Comments on: Father Cotton Blogs From Israel/Palestine http://rabbibrant.com/2010/03/17/father-cotton-blogs-from-israelpalestine/ A Blog by Rabbi Brant Rosen Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:56:06 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Matt Planchak http://rabbibrant.com/2010/03/17/father-cotton-blogs-from-israelpalestine/#comment-6603 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:43:49 +0000 http://rabbibrant.com/?p=6642#comment-6603 Wow.
Okay, putting aside the fact that your understanding of the Palestinian education system comes from a book shelved in the Fiction section of my local library, the examples you give are not the suffering to which he refers. It’s not about the occasional massacre of civilians by zealous settlers. It’s not the egregious acts of violence that came to represent the second intifada. It’s not the rockets fired into Sderot or even the offensive Cast Lead. It’s the ongoing systemic and institutionalized disenfranchisement and persecution of a people within an asymmetrical power structure.
There are historical precedents for this which Jews know all too well.

But at least you and I can agree who, in the analogy, represents Britain, and who represents India. Not much, but it’s a starting point.

Peace.

]]> By: YBD http://rabbibrant.com/2010/03/17/father-cotton-blogs-from-israelpalestine/#comment-6598 Thu, 18 Mar 2010 05:51:12 +0000 http://rabbibrant.com/?p=6642#comment-6598 Cotton’s question “how can a people who have suffered so much cause suffering to other people?” is a very good question. I assume he directed it at the Palestinians who, in their education system point out that no one, NO ONE, has suffered persecution in history as much as the Arabs/Muslims (see Matt Beynon Rees’ current events novel about the Palestinians “The Collaborator of Bethlehem” where he points this out regarding the Palestinian education system). Thus, having been “purified” by the suffering, which is what Cotton is alluding to, it is very puzzling how the Palestinians can then send out suicide bombers to blow up pizzerias and shopping centers, or fire rockets indiscriminately into residential areas, and then publicly celebrate the slaugther, for example by naming a square last week in Ramallah after the terrorist who killed 33 (IIRC) Israelis (including many children) in the Coast Road Massacre in the 1970′s. We all look to the Palestinians to be the moral guides of our time, just as Gandhi and his Indian followers were decades ago.

]]> By: Shirley Gould http://rabbibrant.com/2010/03/17/father-cotton-blogs-from-israelpalestine/#comment-6596 Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:03:45 +0000 http://rabbibrant.com/?p=6642#comment-6596 Now I know why the Rev. Fite has been missing from our King David text discussions at JRC.

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