Nidal never directly attacked Israel and Israel never attacked him. Likewise, for all his criticisms of Israel, Bin Laden never attacked it, nor did Israel attack him. It might be argued that Bin Laden couldn’t have penetrated Israel very easily to strike at it, but certainly he could have hit Israeli “soft” targets such as its overseas embassies (just as he did with U.S. embassies). Israel’s embassies he left untouched. Confining himself to U.S. targets served the interests of the Israelis, who wanted the U.S. to make war on their enemies.
ellauri481.html on line 447: It appears that, just as no one wanted to capture Abu Nidal—in order to sustain Israel’s refusal to engage in negotiations—no one wanted to capture Bin Laden either, because to do so would have ended the pretext for America’s endless Middle East proxy wars on behalf of Israel, as enumerated by General Wesley Clark.
ellauri481.html on line 455: Israel’s Ronen Bergman quotes PLO chief Yassar Arafat on suicide bombings:
ellauri481.html on line 459: Now let’s watch former soldiers in Israel’s IDF, Gaza border defense, explain why the recent “surprise attack” on Israel would be impossible. Aagh, let's not.
ellauri481.html on line 474: Hamas founder Moses Hasan Yousef . . . was a spy for Zionist intelligence 1997—2007 before being given US residency. . . . Shin Bet [Israel’s equivalent of the FBI] considered him its most valuable source within the Hamas leadership. The information Yousef supplied exposed numerous Hamas cells, and assisted Israel in hunting down many militants, and incarcerating his own father, Hamas leader Sheikh Hassan Yousef.34
ellauri481.html on line 478: One must ask, then, given Israel’s long penetration of Arab organizations, what other Mossad agents might have infiltrated Hamas, and might still be there? Was the attack carried out with coordination on both sides, so that Netanyahu could destroy and annex Gaza, driving the people out and turning the land into yet another territory of “Greater Israel?”
ellauri497.html on line 331: Netanyahu treats the relationship with a strict focus on Israel’s immediate security interests, historically placing immense emphasis on maintaining a working relationship with Moscow due to Russia's military presence in neighboring Syria. He prioritizes Israel's security over Ukraine's.
ellauri499.html on line 78: This historical reconstruction proposes that YHWH—a deity firmly rooted in the central Israelite hill country during the Iron Age—only formally became Israel’s god during the ninth century BCE, when Samaria’s Omride kings deliberately modeled the local deity YHWH on the more popular Levantine warrior storm-god Baal(-šamêm). Furthermore, I argue that YHWH only officially became Judah’s patron god and the primary deity of the Jerusalem temple under the direct influence of Omride Israel’s YHWistic political-religious reforms. Ultimately, I conclude that Baal worship was traditional in ancient Israelite and Judahite religion down to the end of the monarchic period, at which point small circles of Judahite scribes began to advocate "historically innovative" monopoöistic political-religious ideologies pitting the Israelite deity YHWH against the allegedly “foreign” god Baal.
ellauri499.html on line 80: This historical reconstruction proposes that YHWH—a local minor deity firmly rooted in the central Israelite hill country during the Iron Age—only formally became Israel’s god during the ninth century BCE, when Samaria’s Omride kings deliberately modeled the local deity YHWH on the more popular Levantine warrior storm-god Baal(-šamêm).
ellauri499.html on line 82: Furthermore, I argue that YHWH only officially became Judah’s patron god and the primary deity of the Jerusalem temple under the direct influence of Omride Israel’s YHWistic political-religious reforms.
ellauri499.html on line 90: However, I argue that this distinctively Judahite portrayal of YHWH and Baal’s relationship is a later partisan construction that makes a normative claim on its ancient audience, prescriptively mandating the worship of YHWH alone. For this reason, the Hebrew Bible’s polemics against Baal cannot simply be taken as an accurate historical depiction of Israel’s religious history, especially for earlier periods.
