Decent people in boston need to demand that the Catholic Archbishop, the Episcopal Bishop. the Methodist bishop. the New england Presbytry, and all the oter official christian organizatinos issue public condemnations of this conference. In much the same way that many University presidents have condemned the british academic boycott.

Anyone who considers Christ to be the Messiah; all Christians, all good and decent people everywhere are invited to come to this conference.

Those who support Christianity know that Jesus was from Palestine. The oldest Christian community in the world is being driven out of their homes for Israeli "real estate."

Actualy the Christian community in Israel is not only stable, but growing at a moderate rate.

The christian community in the palestinian-controlled Gaza, and West Bank is endangered, and shrinking daily as the few remaining christians flee for better lives elsewhere.

I agree that the disappearance of this ancient Christian community is tragic. I also regret that the large Christian community that existed in 1948 chose to side with the Arab program of destroying Israel instead of beocmeing loyal citizens of the new Jewish State.

Hi Karin, what's your connection to the ISB? Are they paying you?

Solomon,

I'll tell you if you first tell me who is paying you, and how much you are getting paid.

Karin

Karin, you are clueless on factual/historical grounds or morally confused or both, perhaps willfully so and blissfully blind to momentous realities.

Inter-religious dialog and relations can sometimes be as difficult as inter-ideological relations at the social/political level (e.g., the 20th century), but in Gaza and the West Bank - in the midst of Islamic, Islamicist and jihadist cultures - Christianity has a dhimmi status and has suffered catastrophic erosions. Two or three examples, among hundreds and hundreds that could be offered (e.g., google "Christians in Gaza and the West Bank"):

Hamas, by Royal Appointment, excerpt:

"One Christian leader, an aide to Jerusalem’s Latin Patriarch Michel Sabah who asked his name be withheld out of fear of Muslim retaliation, called the threats against Qalqiliya’s YMCA part of a general trend of Christian persecution in Palestinian areas ..."

Islam's Global War against Christianity from American Thinker, including a report on Gaza.

Peace on earth, but hatred towards Israel, some excerpts:

"Life for Palestinian Christians such as 50-year-old Joseph has become increasingly difficult in Bethlehem - and many of them are leaving. The town’s Christian population has dwindled from more than 85 per cent in 1948 to 12 per cent of its 60,000 inhabitants in 2006. There are reports of religious persecution, in the form of murders, beatings and land grabs."

"The sense of a creeping Islamic fundamentalism is all around in Bethlehem…George Rabie, a 22-year-old taxi driver from the Bethlehem suburb of Beit Jala, is proud of his Christianity, even though it puts him in daily danger."

"The Christian population of the areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) has sharply declined in recent decades, as tens of thousands have abandoned their holy sites and ancestral properties to live abroad."

"The growing strength of Islamic fundamentalism within the Palestinian national movement poses problems for Christians, who fear they will be deemed opponents of Islam and thereby risk becoming targets for Muslim extremists. This is exacerbated by the fact that Hamas holds substantial power and seeks to impose its radical Islamist identity on the entire population within the PA-controlled territories."

"The plight of Christian Arabs remaining in the PA is, in part, attributable to the adoption of Muslim religious law in the PA Constitution. Israel, by contrast, safeguards the religious freedom and holy places of its Christian (and Muslim) citizens. Indeed, in recent years Israel has been responsible for restoring many of the churches and monasteries under its jurisdiction."

Of course! It's completely fair to disclose who might be paying my bills here. Full disclosure and all that.

As you can see, I carry advertising from Pajamas Media and they pay me a small (quite token) amount for that. I'm not sure if I'm permitted to say, under the terms of the contract, exactly how much money this is, but you can google around and find that at the time they launched it was considered by many to be less money than most blogs could make on their own blog ads and such. In fact, since renewing with them and selecting their "non-exclusive" option, I think I may not be getting anything at all. They have never pressured me in any way on content, other than to send a very occasional note around saying "We have X going on, if you could consider putting a post up about it it would be nice."

That ad revenue is the only income I derive from this blog. Tips in the tip jar and the occasional Amazon gift certificate I get from people clicking my links have totaled...probably less than $250 in the over 4 years of this blog's existence. Sad, I know, but the expression, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" applies particularly to blogging. Hence my Amazon tip jar now says, "Buy the cow."

I have a pre-existing job completely unrelated to politics or any subject that comes up on this blog that pays my bills and is completely unrelated to and unenhanced by this site.

OK, your turn!

In fact, since renewing with them and selecting their "non-exclusive" option, I think I may not be getting anything at all.

Well, at least you're not reinforcing the stereotypes about Jews...

