For the past 3 days we have been staying in Jerusalem, which is in Israel proper, so most of our interactions have been with Israeli organizations, and Israeli people. Actually only one of the five organization we have met has been palestinian (Sabeel). The other four (Families Forum, Israeli Commission Against Home Demolition, Women in Black, Negev Coexistence Forum for civil equality) have been Israeli founded. So this is the most exposure that I’ve had to Israelis, and I’ve had some mixed experiences.

Our time with Women in Black yesterday was spent standing on a corner with a group of elderly Israeli women holding up signs that said “Stop the Occupation” in Hebrew, English and Arabic. We were not a large group. There were only about 20 of us and 12 were the CPT delegation. We had many people drive by and yell things at us like “shame on you” in hebrew, giving us the middle finger and on at least one occasion attempting to spit on us. There was one individual walking by who told us to get our facts straight and he asked us why we sided with those palestinian terrorists instead of Israelis. He mentioned that if we visited palestinians they would cut our throats. He ended his rant by mentioning, “We kicked their butts in 48 now the[y] just need to go back.” when asked where they need to go back to he mentioned Lebanon or Syria (Neither or which Palestinians are from). This encounter was probably the most disturbing of the day because it showed how the two sides of the conflict are dealing with two totally different sets of facts. I wouldn’t even know where to start a conversation with a person with that point of view.

That evening we took part in another Israeli led action (although I never found out what the group leading it was. This action was huge. There were 400 people, mostly Israeli young people demonstrating at Sheik-Jarah in Old City Jerusalem. There was a group of former refugees who had legally bought homes in Sheik-Jarah, but the Israeli government was kicking them out of their homes. The group marched to a home that had been taken and given to a Jewish family, while other parts of the group went to homes that were being targeted. It was good to see a large group of Israelis standing with Palestinians.

Today we met a different group of Israelis. After Israel became a state in 1948 they kicked out a large number of the native Palestinians, but those who stayed were given Israeli citizenship. One of these groups were the Bedouin people who lived in the Negev desert. This is the group we met with. These Bedouins were not nomadic, but lived in small villages. Although they are Israeli citizens the Israeli government refuses to build them a school, or to offer their children transportation to one. When the town tried to build one the government tore it down, even though it is law that every Israeli child have the opportunity to go to school. Besides this injustice the Bedouins do not have access to water or electricity, even though there is an Israeli power plant in the middle of one of the Bedouin villages. Besides this Israel does not recognized them as the owners of there land, even though Israel moved the Bedouins into that region, and created the villages! Because Israel does not recognize the Bedouin’s ownership they claim the right to demolish homes or entire villages. We talked with a Bedouin who’s home was destroyed two days before his wedding! We also talked with a leader of a village who showed us a demolition notice that said his entire village would be demolished sometime in the next two weeks. These orders are given with no alternatives for the bedouins. They have no where else to go, so when their homes are torn down they just build new ones (usually more remote each time). These are people who live in the desert. There is no plan to put anyone else on their land, but they are still being kicked out, and they are Israeli citizens. If this is the way that Israel treats it’s citizens I’m a bit scared to see how they treat those they view as their enemies. Today was very hard for me, but good to see. The Bedouins still have hope even in the face of all this. The activists keep coming out. There is still hope.

Peace,
Jonathan

They shall no more offer sacrifices to demons, after whom they have played the harlot.  This shall be a statute forever throughout their generations.

Now, demons are all over the place in the New Testament.  Apparently they’re primarily invisible, they deceive people with all sorts of false ideas, and they live in people (though the word “demon-possessed” is a translational problem unto itself).  But they don’t tend to show up in the Old Testament, unless we count the frequent references to the gods.  So I was curious, and I pulled out Jay P. Green’s Interlinear, where things just got more complicated.

The Hebrew word in question is Strong’s #8163, sa`iyr, and Green renders it “goats” in Leviticus 17:7.  So what is a sa’ir?  Is it a goat or a demon?  Well, it turns out that the word appears in the AV 59 times, and 52 times it is rendered “kid” or “goat.”  There are several exceptions, though.  First, it is used as an adjective for “hairy.”  This is particularly interesting in Genesis 27, where the hide of a sa’ir (goat) is used to make Jacob’s arms feel sa’ir (hairy).

Next, we have 2 Chronicles 11:15,

Then he [Rehoboam] appointed for himself priests to the LORD, priests for the high places;  for the demons, and the calf idols which he had made.  (NKJV)

The close association of sa’irs and calves in this passage would suggest that we may well be looking at goat idols here.  Finally, there’s the odd cases of Isaiah 13:21 and 34:14, which speak of a variety of animals, including (KJV) “satyrs,” roaming the deserts.  Although I imagine the coincide may not be significant sa’ir and satyr do look a bit alike, no?  Anyhow, the NKJV translates sa’ir/satyr in both places as “wild goat(s).”

So it would appear that the word sa’ir refers to nothing more than goats, or perhaps in a few places goat-gods of some sort.  They don’t seem to be solid examples of “demons” in the OT in the NT sense of the word.

]]> http://fontwords.com/2010/07/27/leviticus-177-demons-in-the-old-testament-and-goats/feed 0 http://fontwords.com/2010/07/26/in-the-news-2 http://fontwords.com/2010/07/26/in-the-news-2#comments Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:17:43 +0000 mitchell b powell http://fontwords.com/?p=2081 In no particular order, the news I found interestingest today:

Britain is looking to decentralize (or as they would say, decentralise) their healthcare system.  One more indication that National Health Plans aren’t working out so hot for the countries that’ve already got them.

