So, she should keep the daughter home from school? Is there another route to take where these men will not show up? Are you suggesting she dress her child according to the standards of other people? What would you do in that situation?
Should the government step in?
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So, she should keep the daughter home from school? Is there another route to take where these men will not show up? Are you suggesting she dress her child according to the standards of other people? What would you do in that situation?
By your use of war zone do you mean Isreal itself? If so what should she do move to another country? As for the "deliberate provocation" well she is sending her daughter to a religious school where the dress code is long sleeve shirts and long skirts. From what I understand the entire female population of that school has this problem and this mother was the one that was interviewed.
An interesting note is that this is apparently not a new problem in Isreal. What has changed however is that the sect instigating this violence has spread to a new area that is populated by Jews that moved to Isreal from America. Well the American Isrealis are fighting back thru publicity, media, groups of men escorting the girls to school and what not.
I might have a friend or two in Israel who belong to this religious group, or another. I know the psychology of fundamentalist religious folks in general. It's a desperate sort of thing to be "different" and outside the "mainstream" in any way. Trying to stick up for their rights is like I imagine it would have been on the American frontier agitating for humane treatment of "Native Americans". You might get your house burned down . . . . by the frontiersmen. While I can sit at my computer today and argue for the rights of mankind anywhere in this world, I bet if I was anywhere else where there is some kind of hot button political cause on the line, I'd find some way to keep my kids out of the line of fire.
If that means my girls dress in the little uniform required by the nuns running the Catholic school, I'd be getting them the uniforms. If that means dressing like contemporary "free" American public school kids, I'd probably be shopping the same malls the other parents shop. Sometimes it's just not "about you" or "your rights". It's about your kid not getting trampled in the melees.
So we have a mother who has the same world view you do, somewhere on this planet, anywhere on this planet where the other folks locally are different from you. You are a cultural bigot if you believe your values have to prevail over other peoples' values without any respect for other peoples' values. If that mother is using the same media stream you drink from to promote your values where you're the minority, you and that mother don't really believe in your own rhetoric about your own "rights". She, and you, are no better than those fundamentalist bullies who are using their local majority status in their local situation to bully other folks. Because what you are doing is actually the exact same thing.
My own decision in that exact neighborhood would be for my kid to dress the way others expect, sit in the classroom and pay attention to the teacher and learn the best she could from the teacher there, and I'd be talking to her about how people are always going to be different from her somehow, no matter where she goes in the world, and why she should try to be nice to them, and understand them in some positive light.
Hell, I'd even be telling her that in a deranged fascist police state where everyone thought their country was always right, and that their country should be the big bully on the world stage drafting all the kids into some multimillion-man army to send halfway around the world to make sure some mountain tribe of freedom fighters of another religion had to make way for one of our major corporation's plans for an oil pipeline.
I find some other way to try to make a difference in the world, than putting my kid front and center in the "war".
Babe you make some good points. You really do. However I think you and I disagree on some vital points. The sect doing this is not the downtrodden group. They are actually well conected politically. They are the ones forcing their views on others. Some one living their life, even if I disgree heavily with it, is not forcing their view on me. In this case the group causing the problem is the minority. They basically have a problem with any one living near them that is different.
For example they want men and women to walk on different sidewalks...
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on certain points.
For example they want men and women to walk on different sidewalks...
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on certain points.
Soi, you're OK with social groups forcing their morals on other social groups, as long as they don't use the governemnt to do so? YOu believe in oppression by mobs, rather than government?
I guess I question anything I read in the media, as a sort of mission in life. I'd hate the dogs on top in any fight, because I ultimately value the right the be different more than anything else.
Are you one of Obama's cadre of community organizers, so much so that you have to win every point in this game?
If I'm carrying a gun, and wearing leather leggings, padded arm protectors, and steel-toed boots, struttin' down the street in my ghetto, I really just don't need to kick every dog that barks. Obama is a fascist controlled by the Chicago mob, with it's Las Vegas lines of influence which dovetail with our militarist neocons including Bush and the whole Goldman-Sachs group of financiers. If you can't see something wrong with an America like that, you're truely despicable. But because you've bought the whole context of lies and sincerely believe you're in the right, I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt.
What tells the story here is that our present "government" does have all the weopons, and all the protections of law, and the use of schools for disseminating a stinking pile of propaganda. . . . and they still feel they have to kick dogs like me who just yap.
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Well the media is always supect to some degree or another. However in this case I see it as the minority not allowing/wanting anyone to be different from them.