As the pampered wife of Joachim Martillo, I have not needed to solicit advertisements for my blog. I find some time between breastfeeding my baby and renovating our 1929 Boston home to engage in philanthropy.

I felt obligated to do what I could to educate people about the David Project after I learned that my article, "Night of Power for Somerville," which Joachim forwarded to the boston-net list, was frivolously and maliciously included in DP court filings as part of the general defamation campain against the ISB.

So just to be clear, you have no connection to the ISB, other than posting regularly on their email list, and your funding, including your "new career as a reporter" ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/togethernet/message/25661 ) (I believe you were also saying somewhere you could pay people to help as you had gotten funding, no?), all those news items, the postings at The Muslim Observer...that doesn't pay, it's all through the largess of the "pampering" Joachim?

"Those who support Christianity know that Jesus was from Palestine."

Huh?????

This is an absurd statement. One is tempted to wonder whether this is an honest error or a deliberate deception.

Jesus lived and taught in Galilee and Judea. These areas were not called Palestine until 100 years after the time of Jesus - being renamed by the Romans as punishment/retribution for Bar Kochba's revolt. The area from which this name was derived did not include Galilee, Bethlehem, or Jerusalem. To suggest that to be Christian is somehow to support denying or altering facts is rather offensive to Christians.

Jesus Called it 'Israel'.

Timely.

Zionist Youngster - was that just posted on the 15th?

Jesus probably used Eretz Yisrael in some religious contexts, but in every day context he probably used terms like the Galilee, Judea, Samaria, and Eretz Plishtim (Palestine).

When I last visited Nablus in Samaria, I saw early 1st century epigraphy that used Eretz Plishtim to designate at least Samaria and probably the whole region associated with the Hasmonean and Herodian kingdoms.

In other words the term Palestine must correspond to a region far larger than the area Philistia in the map at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philistines . [Note that Nablus (Greek Neapolis) corresponds to the city designated Shechem on the map.]

In general when we look at the usages in Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Assyrian, and Egyptian, we must conclude that Palestine has been for the most part the normal terminology for the last two millennia for the region currently wrongfully held by the State of Israel (timah shmah).

Eretz Yisrael has only limited theological significance, and the attempt by Zionists to rename the region Eretz Yisrael in non-religious contexts is an exercise in Zionist hasbarah (propaganda) or -- to be more precise -- creative pseudononomatology.

Joachim Martillo,

There is formidable, virtually irrefutable, evidence that 'Galilee,' 'Judea' and 'Samaria' were used by Jesus and friends as it's the language of the NT's gospel texts, there is no evidence, beyond the purely speculative, that Plishtim was used, indeed it runs counter to other speculation and opinion.

You're also aware, one suspects, there is an ample body of pseudepigrapha, with its origins in antiquity, yet your speculative and hypothesis forming bent does not lead you to speculate in any manner contrary to your ideological bent.

No mere coincidence, that.

As to when and in what sense Yisreal was used with "religious" vs. ontological vs. geographical intent, by Jesus or anyone else of that era, you would represent a pseudo-authority and a profoundly corrupted quasi-authority, at best.

Will Spotts,

That's what the date on The American Thinker says.

Joachim Martillo,

What name Jesus used is of little interest to Jews. The reason for addressing the issue is the Muslim (or "Palestinian"--the name of the fictitious nation that's used by the Muslim to market their jihad as a nationalistic struggle for self-determination) propagandists argument that "Jesus was a Palestinian". It's a clever ploy that has taken many naive Christians in (and see also my write-up from last December).

"Eretz Yisrael" is the name the Jews call this land by. Not of "limited" theological importance either--it appears throughout the Mishnah and Talmud several times. All of Eretz Yisrael rightfully belongs to the Jews, as per G-d's promises in the Torah, and parts of it are currently being wrongfully held by the Muslims, who have even concocted a new nation from scratch in order to usurp the Jewish claim and gain support in the eyes of the Western Left. It has worked well. But ill-gotten gains will not stand, even when (your words) creative pseudononomatology is used to reinforce them.

"Ethnic Ashkenazim Against Zionist Israel", eh? Quisling. You can welcome your soon-to-be Muslim overlords, if they allow you to live as a dhimmi (second-class citizen in their apartheid Caliphate). Alternatively, you can repent and join the good side, the side of Zionism.

One wonders how concerned you might be, Joachim, with Islamic Waqf digging at the Temple Mount, absent any archaeological supervision to protect antiquities. The Temple Mount site representing only the most prominent and recent example of such a miscarriage carried out by the Islamic Waqf and from other Islamic inspired quarters against history.