Pelosi is opposed to raising the retirement age for Social Security, saying that the budget deficit and social security are like “apples and oranges.”  That’s a really vague statement, but presumably she’s trying to imply that the 700 billion we spend each year on Social Security is not at all a factor in producing our 1,400 billion dollar deficit.  As though social security was just some self-sustaining program separate from everything else the government does.  Democrat majority Stenny Hoyer, however, understands that Social Security spending and deficit spending are indeed apples and apples.  Attaboy, Hoyer.

And the recent leaked military documents are suggesting that while we pay for the maintenance of the Pakistani military, they are in turn guiding the Taliban with information and strategic help.  If that’s true, the US is fighting US-backed Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan.  From the Cold War, to Bin Laden, to ousting the Shah of Iran, it always seems like we wind up funding our enemies in the name of protectic ourselves.

⁵And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

First of all, there is the matter of how John Stossel called for the repeal of portions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with disagreeing with John Stossel on this issue, but I want to draw attention to the way Prof. Giroux handles this issue.  Look at his approach:

While there are plenty of talking heads spewing lies, insults and nonsense in the various media, it would be wrong to suggest that these right-wing populist are intellectuals. They are neither knowledgeable nor self-reflective, but largely ideological hacks catering to the worst impulses in American society. Some obvious examples would include John Stossel calling for the repeal of that “section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bans discrimination in public places.”[1]

In his conflation of right-statism with libertarianism, Giroux completely misses the point that Stossel is not a right-winger, but is rather an (as far as I can tell) consistent libertarian who opposes such “Republican” things as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Giroux decries the lack of critical thinking he sees on the right, but like a typical ideologue immediately assumes that John Stossel is an “obvious example” of a racist.  Nevermind that radical libertarians have always opposed slavery, Jim Crow laws, and forcing private establishments to be morally upright.  Whether one agrees or disagrees with the radical libertarian stance on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, no one can decry their opponents lack of “critical thinking” and then brand them as “racist” because they fail to agree as to how involved government should be in enforcing that property owners act morally.  Let us keep in mind that the first successes of desegregation, including the Greensboro sit-ins, were done by means of private individual work that succeeded without government intervention, and that John Stossel has personally promised to boycott any institution that racially discriminates.

Quoting Richard Cohen, Giroux holds up another example of what he calls right-wing ignorance:

We now have politicians who lack a child’s knowledge of government.  In Nevada, Sharron Angle has won the GOP Senate nomination espousing phasing out Social Security and repealing the income tax as well as abolishing that durable conservative target, the Education Department.

Again, Giroux simply points to a set of positions he disagrees with and decides that anyone who holds them must be more ignorant than a child.  Not good for someone who is decrying a lack of critical thinking.  He also assumes that the latest economic crisis is the result of laissez-faire economics, which is an incredibly ignorant statement given that the US government (federal, state, and local) spends a whopping total of 47% of the nation’s GDP while the US government subsidises all sorts of businesses while spending $5 for every $3 of tax revenue, with a government debt of $119,000 per taxpayer and a fiat currency-based fractional reserve banking system which, propped up by government, has inflated away 97% of the dollar’s gold value in the last four decades.  Nevertheless, Giroux, like all too many on the left, continues to live in a fairy-tale world where our country is a failing “laissez-faire” state.  The fact that professors are even listened to as they pretend that our country is run by laissez-faire while simultaneously castigating their opponents as ignorant is a shameful indictment of the sort of thinking in our country.

He also pretends that the Tea Party movement, an amorphous collection of libertarian-leaning protesters, is out to “abolish government,” which is of course a complete distortion.  The US has never had any large anarchist movement (though perhaps our national dialogue would be considerably enriched if we did).  Giroux also feels that “corporations” have too much influence over college education, keeping pro-government professors from speaking out on controversial topics, while completely ignoring the fact that professors in our government-run education system are consistently more in favor of government intervention than the population as a whole.  But, of course, in Giroux’s view it is only committed statism that includes critical thinking.

Particularly strange is Giroux’s characterisation of laissez-faire economics as “Darwinistic,” by which he means a brutal system in which the big are able to beat up the small.  But the idea of laissez-faire is the belief that government should enforce the right of individuals to do as they wish with their own property, and that individuals should be enabled to freely do as they will so long as they don’t use violence against others.  Laissez-faire, a system which allows only voluntary trading of goods and services as a means of amassing wealth, is thus the opposite of Darwinistic economics.  No, if we are to look for a system in which the strong may take from the weak, we can only look to two groups of people:  robbers and government.  They are the only two agencies which use force to take from some to give to others.  If we are really worried about economic Darwinism, we should fear government redistribution, which is nothing more than the most powerful agents in society (government) being allowed to take from less powerful agencies (private individuals).  But the critical distinction between voluntary exchanges on the market and the forced exchanges of government is another one of those issues that Giroux, a champion of what he calls “critical thinking,” decides to completely ignore.

Giroux also is upset about the failure of academia to “speak truth to power,” which he somehow imagines will be accomplished only with more government funding of education and less private funding.  This only makes sense if we assume that private individuals have no interest in truth, while somehow government, the biggest power in society, will empower individuals to be critical of the powerful.  Giroux can talk all he likes about how it is the duty of academics to “oppose all orthodoxies,” but if in the end he proposes to do that by keeping education under the thumb of government his anti-authoritarian talk is only talk.

He can talk all he wants about the need for “critical thinking,” but, in his last chapter, he defines “critical thinking” as opposition to the market.  And because “market” means nothing more than freedom of economic exchange, all his big words and such mean only one thing.  Like some sort of Orwellian government agent, he pretends that increasing government power is the way to freedom, and that curtailing the basic human freedom to mind one’s own business is the only path to freedom.  He’d make a great Stalinist.