The greater population is not forcing this sect of Judaism to conform to their beliefs. They are just trying to prevent this sect from enforcing their views on everyone else.
I'm just aqsking you to face the consequences of your positions. I suppose it is hard to do.
OK, so I was off enlarging my rant while you posted this. You and GoJazz are hitting a sweet spot with me if you're saying the force of government is actually coming down on the side diminishing human liberty, with a government-favored sect getting a lot of room for harassing a kid on the street who is "different". I have seen some situations where the media was giving coverage like this, but from what I saw I thought it was being reported all wrong. But, in the larger context, I believe the government of Israel feels it's being squeezed at peril of it's very existence, and a lot of the people over there just have to cope with the extreme things being done by all the contentious factions somehow.
The thing that really sticks out in my mind was the day an Israeli friend took me into the Arab Quarter of Jerusalem with a group of tourists. I wandered over into an area called "The Pinnacle of the Temple", really just a section of the old city wall of Jerusalem that had a corner about two hundred feet high jutting out into a steep ravine, just opposite the old city cemetery. I guess I wasn't supposed to go there, I stepped over some barricades, but nobody else was around, and I got up on that wall. Then the Palestinian police saw me, and while I wandered off into a clump of olive trees and went down some stairs to take a close look at the Eastern Gate, I heard a lot of radios crackling. I poked my head up, and saw about forty cops all running over to where I had just been. I stepped across those barricades once again and went into the crowd over by the Dome of the Rock. All this in less than say about one football field. I really just don't like cops or governments anywhere, I suppose, but I realize now that I would have been taken in and held for a good long time by those police for my audacity of actually enjoying the best Jerusalem has to offer to a tourist.
But a few minutes later, back with my group, I was buying some carved olive items from a prospering Palestinian merchant, who asked me who I was with. Like an idiot, I said I had an Israeli guide, and to my horror I saw a murderous grin cross his face, while he picked him out, and several Palestinians started towards my friend. My friend saw what was happening, and realized immediately what was going on, and ran for his life. I saw a bunch of Palestinians chasing after him down the narrow street.
He escaped, and lived to try to tell me that while Israel does have so-called civil liberty and human rights, it's just a mistake to assume anything. Translation: In places where people are scrapping over every inch of rock/dirt/air for their very survival, it's really a war, and the high ideals of peaceful, secure governance are just pipe dreams. In places like that, you're doing good if you can survive somehow, and if you survive for the duration you're lucky.
But where were those Palestinian cops who had forty walkie-talkies crackling over the stray tourist an hour earlier? I didn't hear one peep of any effort to protect the Iraeli guide, who indeed was not wearing his identifiable customary clothing to go shopping. I rather got the impression they would have joined in the murder in the streets in broad daylight.
Just try to wrap your mind around a scene like that. There was no gratitude for the guide who brought in the customers, no effort at being considerate of others, or respectful.
Yep, I call that "war", and if I went there today I'd dress to the local custom if I went shopping. Or to school.
Babe that is the problem. I don't think what this sect wants is the local custom. From all reports (and again it could be bad reporting but who knows) the sect doing the perdecuting is moving into a new area and trying to take over that community. They are the ones who are different. They have EVERY right to be. What they do not have the right to do is make others exactly like them.
As for in a war zone, if I felt I lived in a war zone than yes I would probably have to have a nice hard think on my views and what fights I am willing to have. However this is not palestinians and Isrealis. This is Isreali/Isreali violence. I actually have first hand experience in being persecuted and assaulted because I am different. I applaud them for standing strong and refusing to be told how they can live by a hardline sect of their own religion.
As for in a war zone, if I felt I lived in a war zone than yes I would probably have to have a nice hard think on my views and what fights I am willing to have. However this is not palestinians and Isrealis. This is Isreali/Isreali violence. I actually have first hand experience in being persecuted and assaulted because I am different. I applaud them for standing strong and refusing to be told how they can live by a hardline sect of their own religion.
Are you saying they should not get that room?
This little girl is not traveling through the Palestinian quarter, she's walking down her own street. Her religious group is supposedly not at war with those of the harrassers.
You seem to be reflexively opposed to the notion that government can act to preserve freedom. That's as much based on faith, and counter to evidence, as belief that the sun orbits the earth or that the earth is flat. As with most faith-based positions, it leads you into difficult territory when facing real-life situations, because you are relying on a disprovable view of the world. I firmly believe that the actions of governments need to be more accountable to people, but they are necessary, and will be as long as we are human.