Not the Torah - e.g. “[18] He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. [19] Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.” Deuteronomy 10:18-19 (ESV)
Regarding the second one, variations of that, to help or protect strangers/travellers, seems to have been relatively common across a variety of historical cultures.
Tangentially, it also reminds me of a woman's grave that was found in Denmark I think. I can't remember how old the grave was, but something like 3-4000 years. They were able to use isotope analysis of her teeth, hair, stomach contents, etc. to trace her movements.
She was from the area, but in the last year of her life, she'd travelled down to around Switzerland and back. There was a documentary about it, I'll see if I can find it...
Well... I'm not sure which bog body it was, there were a few!
It might've been the 'Haraldskær Woman', I found an article [1] about her which roughly matches my recollections, and is from around the same time I would've seen the documentary. Although she might've only travelled as far as central Germany.
Tangential, but I am always skeptical of these sorts of reconstructed stories when they rely on purely academic methods such as ancient stomach contents analysis and inferred historical geographic flora. Like, if that’s wrong somehow, how would you know, exactly? Both of those examples are fundamentally non-verifiable.
You can check if there's agreement between different techniques. Tooth enamel would be a pretty trustworthy source of information, for example. It just depends on what level of confidence you want in the results.
I'm personally comfortable with a "probable" or "it's likely that" in my history docos. I'm a lot less comfortable with that standard when it comes to planes, trains, and automobiles.
That makes sense to me and I’m comfortable with redundant agreeing evidence as well (assuming we don’t ignore any contradictory evidence), but my impression is that these fields do not consistently have such a standard. Maybe my impression is wrong? To me it seems like you need to crawl through the dependency chain and verify that reasonable standards were used all the way up. Does the peer review process in these fields actually enforce this? It seems like no, but I am just a spectator.
there are in most primitive moral codes requirements to welcome strangers and give them hospitality, this is a chance to make an out member come in of course, but there are the truly out - enemies that you are not required to treat nicely.
It makes complete sense that people feel that way. European and Euro derived cultures are universalist from Christianity. But universalism isn’t the norm for moral systems throughout history. We only feel like universalism is best because it permeates the morality we grew up with.
I'm not sure what to say about people that encourage other people to keep starting wars they can't win instead of cutting a deal. While being at no personal risk themselves.
The whole point of the article you are commenting on is discussing the history of the notion of Eretz Yisrael, a political point which has always existed in Israel and has become significant after Netanyahu recent interview - certainly not a “Western fantasy” - and confront it with how it was applied during Israel history.
No one is discussing than Ben-Gurion did use borders as a négociation tool. But Likud’s 1977 platform also exists and the “Yinon plan”.
The main question is how relevant is the concept to Israel current political environment and ambitions.
I have no comment to make about your last paragraph. I fear we have reached the point where history will have to be the judge.
My whole argument is that "great israel" as an idea in a democracy never had any vetoing power aka any blockung majority. Its as relevant to israel as "nazi-moonbases" are to the western world. Its loud cringe fringe ignored. What Israel wants most of all is peace , because war with a reservist army hurts its economy.
Yet, it has been at war with the islamo-supremacists in the arab world forever and a day. Israel has to deal with the reality it faces, not the make a wish realities into which large parts of the west retreat every time they look at the world without looking at it . Thus here we go.. again and again.. the wheelchair war, were your retarded neighbor tries to run you over again and again no matter what you offer..
This is such a tremendously biased and ignorant e reading of history it blows my mind.
Hamas is a modern creation that has nothing to do with Gaza. Gaza was a refugee camp for the displaced Palestinianas, many who came from towns torched by Jewish paramilitary forces.
To talk about Islam legitimizing attacking nonbelievers is as bigoted a statement as characterizing Judaism by the insane beliefs of the half million settlers who constantly bulldoze Palestinian towns (and act which the West refuses to call it what it is: terrorism and ethnic cleansing).
For the Palestinians and the southern Lebanese who have also been bombed by Israel, or the innocent people who die every day in Gaza, Israel is the “permanent hostile neighbor”. Hamas and Hezbollah didn’t come out of the ether.
Hamass is a direct spawn of the muslim brotherhood which spawned due to hitlers propaganda in the 2nd worldwar. The idea that shaped the organisation are ancient and literally where there before israel was founded as save haven for the jews escaping europe and the middle east .
tzedek tzedek tirdof (justice, justice shall you pursue) "