JERUSALEM: Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land.
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon said missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Israel, distributing hundreds of New Testaments and missionary material.
After receiving complaints, Aharon said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Jewish religious students who went door to door to collect it.
The books were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a synagogue, he said.
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First image that occurred in my mind
I am not sure that it is violence against Christian missionaries. They weren't hurt in any way, physically anyway. Bruised ego a little maybe.
I am not for book burnings usually, but this may be justified. Can't they leave everyone alone
I don't understand how burning new testaments is an act of violence against somebody. Personally I'd like to start one of those drives for the Mormon pamphelets that are left here by those door-to-door crazies. Not that I have anything against them evangelizing, it's just that when they do it at 8am on a Saturday I'm about ready to consider beating someone down.
If I went through the Bible Belt here in the good ol' US and A distributing Kahless rhetoric, I would probably expect a book burning (and a beating) or two, myself!
How about next time, they just parade through town wearing swastikas? That might be fun!
You know, I have zero sympathy for christian missionaries anywhere. They make the decision to go to an environment that doesn't want them because of their warped belief that they are right and the world is wrong and all they need to do is just let people know how wrong they are.
I'm not for book burning and think there was probably more to the whole situation. But, even if there wasn't, what the hell did the missionaries think? That they could go to Jerusalem, the most Jewish of places, and they'd be loved and welcomed for their message of "truth"?
I've never heard of a Jewish missionary, or a Muslim missionary, Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto...any other kind of missionary than Christian. (I'm not saying they don't exist; I'm just saying that in my experience, I've never heard of one; but I hear of Christian ones almost daily as they put themselves in stupid situations and make the news because of it). Their arrogance deserves to be knocked down a peg or two in my humble opinion.
I'm not a fan of burning books, but, it's not "violence". And rejection of an alien religion is not persecution. If someone wants to evangelize in hostile territory they should accept the fact they will be resisted. Better yet, KEEP YOUR PATHETIC FANTASIES TO YOURSELF!
Once, when I questioned the fundiness of a quote about book burning, I was tartly told that anything involving Christians and book burning was per se fundy. We should apply the same standard across the board unless we want to be fundies of anti-Christianity.
(Got to live up to my name once in a while ...)
I'm against book burning as a general rule, but how does burning a bunch of paper constitute "violence" against christians?
I would consider myself put on notice, though.
God damn it: you DON'T BURN BOOKS! (That's fucking infuriating.)
Instead, they shoulda sent all those books back the the missionaries postage due.
/Caps lock of truth off now.
EXCLUSIVELY ON PAY-PER-VIEW!!!
THE MAIN EVENT
JEWS VS CHRISTIANS
FOR THE WORLD DOMINATION CHAMPIONSHIP
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"Jewish fundies dont push their crap on anyone."
You might like to ask the organisers of Gay Pride in Jerusalem about that....
JUNE 2007: A Gay Pride march in Jerusalem has taken place amid tight security, sparking fierce protests among the holy city's religious communities.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6225444.stm
For once, I think both sides could have done better--the missionaries should have never gone around wasting their time and resources like that, and the Jewish people could have recycled them instead of burning them--it's more environmental and human-health friendly.
But at least they didn't just throw them all into a landfill, and, as Illuminatalie pointed out, they gave the paper-printing companies more money. So at least they gave the people who work there additional job security, probably the best thing to come out of all this.
Interesting, that has been among the few things I hadn´t expected from fundamentalist orthodox jews.
Well maybe the Christians will finally realize that the Jews don't want to be one big happy family. Probably not, they don't learn things very quickly.
As far as the book burning, it was a message. I don't put it in the ranks of the Nazi book burnings, more at the level of the Beatles album burning after the "we're bigger than Jesus" comment.
Uh, right, the Christians didn't *provoke* this act?
Actually, I wouldn't put it past the Christians to stage something like this, just so they can cry "Persecution!"
I'm sure I'm not the only one applauding this. It's a waste of good paper and ink, yes, but then they were wasted when the materials were printed. It's like a more visual way of making fake Chick tracts, if you ask me.
The Zionist project was originally secular in aim. The haredim seem determined to turn Israel into as intolerant and repressive a shithole as any other country in the Middle East. Theodor Herzl would be appalled, to say the least.
Jewish or not, these people are evil, evil sons of bitches, even more so than the Ben Steins and Richard Perles we have in this country. (I do find myself continually amazed at the depths to which Jewish fundamentalists will sink. It's like they have no idea that there are anti-Semites out there who will read it as direct validation of the Protocols. Meir Kahane isn't dead, he's just resting... and his successors are evidently determined to see a great people, a tradition that gave us some of the greatest scholars, musicians, and businessmen history has ever seen, ground into irrelevance or extinction just to rebuild the Temple.)
I was just thinking the other day, "Y'know, we never get anything about Jewish fundies. It's always Christians and Muslims and shit. Are there even any?" And behold. Now, where are the Hindu fundie quotes?
I'm with Athar on this one. They all cry peace and love and hope, but no one even attempts to make it happen. It 'might' happen if everyone was brainwashed into thinking one way and we had no free will at all. But until that point, peace and love will never be a world 'round thing. We'll only get small pockets of it poping up around the place.
