Does the Bible say that Israel is the land of the Jews?

Dr. Naomi Wolf says not, although she is herself Jewish:



I reproduce her comments below. My rejoinder first:

She has a point. In Genesis 12: 6, later amplified in chapter 15, God (Yahweh) says that Abraham and his descendants ("seed) were given ownership of the land of Israel due to their covenant to worship him and obey his commandments. And that was a "covenant" or contract. They got the land as part of a deal, the deal being that they worship and obey Yahweh, the Hebrew God. There were lots of Gods around at thetime so which one you worshipped was important and significant.

But Ms Wolf is right that other people could become covenanters (part of the deal) by also worshipping Yahweh and doing his bidding. So being a genetic descendant of Abrahan was significant but not crucial to being part of the covenanters and gaining their rights.

So outsiders could become adopted into the covenanted people but that did not in any way reduce the Yahweh-given rights of Abraham's "seed" to the land of the Canaanites.

And even the descendants of Abraham could lose their rights by stopping worship of Yahweh.

But that people could be both kicked out of and adopted into the Abrahamic family still left that family with inherited rights to the land concerned

Ms Wolf is correct in saying that behaviour matters in who is bound by and affected by the covenant but WHICH behavour is the point. And it is worship of Yaweh that is the key, not just generally doing good

And that the descendants of the original covenanters and their "seed" continued to regard the land concerned as theirs we see throughout the rest of the Bible. They continued to live there and returned there after both their sojourn in Egypt and after their Babylonian exile.

So if nothing more, it is an historical fact that the Yahweh-worshipping descendants of the Abrahamic covenanters continued to live in what we now call Israel for many centuries after the original covenant.

But perhaps Ms Wolf does us a favour by noting that the people concerned were NOT racists. Genetic descent was important but others could be welcomed into the tribe by worshipping their god and following his rules. And Israel to this day honours that.

But her saying that ownership of the land is "NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT" is a blatant lie. She must not know the meaning of the word "covenant"

"Okay, so I was challenged below: "Read the Bible! God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people."

"So....I may get crucified for this but I have started to say it -- most recently (terrified, trembling) to warm welcome in a synagogue in LA: Actually if you read Genesis Exodus and Deuteronomy in Hebrew -- as I do -- you see that God did not "give" Israel to the Jews/Israelites.

We as Jews are raised with the creed that "God gave us the land of Israel" in Genesis -- and that ethnically 'we are the chosen people." But actually -- and I could not believe my eyes when I saw this, I checked my reading with major scholars and they confirmed it -- actually God's "covenant" in Genesis, Exodus and Deuteronomy with the Jewish people is NOT ABOUT AN ETHNICITY AND NOT ABOUT A CONTRACT. IT IS ABOUT A WAY OF BEHAVING.

Again and again in the "covenant" language He never says: "I will give you, ethnic Israelites, the land of Israel." Rather He says something far more radical - far more subversive -- far more Godlike in my view. He says: IF you visit those imprisoned...act mercifully to the widow and the orphan...welcome the stranger in your midst...tend the sick...do justice and love mercy ....and perform various other tasks...THEN YOU WILL BE MY PEOPLE AND THIS LAND WILL BE YOUR LAND.

So "my people" is not ethnic -- it is transactional. We are God's people not by birth but by a way of behaving, that is ethical, kind and just. And we STOP being "God's people" when we are not ethical, kind and just. And ANYONE who is ethical, kind and just is, according to God in Genesis, "God's people." And the "contract" to "give" us Israel is conditional -- we can live in God's land IF we are "God's people" in this way -- just, merciful, compassionate. AND -- it never ever says, it is ONLY your land.

Even when passages spell out geographical "boundaries" as if God does such a thing, it never says this is exclusively your land. It never says I will give this land JUST to you. Remember these were homeless nomads who had left slavery in Egypt and were wandering around in the desert; at most these passages say, settle here, but they do not say, settle here exclusively. Indeed again and again it talks about welcoming "zarim" -- translated as "strangers" but can also be translated as "people/tribes who are not you" -- in your midst. Blew my mind, hope it blows yours"

https://www.facebook.com/naomi.wolf.author/posts/okay-so-i-was-challenged-below-read-the-bible-god-gave-the-land-of-israel-to-the/10152548360004476/

*********************************************

The procrustean Kamala

Kamala Harris keeps telling us she wants ‘equity’ not ‘equality.’ What does she mean? She is using ‘equality’ to means ‘equality of opportunity’ while (for her) ‘equity’ means ‘equality of outcome’. Harris has said repeatedly that what she wants is for everyone ‘to end up in the same place’. And that means, she says, that some people (the disadvantaged) will need more help (positive discrimination) and others will need less. She sometimes calls this ‘social justice’.