ellauri499.html on line 96: Adopting this perspective, I conclude that: (1) Baal worship was traditional to ancient Israelite and Judahite religion down to the end of the monarchic period; (2) YHWH’s cult cannot be said to have originated historically in Bronze Age Arabia—as the reigning “Midianite-Kenite Hypothesis” maintains—but is rooted in the central Israelite hill country in the Iron Age (cf. the “Berlin Hy- pothesis”); (3) YHWH cannot clearly be said to have originated as a storm god, as many scholars maintain, but especially appears to have taken on storm-god features under Baal’s infuence in the Iron II period; (4) YHWH became Israel’s representative god under the patronage of Samaria’s ninth-century Omride kings, who seem to have modeled YHWH on the more popular Levantine deity Baal(-šamêm); (5) YHWH’s associations with the deep south are to be connected to political and economic expansion into the Egyptian Sinai during the ninth and eighth centuries; (6) YHWH officially became Judah’s patron god and the primary deity of the Jerusalem temple under the direct infuence of Omride Israel’s YHWistic political-religious reforms; (7) Jerusalemite YHWism further developed distinctive YHWistic traditions that reflect and respond to Judah’s specifc social-political economy and political-religious history; and (8) the Hebrew Bible’s Baal polemics largely derive from limited Judahite scribal circles in the late monarchic and post-monarchic periods that advocated newly invented insidious political-religious ideologies.
ellauri499.html on line 98: According to much of the Hebrew Bible, which is a cultural product of the kingdom of Judah and its heirs, Israel is to worship only YHWH, who rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt under Moses’s leadership, established an exclusive covenant with them to be their god and they his people, and brought them into their land, defeating Israel’s enemies and for- bidding the worship of their gods, including Baal. Yet, the Israelites repeatedly forsake their covenant obligations to YHWH and worship Baal and the other deities.
ellauri499.html on line 106: Although the Hebrew Bible claims Israel’s name and heritage for its peoples, it is ultimately a Judahite scribal creation written largely after the destruction of the kingdom of Israel that reflects the political and cultural values of particular scribal circles invested in the kingdom based at Jerusalem. While Israel and Judah were both small southern Levantine kingdoms that shared the He- brew language and the worship of YHWH—indeed, YHWH historically is only known to have been worshiped in Israel and Judah —differences in social and political structure indicate that the two kingdoms had rather distinctive political cultures.
ellauri499.html on line 108: Historically, the name “Israel” appears to have been the older regional political identity, mentioned already in the Late Bronze Age Merenptah Stele (ca. 1208). The Iron Age II kingdom of the same name—whatever its historical relationship to Merenptah’s Israel—was the more politically, militarily, and economically powerful of the two kingdoms, with close ties to Lebanon and the Syrian kingdoms to the north. Indeed, the Jerusalem-based kingdom, early on known as the “House of David,” even appears to have been Israel’s vassal at times during the ninth and eighth centuries.
ellauri499.html on line 116: While the god Baal/Haddu is historically well attested outside of the Hebrew Bible and ancient Israel, YHWH’s historical origins remain obscure and his worship limited to Iron Age Israel and Judah. The Hebrew Bible occasionally describes YHWH(-El) with bovine language (Bellow/Snort/Grunt/Mooh)—especially horn imagery (Num 23:22, 24:8; Hosea 8:5–6, 10:5–6, 13:2) —although its Judahite authors roundly condemn Israel’s use of bull-calf icons to worship YHWH (Exod 32:4, 8; Deut 9:16; 1 Kgs 12:28–32; Ps 106:19–20; Neh 9:18; 2 Chr 13:8). For instance, Hosea 8:5–6* criticizes the “calf (icon) of Samaria,” which, particularly in light of the mention of “YHWH of Samaria” on Pithos A from Kuntillet ʿAğrûd, most likely served to emblemize YHWH. The “Berlin Hypothesis” posits that YHWH did not originate in the deep south but in the central Israelite highlands.
