Jerusalem is the capital of Israel

[Karlysymon]

The Israel/Palestine question....polarising as always.

Hopefully, this isn't a Franz Ferdinand moment.

 

[DesertRose]

Palestinians 'walking away' from talks with Pence snub: White House
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/palestinians-walking-away-from-talks-with-pence-snub-white-house#cxrecs_s

 

[DesertRose]

How Christian Fundamentalists Plan to Teach Genocide to Schoolchildren
By Katherine Stewart, Guardian UK

02 June 12

ood News Clubs' evangelism in schools is already subverting church-state separation. Now they justify murdering nonbelievers.

The Bible has thousands of passages that may serve as the basis for instruction and inspiration. Not all of them are appropriate in all circumstances.

The story of Saul and the Amalekites is a case in point. It's not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men - but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) - people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."
"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."
The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"
"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"
The CEF and the legal advocacy groups that have been responsible for its tremendous success over the past ten years are determined to "Knock down all doors, all the barriers, to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later, now!" in the words of a keynote speaker at the CEF's national convention in 2010. The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.

In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".

As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.

Good News Clubs should not be in America's public elementary schools. As I explain in my book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, the club exists mainly to give small children the false impression that their public school supports a particular creed. The clubs' presence has produced a paradoxical entanglement of church and state that has ripped apart communities, degraded public education, and undermined religious freedom.

The CEF's new emphasis on the genocide of nonbelievers makes a bad situation worse. Exterminist rhetoric has been on the rise among some segments of the far right, including some religious groups. At what point do we start taking talk of genocide seriously? How would we feel about a nonreligious group that instructs its students that if they should ever receive an order to commit genocide, they should fulfill it to the letter?

And finally, when does a religious group qualify as a "hate group"?

 

[z gharib]

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

 

[Thunderian]

How Christian Fundamentalists Plan to Teach Genocide to Schoolchildren
By Katherine Stewart, Guardian UK

02 June 12

ood News Clubs' evangelism in schools is already subverting church-state separation. Now they justify murdering nonbelievers.

The Bible has thousands of passages that may serve as the basis for instruction and inspiration. Not all of them are appropriate in all circumstances.

The story of Saul and the Amalekites is a case in point. It's not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men - but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) - people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."
"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."
The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"
"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"
The CEF and the legal advocacy groups that have been responsible for its tremendous success over the past ten years are determined to "Knock down all doors, all the barriers, to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later, now!" in the words of a keynote speaker at the CEF's national convention in 2010. The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.

In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".

As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.

Good News Clubs should not be in America's public elementary schools. As I explain in my book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, the club exists mainly to give small children the false impression that their public school supports a particular creed. The clubs' presence has produced a paradoxical entanglement of church and state that has ripped apart communities, degraded public education, and undermined religious freedom.

The CEF's new emphasis on the genocide of nonbelievers makes a bad situation worse. Exterminist rhetoric has been on the rise among some segments of the far right, including some religious groups. At what point do we start taking talk of genocide seriously? How would we feel about a nonreligious group that instructs its students that if they should ever receive an order to commit genocide, they should fulfill it to the letter?

And finally, when does a religious group qualify as a "hate group"?

Do you really want to talk about whose faith is advocating genocide?

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," is as genocidal as anything you can find and misinterpret from the Bible.

 

[DesertRose]

Do you really want to talk about whose faith is advocating genocide?

Anti-Christians and those they support do!
My prognosis for your North American cult is not good and that is within North America as well.

 

[DesertRose]

"The old will die and the young will forget"
David Ben-Gurion, the founder of Israel, in 1949

 

[z gharib]

"From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,"

is it a quote from a religious book ? where ? ( i assume this based on your comment "....faith advocating genocide ?

 

[Lisa]

How Christian Fundamentalists Plan to Teach Genocide to Schoolchildren
By Katherine Stewart, Guardian UK

02 June 12

ood News Clubs' evangelism in schools is already subverting church-state separation. Now they justify murdering nonbelievers.

The Bible has thousands of passages that may serve as the basis for instruction and inspiration. Not all of them are appropriate in all circumstances.

The story of Saul and the Amalekites is a case in point. It's not a pretty story, and it is often used by people who don't intend to do pretty things. In the book of 1 Samuel (15:3), God said to Saul:

"Now go, attack the Amalekites, and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys."
Saul dutifully exterminated the women, the children, the babies and all of the men - but then he spared the king. He also saved some of the tastier looking calves and lambs. God was furious with him for his failure to finish the job.

The story of the Amalekites has been used to justify genocide throughout the ages. According to Pennsylvania State University Professor Philip Jenkins, a contributing editor for the American Conservative, the Puritans used this passage when they wanted to get rid of the Native American tribes. Catholics used it against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics. "In Rwanda in 1994, Hutu preachers invoked King Saul's memory to justify the total slaughter of their Tutsi neighbors," writes Jenkins in his 2011 book, Laying Down the Sword: Why We Can't Ignore the Bible's Violent Verses (HarperCollins).