But there’s the problem. Justice normally means unequal outcomes. In most court cases, when justice is done, one side wins and the other side loses. The person charged with a crime is found to be ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’. If the prosecution wins, then the defence has to lose. If a complainant sues a plaintiff in a civil case the court will find for either the complainant or the plaintiff. One side wins and the other loses. They don’t ‘both end up in the same place’.

The justice system provides equality of opportunity (to present evidence, to argue their case, etc.) but never provides equality of outcomes. And ‘equality of outcome’ can only work in a society if some (the hard working, the talented) are cheated, and others (the lazy, the dull) are given an unfair advantage. Society is ‘unjust’ in the same way the 100-metres sprint is unjust—only one person comes first, others come second or third, or fail to finish in a place.

And that outcome is ‘fair’ because they have different abilities. To force them all to ‘end up in the same place’ (all come first, simultaneously) would be unfair. That’s why so-called ‘equity’ (equality of outcome) is a con, a cheat, and damaging to society.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/language-123/

*************************************************

UK: Yvette Cooper’s chilling crackdown on ‘harmful’ beliefs

Brendan O'Neill

Why is there not more disquiet over Yvette Cooper’s promise to crack down on ‘harmful’ beliefs? To my mind it ranks as one of the most chilling political pledges of the modern era. The thought of a Labour government, or any government, imperiously decreeing which ideas are ‘harmful’ and which are benign leaves me cold. It’s a first step to tyranny and it needs to be walked back.

A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the government a blank cheque to demonise views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC

The Home Secretary has commissioned a rapid review of ‘extremist ideologies’ as part of a new government counter-extremism strategy. She has vowed to come down hard on people who push ‘harmful or hateful beliefs’. The aim is to tackle head-on any online or offline activity that ‘promotes violence or undermines democracy’. Her mission has acquired a new sense of urgency, it seems, following the recent riots, which were in part fuelled by misleading or outright bigoted blather online.

No one aside from a handful of nutters will oppose feeling the collars of people who promote violence. Inciting violence is illegal. If you do it you’re in trouble. But Cooper’s other categories of ‘harmful’ thought are flabbier and more troubling. Consider her promise to tackle ideologies that undermine democracy. What does this mean?

I hate to relitigate the recent past – really, I do – but would it mean that Remainers who tried to block the enactment of the largest democratic vote in the history of these isles might get a knock on the door from Cooper’s crusaders against extremist thought? Perhaps Cooper will pop over to No. 10 itself and have a stern word with her boss, Keir Starmer. After all, as shadow Brexit secretary under Jeremy Corbyn he was forever agitating for a second referendum, which would have entailed voiding the first vote. Was that ‘harmful activity’ that threatened to ‘undermine democracy’?

Of course, Remainers are going to be fine. Cooper is hardly about to crack down on her own dinner-party set, is she? And therein lies the entire problem with censorship, with entrusting officialdom to sort ideas into boxes marked ‘acceptable’ or ‘unutterable’. It gives government the awesome and terrifying power to shape public discourse to its own ideological tastes. Censorship is always dolled up as a heroic effort to protect the public from ‘harmful’ ideas, but in truth it is about ensuring the public is primarily exposed to ideas the government approves of.

I have no doubt that in the eyes of Cooper’s Home Office, ‘undermining democracy’ is when a couple of thousand far-right oafs gather in Whitehall, not when a hundred thousand nice people from leafy suburbs march to say ‘Stop Brexit’. It is a short step from ‘countering extremism’ to countering ideas the government dislikes while signal-boosting ideas it does like. Whatever their lofty social promises, crusades against problematic speech have a terrible tendency to empower official narratives at the expense of dissenting ones.

Ask yourself: what is a ‘harmful’ belief? And more to the point, who gets to decide? It is a mere three years since Starmer thundered that it is ‘not right’ to say only women have a cervix. That is ‘something that shouldn’t be said’, he cried after one of his MPs – the heroic Rosie Duffield – committed that very blasphemy of stating basic biological facts. Are we seriously expected to trust a government led by this man to rule on what is a harmful belief and what is an okay belief? Given he once thought basic biology was ‘something that shouldn’t be said’, who knows what perfectly normal, scientifically correct belief he might rebrand as ‘harmful’ in the near future.

