

In his case it would have been late 50's or early 60's but it started earlier than that. The only things I've known about it is his own story he told me but here's a wikipedia precis of Iraqi Jews.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Jews
The most telling statistic is the population drop from 150,000 in 1948 to less than 100 today.