This fall, more than 100,000 American public school children, ranging in age from four to 12, are scheduled to receive instruction in the lessons of Saul and the Amalekites in the comfort of their own public school classrooms. The instruction, which features in the second week of a weekly "Bible study" course, will come from the Good News Club, an after-school program sponsored by a group called the Child Evangelism Fellowship (CEF). The aim of the CEF is to convert young children to a fundamentalist form of the Christian faith and recruit their peers to the club.

There are now over 3,200 clubs in public elementary schools, up more than sevenfold since the 2001 supreme court decision, Good News Club v Milford Central School, effectively required schools to include such clubs in their after-school programing.

The CEF has been teaching the story of the Amalekites at least since 1973. In its earlier curriculum materials, CEF was euphemistic about the bloodshed, saying simply that "the Amalekites were completely defeated." In the most recent version of the curriculum, however, the group is quite eager to drive the message home to its elementary school students. The first thing the curriculum makes clear is that if God gives instructions to kill a group of people, you must kill every last one:

"You are to go and completely destroy the Amalekites (AM-uh-leck-ites) - people, animals, every living thing. Nothing shall be left."
"That was pretty clear, wasn't it?" the manual tells the teachers to say to the kids.

Even more important, the Good News Club wants the children to know, the Amalakites were targeted for destruction on account of their religion, or lack of it. The instruction manual reads:

"The Amalekites had heard about Israel's true and living God many years before, but they refused to believe in him. The Amalekites refused to believe in God and God had promised punishment."
The instruction manual goes on to champion obedience in all things. In fact, pretty much every lesson that the Good News Club gives involves reminding children that they must, at all costs, obey. If God tells you to kill nonbelievers, he really wants you to kill them all. No questions asked, no exceptions allowed.

Asking if Saul would "pass the test" of obedience, the text points to Saul's failure to annihilate every last Amalekite, posing the rhetorical question:

"If you are asked to do something, how much of it do you need to do before you can say, 'I did it!'?"
"If only Saul had been willing to seek God for strength to obey!" the lesson concludes.

A review question in the textbook seeks to drive the point home further:

"How did King Saul only partly obey God when he attacked the Amalekites? (He did not completely destroy as God had commanded, he kept the king and some of the animals alive.)"
The CEF and the legal advocacy groups that have been responsible for its tremendous success over the past ten years are determined to "Knock down all doors, all the barriers, to all 65,000 public elementary schools in America and take the Gospel to this open mission field now! Not later, now!" in the words of a keynote speaker at the CEF's national convention in 2010. The CEF wants to operate in the public schools, rather than in churches, because they know that young children associate the public schools with authority and are unable to distinguish between activities that take place in a school and those that are sponsored by the school.

In the majority opinion that opened the door to Good News Clubs, supreme court Justice Clarence Thomas reasoned that the activities of the CEF were not really religious, after all. He said that they could be characterized, for legal purposes, "as the teaching of morals and character development from a particular viewpoint".

As Justices Souter and Stevens pointed out in their dissents, however, the claim is preposterous: the CEF plainly aims to teach religious doctrines and conduct services of worship. Thomas's claim is particularly ironic in view of the fact that the CEF makes quite clear its intent to teach that no amount of moral or ethical behavior (pdf) can spare a nonbeliever from an eternity in hell.

Good News Clubs should not be in America's public elementary schools. As I explain in my book, The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children, the club exists mainly to give small children the false impression that their public school supports a particular creed. The clubs' presence has produced a paradoxical entanglement of church and state that has ripped apart communities, degraded public education, and undermined religious freedom.

The CEF's new emphasis on the genocide of nonbelievers makes a bad situation worse. Exterminist rhetoric has been on the rise among some segments of the far right, including some religious groups. At what point do we start taking talk of genocide seriously? How would we feel about a nonreligious group that instructs its students that if they should ever receive an order to commit genocide, they should fulfill it to the letter?

And finally, when does a religious group qualify as a "hate group"?

That whole article is a lie. No one in a Good News Club would tell children to kill anyone. The Good News Club is there to tell kids the Good News-Jesus, God the Son dying for their sins and how they can come to know God.

As for CEF not wanting to teach in churches...churches have their own teachers who may be using CEF material. CEF started the Good News Clubs to go into schools and share the Good News with nonbelievers...

AND it’s not easy to get a club in the schools because they don’t want you there in the first place! AND it is even harder to advertise your club because the schools won’t want you to advertise it the way they send home after school activities. Even CEF tells you to stand across the street to advertise your club.

Also the thing with God telling the Israelites to fight for the land God was giving them was for them in that time period alone and no real Christian would teach children that God would tell you to kill anybody or that you must do it. They more than likely would tell you that you didn’t hear God.

Anyway, that’s how it was 17 years ago when I taught a Good News Club. We didn’t talk about if God asks you to kill you must kill because that’s not what the club was about. It was only to share the Good News. God the Son dying for sins.