In this era of hyper-fragility, people claim to be ‘harmed’ by words all the time. Say ‘I’m not sure about same-sex marriage’ or ‘I don’t think biological males should box women at the Olympics’ and you will inevitably trigger a million right-on saps crying, ‘Stop erasing me!’ If the government sends the signal that ‘harmful’ beliefs are unacceptable under its watch, we will witness of orgy of grievance-mongering as all sorts of social groups agitate for the crushing of beliefs that make them feel uncomfortable or just sad.

Indeed, I can envision entire belief systems being reimagined as ‘harmful’. Some already have been. Traditional Catholics, for example. They think marriage should only be between a man and a woman, that sex is determined by God not scalpel-wielding gender surgeons, and that only followers of Christ get to Heaven. That’s homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic, right? In other words: harmful. Shut them down!

A war on ‘harmful’ beliefs would give the government a blank cheque to demonise and shush views that are old-fashioned, possibly unpopular or just not very PC. Labour would do well to remember that one man’s ‘harmful’ belief is another man’s heartfelt moral conviction. To the aloof operators of Yvette Cooper’s Home Office, angry public bristling against mass immigration or impassioned agitation against gender ideology might appear ‘harmful’ – but to many others it is legitimate, important commentary.

The harms of censorship outweigh the supposed harms of controversial speech every single time. I would far rather be exposed to a ‘harmful’ idea than have my eyes and ears covered by Cooper and her fellow paternalists in Whitehall. At least my autonomy and self-respect would remain intact.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/yvette-coopers-chilling-crackdown-on-harmful-beliefs/

*********************************************

UK: Top cop's mic grab sets a dreadful example to other police officers

A Sky News reporter having his microphone grabbed and dropped to the ground might seem like a trifling story right now, given everything that’s happening in the country. But when the mic-grabber is none other than Sir Mark Rowley, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, it’s a different matter. A very different matter. In a democracy, cops don’t treat journalists in such a dismissive, degrading fashion.

It was outside the Cabinet Office that Sir Mark outrageously interfered with the property of a reporter. The man from Sky News asked him if he was going to ‘end two-tier policing’. And instead of answering – or not answering, if he wants to be a big baby about it – Sir Mark yanked Sky’s mic and seemed to push it to the ground. As he then arrogantly strutted to his car, the reporter could be heard saying: ‘Did he just do that?’

Yes, he did. And it was beyond inappropriate. For the most powerful cop in the country to manhandle an instrument of journalism, to try to physically prevent a reporter from recording something, sends a terrible message. Will Sir Mark’s lower-downs now behave likewise? Will they take their cue from the big man and grab and discard the kit of any journalist who asks them a pesky question?

It felt like a mask-off moment. It seemed to reveal a haughty disregard on the part of Sir Mark, and perhaps the Met more broadly, for the right of reporters to interrogate people in power. Rowley didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. His lunging for the mic and his puffed-up demeanour said it all: ‘I’m not speaking to a lowlife like you.’

It was the physicality of the encounter that truly rankled. What if Sir Mark had broken that mic? I can see the global headlines now: ‘Chief British Police Officer Smashes Journalist’s Equipment.’ There was a palpable authoritarian undertone to Sir Mark’s gruff behaviour. It felt like more than exasperation – it felt like intolerance. Intolerance for the freedom of the press to ask questions that make officials feel uncomfortable.

In this case, it seems to have been the reporter’s query about ‘two-tier policing’ that pushed the Met boss over the edge. I’ve noticed an extreme defensiveness on this question. Keir Starmer, too, bristled at the suggestion that cops are treating the current rioting mobs more harshly than they did other recent acts of brutish disorder. It’s a ‘non-issue’, he said. Leftists online are as one with Sir Mark and Sir Keir, furiously denouncing all talk of two-tier policing as a ‘conspiracy theory’.

Is it possible they protest too much? To many it seems at least plausible to ask whether the current riots are being policed and condemned more ferociously than the Harehills riot in Leeds last month was. And didn’t Sir Keir take the knee in the fashion of Black Lives Matter in August 2020 when the BLM protests were at their height? Some on the left described the England riots of 2011, with all their arson and looting and death, as an uprising against austerity. Yet now street violence horrifies them. It all has at least the whiff of a double standard, no?

Regardless, the point is that reporters must have the right to ask such questions, even if they irritate the top dog of the armed wing of the state. In recent years, both the political class and the police have too often been disdainful of press freedom. Yet without that freedom, we’re screwed. Reporters holding officialdom’s feet to the fire is what keeps a nation free and informed. Sir Mark must apologise to Sky News and make it clear that none of his officers should ever meddle with the property or the liberty of a journalist.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/08/mark-rowleys-mic-grab-sets-a-dreadful-example-to-police-officers/

**************************************************

My my main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://jonjayray.com/ozarc.html (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

***********************************************