Totally against book burning as well. I am an enviromentalist, and they could have simply shredded the books in public then recycled the confetti. It would have gotten the point across, and also helped print the story on the next days news paper.
@tmr:
I think there actually were Buddhist missionaries. Key word being "were". But really the most they did was travel around living all Buddhist-ly and showing people what it's about. And Shinto didn't really need missionaries because it was/is pretty much the majority in Japan and they didn't give much of a shit about what anybody else was doing anyway.
On the topic itself: Burning something someone gave you is violence now? I can see that it's a pretty dick move, but violent?
That repression shoe doesn't feel so hot when it's on the other foot, does it, douche bag?
It's tragic that members of a religion that has suffered so much persecution and intolerance over the ages can show the same sort of intolerance to others.
To be fair, given the persecution Christians have visited upon Jews down through the years, burning a Bible has to be at least the equivalent of burning Mein Kampf .
Europe/America: Orthodox Christians set fire to hundreds of copies of Jews in the latest act of violence against Judaism in the those Holy Lands.
Or Yehuda Deputy Mayor Uzi Aharon and missionaries recently entered a neighborhood in the predominantly religious town of 34,000 in central Europe, distributing hundreds of New Talmuds and missionary material.
After receiving complaints, the mayor said, he got into a loudspeaker car last Thursday and drove through the neighborhood, urging people to turn over the material to Christian religious students who went door to door to collect it.
The Jews were dumped into a pile and set afire in a lot near a church, he said.
I don't think this is particularly fundie or should be lumped in with Nazi-like book burnings. They weren't going around FORCING people to turn over the books, they were just saying "Hey, we're doing this, come join in." It wasn't an attempt to keep information from the people but an act of protest against some self-righteous assholes.
Whilst I do find book burning to be abhorrent, I'm with the Jews on this one.
Besides, I thought Christians weren't supposed to convert Jews?
A lot of people seem to be bashing missionaries, but lots of missionaries do really good things, like bringing food and medicine. My grandmother went on a mission trip to Honduras to help the forgotten children. A mission was set up there to help these orphan kids who had been found living in the city dump, giving them homes and food. Lots of missionaries want to help people, and many do.
@Paradox:
Later in the article:"He [Aharon] said he regretted the burning of the books, but called it a "commandment" to burn materials that urge Jews to convert.
Actually, according to OT law he shouldn't have limited himself to the books, he should have gone after the ones attempting to convert Jews too (and maybe even after the ones who just told the would-be converters to bugger off instead of attempting to slaughter them, I'm not sure anymore. I also forget whether a specific method of execution is to be used in this case)
If the deputy mayor had not been the one urging the book burning, but instead it was one of the town citizens organizing the burning (and making participation as voluntary as possible), then it would not have been such a problem. This way, only those individuals who wanted to burn their own received copies of the New Testaments with others of like-mind would have done so to express their displeasure to the Christian missionaries. This would not count as violence against Christians.
What made book-burning evil in other times is that the books were taken from public libraries and/or forcefully taken from the books' owners. Burning your own bought (or received as a gift) copy of Harry Potter would not count.
The situation with the deputy mayor calling for the collection and burning of the material creates a coercive environment that would force those who do not want to burn the Christian material (for whatever reason) to comply in fear of authority.
OH MY GOD, WHAT THE- Oh, it was the missionaries' books, not the missionaries themselves. How dissapointing, now that I think about it.
Oh lawdy. Fight of the century.
However, I gotta say, the concept of missionary work kinda pisses me off.
"No, Hasid. You don't get food until you accept Jesus"
"JERUSALEM: Orthodox Jews set fire to hundreds of copies of the New Testament in the latest act of violence against Christian missionaries in the Holy Land."
And the fundies in the US would do the same with the Quran, On the Origin of Species, The God Delusion, Harry Potter, and anything that wasn't the New Testament, if they had their way. The Nazis did exactly the same thing, you know.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it indeed.
1. Israel really REALLY should be careful when doing these things; they really should know better
2. Now the Christians can have a taste of their own medicine.
3. Still fucked up. Why does no religion have a rule saying: don't be an asshole. Seriously, that would be one rule all could use.
I've never heard of a Jewish missionary, or a Muslim missionary , Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto...
Muslims do have those, they are called "Tablighi's" (lit. preachers) and they are just as bad, if not worse, than their Christian counterparts. The Buddhists have their travelling monks, but those are quite bearable compared to the competition. And the Jews have that whole elitist, god's-chosen-people thing going for them.
What i find disturbing is that an elected official is collecting and burning books. That shouldn't be his job. people are perfectly capable of throwing things out on their own, or using the pages as scrap paper. I wouldn't blame him for reprimanding the missionaries for soliciting without permission, but burning their material automatically makes the situation antagonistic, and increases the likelihood of future conflicts.
It's a good thing that the crazy segment of Christianity lacks the contacts for bombs and stuff. I mean, we worry about Muslim reprisals when a pastor burns Korans, but Christians aren't quite worth the fear, I guess.
i fucking hate book burners...
it seems some people out there have failed to learn from history. it seems they are now mimicking the bad behavior of the Christians.
*sighs loudly* when will they fucking learn..
Meh'd
I mean, I throw away missionary material that finds its way into my hands. This may be a little more dramatic, but it is saying the same thing, "No thank you!"
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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