 

[Lisa]

you must suffer from seriously damaged eyesight (as well as lack of functioning brain cells) - maybe cataract or glaucoma?

just for your information (since you seem to have some understanding issues - due to your brain dead satus) - the armed ones are your fellow khazar devil worshippers.

the unarmed ones are the palestinians.


for real now - your type of comments can only be made by people who suffer from some type of severe brain injury or people who have a brain tumor.

the symptoms include:

- loss of reality in every sense/perceiving a very twisted reality - hence seeing things nobody else can see (hallucinating)

- change in sensation (vision/smell & or hearing without losing consciousness)

- loss of awareness or a partial or total loss of consciousness

- change of personality or memory


do yourself a favor & go for a check.

I don’t suffer from any of those things, thanks for your concern anyway.

I do happen to follow some things in the Middle East and those Palestinians aren’t as pure and innocent as muslims here would like people to believe....they even teach their children to engage the Israeli armed forces with rocks, looking for a fight. Where they should instead keep their precious children safe...but again there’s a reason to teach their children about throwing rocks, they are looking for a fight, not peace.

The Israelis in turn teach their people, even women how to fight to preserve themselves in a land where no Palestinian or any of their muslim neighbors want them to be there...it’s called self preservation. Then you have the majority of the world siding with muslims...Israel I would imagine feels pretty alone.

 

[Kung Fu]

What about turning the other cheek?

Turning the other cheek is a not a realist approach to life. If someone attacked your family you wouldn't be turning the other cheek you would defend them.

 

[Kung Fu]

Israel was an established nation for hundreds and hundreds of years, with the seat of government in Jerusalem. There has never been a nation called Palestine.

Then I guess it was okay what the settlers did to the Aboriginal Natives of North America you know since they never had a nation

I swear you closeted colonialists will say anything in order to hide your racist beliefs.

 

[SpektaCoolAir]

I don’t suffer from any of those things, thanks for your concern anyway.

I do happen to follow some things in the Middle East and those Palestinians aren’t as pure and innocent as muslims here would like people to believe....they even teach their children to engage the Israeli armed forces with rocks, looking for a fight. Where they should instead keep their precious children safe...but again there’s a reason to teach their children about throwing rocks, they are looking for a fight, not peace.

The Israelis in turn teach their people, even women how to fight to preserve themselves in a land where no Palestinian or any of their muslim neighbors want them to be there...it’s called self preservation. Then you have the majority of the world siding with muslims...Israel I would imagine feels pretty alone.

teaching their people how to fire a machine gun on stone throwing children is self preservation to you?

no sane person would produce such bullshit & display such incredible lack of empathy!

you are most deserving of the title kafeerah - concealing & denying/rejecting the truth big time!

no matter how much you try to please your master (satan) - at the end - he will dump your ass anyways!

cheering for killings of the innocent won't get you anywhere but straight to hell (if you die in that state).

 

[Lisa]

teaching their people how to fire a machine gun on stone throwing children is self preservation to you?

no sane person would produce such bullshit & display such incredible lack of empathy!

you are most deserving of the title kafeerah - concealing & denying/rejecting the truth big time!

no matter how much you try to please your master (satan) - at the end - he will dump your ass anyways!

cheering for killings of the innocent won't get you anywhere but straight to hell (if you die in that state).

They don’t teach them to fire on children...they are very restrained even though they are getting pelted with rocks...whose the peace loving people then?

What lack of empathy? I think the Palestinian people should protect their children so that an accident doesn’t happen and they get hurt doing something so dangerous....

Well, you must not understand about satan...he is very happy when people mess up their lives and join him in the pit....but I am not following satan.

I don’t cheer for anyone to get killed...that’s the muslim way with death to US, death to Israel and handing out candy to their kids when a Jew dies....

 

[mecca]

I thought the muslims were the slave traders?

Your defensiveness proves my point.

 

[Lisa]

Your defensiveness proves my point.

What defensiveness? Its a fact that muslims were in the slave trade and still are. Muslims have no problems owning slaves and treating them very poorly...that’s your history.

 

[Kung Fu]

What defensiveness? Its a fact that Christians were in the slave trade and still are. Christians have no problems owning slaves and treating them very poorly...that’s your history.

Fixed it for you again

 

[Kung Fu]

The Israel/Palestine question....polarising as always.

Hopefully, this isn't a Franz Ferdinand moment.

It's always been a simple issue. Europe kills a bunch of Jews and instead of getting a Western nation to bear the burden of their mistakes (if they thought it was a mistake) they decided to take all of them and dump them in a region where Palestinians have been living for thousands of years and who had nothing to do with any of the wars. They then armed these Jews that they dumped with machine guys and other weapons in order to take it over. To this day they continue to fund the Jews solely which allows them to keep the Palestinian inhabitants in check from ever taking back what was theirs.

That sounds pretty simple to me.

 

[Lisa]

Fixed it for you again

Rewriting history more like....

 

[Kung Fu]

Rewriting history more like....

Simply stating facts.