ellauri499.html on line 122: Many scholars also interpret the biblical story of Jeroboam I’s installation of bull-calf icons at Dan and Bethel (not Samaria) as a programmatic attempt to consolidate Israel’s political-religious identity in opposition to the political claims and religious traditions of the Davidic monarchy and its YHWistic temple in Jerusalem.
ellauri499.html on line 132: Later Assyrian inscriptions remember Omri, not David or Solomon, as the definitive political leader from Israel’s past.
ellauri499.html on line 134: In light of YHWH’s historical origins inde- pendent from Israel—evidenced in part by the theophoric element El, not YHWH, in Israel’s name —the important religious-historical problem arises as to when and under what circumstances YHWH formally became Israel’s representative deity.
ellauri499.html on line 136: Relying heavily upon the Hebrew Bible’s dominant Judahite narrative, scholars have ascribed YHWH’s formal elevation to the position of Israel’s patron deity to Israel’s Mosaic prehistory, the reign of Saul, King David’s rule, or even Jehu’s coup overthrowing Omri’s royal house. However, I contend that this major shift in YHWH’s identity is to be correlated with Israel’s broader political, economic, and cultural transformation under the Omrides.
ellauri499.html on line 140: In this context, the Elijah cycle (1 Kgs 17:1–2 Kgs 2:18)—whose protagonist’s name, meaning “Yah is my god,” signals its ardently YHWistic religious perspective—repeatedly pits YHWH against Baal as Israel’s divine “lord,” most dramatically in the contest between YHWH and Baal at Mount Carmel and the ensuing bloodbath (1 Kgs 18:17–40).
ellauri499.html on line 141: However, the Hebrew Bible’s partisan portrayal of Ahab— judged the worst king in Israel’s history by the Judean editors of the books of Kings (1 Kgs 16:30; cf. 1 Kgs 21:25–26)—and his son Ahaziah as unrepentant Baal worshipers cannot be taken at face value, serving as it does late Judahite political and religious interests.
While some scholars argue that the Baal polemics in the Elijah cycle contain traces of early Israelite tradition, the writers who composed and edited the biblical material in the books of Kings about the Omrides’ worship of Baal clearly were Judean scribes active in the post-monarchic period, hundreds of years af- ter the events portrayed.
ellauri499.html on line 143: In short, the Hebrew Bible’s late, tendentious portrait of the Omrides as ardent Baal worshipers cannot be used to reconstruct ninth-century Israelite religion. Rather, I argue that the evidence points toward the Omride royal court in Samaria as the engine of Israel’s political-religious transformation during the Iron Age IIB, including YHWH’s identifcation as the “god of Israel”, via his translation as a storm god modeled on Baal(-šamêm).
ellauri499.html on line 145: Ironically, to the extent that the Baal polemics in the books of Kings (coincidentally?) refect anything historical about early Israelite religion, I argue that it is the memory of the Omrides’ central role in reforming Israelite religion on a Phoenician model, albeit to promote YHWH, not Baal, as the “god of Israel” and Israel’s divine “lord.”
ellauri499.html on line 161: In sum, Judah’s political subordination to Israel may have had a strong impact on Jerusalemite royal political theology. It may be, then, that Jerusalem’s Davidic monarchs first installed YHWH as their divine patron in connection with, or under the infuence of, the Omrides’ elevation of YHWH to the position of Israel’s kingdom god.
ellauri499.html on line 173: It was the Omrides who formally elevated YHWH to the position of the “god of Israel” in their efforts to consolidate royal power in Samaria and expand Israel’s political control north of the Jezreel Valley and east of the Jordan River.
ellauri499.html on line 297: An earlier passage had made Shechem the scene of Joshua's covenant between all the tribes of Israel and "El Yahweh, our god of Israel" and a later one describes it as the location of the "House of El Berith". Big fat hairy difference. It is thus unclear whether the false worship of the "Baʿalim" being decried is the worship of a new idol or rites and teachings placing Yahweh as a mere local god within a larger pantheon. The Hebrew Scriptures record the worship of Baʿal threatening Israel from the time of the Judges until the monarchy, but it may just have North-South politics masquerading as religious heresy.
Throughout all the stories of Judges the popular faith in YHWH/Baal runs like alternating current. This faith raises the judges, and inspires poets, prophets, and Nazirites. ... Worship of Baals and Ashtoreths has been schematically interspersed between these chapters. No trace of a vital, popular belief in any specifically foreign gods can be detected in the stories. Baal prophets were identified snd eliminated in Israel centuries later; but during the age of the judges when Israel is supposed to have been most deeply affected by the religion of Canaan, there are no Baal priests or prophets to speak of, nor any other intimation of any trouble from polytheism in Israel’s life, while the Deuteronomist and the present form of Jeremiah phrase the Judahite godnapping as struggle about monolatry or monotheism against henotheism or polytheism.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 295: We also need to remember that Bible prophecy only illuminates world history where Israel is concerned. Great Empires have come and gone during Israel’s absence without so much as a hint of their existence in the Bible. Even the United States, by any measure the most successful of them all, is missing from the prophetic record. You can’t tell me God didn’t know these empires were coming, so their absence has to mean that He sees them as irrelevant to Israel’s destiny. Don’t get me wrong, He has used them all to advance His plan for His people, and they were all blessed through their time of participation. But He didn’t find any of them worthy of mention because He didn’t actually need any of them to fulfil His plan.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 348: Based on existing conditions in the world today we would interpret this prophecy as pertaining to Jordan. But this could all change with the Battle of Psalm 83 when Edom, Moab, and Ammon could come under Israel’s control again. Is that what will prevent the anti-Christ from conquering them, or is there more to it?
xxx/ellauri415.html on line 200: Sally Sheffield 1969 on juutalaissyntyinen Playboy-malli. Hän syntyi syövän merkin alla 17. heinäkuuta 1941 New Yorkissa, New Yorkissa, Yhdysvalloissa. Sally Sheffield oli Playboy Playmate kuukauden toukokuussa 1969. Hän sai arvostetun Playboy Playmate -tittelin 27-vuotiaana. Hänen mitat ovat 36-24-35. Sally Sheffieldillä on luonnolliset rinnat, sielukkaat ruskeat silmät ja ruskeat hiukset. Sheffield spent eight months on an Israeli kibbutz, where she said she artificially inseminated hens. In her Playboy profile, Sheffield praised the integrity of one-eyed Moshe Dayan, who at the time of her photo shoot was Israel’s minister of defense. Pompeo Posar kuvasi hänen keskitaittonsa. (Se ei välttämättä ole kuvan mirri mutta varmaan yhtä karvainen.)
xxx/ellauri457.html on line 203: Wait, there's more: The US State Department has imposed sanctions on three Palestinian human rights groups that asked the International Criminal Court to investigate and arrest Israeli leaders over accusations of war crimes in Gaza. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday the US will sanction the three NGOs – Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights (Al Mezan), and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) – for engaging in what he called the ICC’s “illegitimate targeting of Israel.” The US sanctions come days after the world’s leading genocide scholars said Israel’s actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide. Israel rejected the accusation, saying it is based on a “campaign of lies” by Hamas. It has previously rejected other accusations it is carrying out genocide or war crimes.
xxx/ellauri485.html on line 426: Even before this war began on February 28, Iran calculated it could weather a brief war with Washington as long as it could set end-of-conflict terms by hijacking the Strait of Hormuz and forcing Trump to the negotiating table. That it has exceeded that aspiration of driving Trump towards a pain point on the price of oil and can even monetize the vital maritime lanes through extortion buys the gambit even more time. Tehran likely looks at the recent history of conflict – be it NATO in Kosovo in 1999, where months of strategic strikes failed to cripple Serbian troop movements, or the wars in Iraq of 1991 and 2003, or Israel’s air strikes in Lebanon in 2006, where the main bridge to Syria was blown up, or even in the most recent Israeli strikes on Lebanon’s bridges – they are at worst a nuisance, not an overnight game-changer.
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