Such miscarriages are pernicious and vile, and premeditated, they amount to cultural intifadas, strategems carried out against Israel and against the evidence of history and antiquity.

boston-net is not the ISB.

As for why I might engage in a hobby that costs my husband money, well, some women buy shoes...

Joachim,

If there is, in Nablus, a first century text referring to "Eretz Plishtim" to designate the entire terriotry of the herodian and Hasmonean kingdoms you have GOT to publish it. Such usage is entirely unknown to the scholarly world. You owe it to the world to share this astonishing discovery.

Such epigraphy is hardly unknown at all. I had a guide take me to a site that was described in several books of Samaritan/Samarian archeological sites.

You can find such epigraphy discussed in Robert T. Anderson and Terry Giles, The Keepers: An Introduction to the History and Culture of the Samaritans (Peabody, MA.: Hendrickson, 2002) as well as in the sources that this book references.

Ethnic Ashkenazim are so ashamed of their real origin as an autochthonous Eastern European and Southern Russian ethnic group that they lie about their history and the basic facts of ME archeology in an attempt to steal the lineages of other peoples.

The mentality of ethnic Ashkenazim would simply be tragic or comic (depending on perspective) if it did not inspire ethnic Ashkenazim to carry out or support Zionist genocidalism.

BTW, the specific passages escape me at the moment, but I recall reading Talmudic and Mishnaic text that refer to Palistiney in non-ritual contexts. You could probably find the passages by consulting Jastrow, which is a dictionary of leshon qodesh.

The sages of the Mishah and the Talmud, who were constructing a non-territorial religion and who viewed Galut (exile) as a spiritual and not as an actual historic concept had no problem with using Palistiney as a territorial description in non-ritual contexts. [For this reason practically all torah-true rabbinical scholars of the late 19th and early 20th century treated Zionism as an anathema for attempting to reinterpret basic rabbinical Jewish concepts in a completely false and heretical way.]

The true physical descendants of the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud are Muslim and Christian Arabs of Palestine and Mesopotamia.

The connection of ethnic Ashkenazim to Palestine is purely mythological, and well-educated Americans should treat all ethnic Ashkenazi claims to Palestine with scorn and with contempt.

autochthonous wow you know some really big words. Unfortunately, using big words is not the same as knowing how to value sources.

Lots of topics in history are open to debate. Others are settled because they are supported by mountains of irrefutable evidence.

For example the pyramids were built by the ancient Egyptians. There is a popular theory asserting that they were built by visitors from another planet. We call such people cranks.

The Etruscans originated in the eastern Mediterranean. It used to be possible for serious scholars to argue that they were autochthonous, Italian scholars were particularly prone to do so. Recent archaeological evidence supported by genetic evidence makes it impossible for any scholar to argue credibly for the autochthony of the Etruscans, although some cranks and possibly some Italian chauvinists will probably continue to do so.

The Jews originated in the highlands of Judea and Samaria in ancient times. there are people who argue that Ashkenazi Jews originated in eastern Europe. The weight of historical, archaeological and genetic evidence supporting the narrative of the origins of the Jewish diaspora, including the Ashkenazim of eastern Europe, in ancient Israel is so strong that we call people who deny it cranks or anti-Semites. You, of course, are a well-documented anti-Semite. Using big words does not make anti-Semitic theories plausible.

There is no archeological, linguistic, historical textual, or onomastic evidence that links ethnic Ashkenazim with Greco-Roman palestine. The belief in such a link is German Nazi and Zionist myth.

I discuss the usual pseudoscientific claims in http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2005/07/zionazi-racial-science_03.html .

Twenty-five years ago I spent a good deal of time researching classical, medieval European and Genizah sources. After thinking about the material for two and a half decades, I believe I can explain the origins of modern Jewish communities as well as why Rabbinic Judaism won out over Karaite Judaism, how medieval Jews became involved in medicine and banking, and who created the Slavonic book of Esther. In addition, my hypothesis also helps to explain a lot about Catharism.

This forum is not the proper place to go into the details, but I have slated August for finishing up a book in which my hypothesis will be part of a large appendix.

BTW, I also believe I can explain how, when, and where proto-Rabbinic Judaism first became matrilineal. Shaye Cohen discusses the issue in The Beginning of Jewishness and has the start of a hypothesis. I can do better.

Source, In DNA, New Clues to Jewish Roots, excerpt:

"The [Hammer] study, led by Dr. Michael Hammer of University of Arizona, showed from an analysis of the male, or Y chromosome, that Jewish men from seven communities were related to one another and to present-day Palestinian and Syrian populations, but not to the men of their host communities.

"The finding suggested that Jewish men who founded the communities traced their lineage back to the ancestral Mideastern population of 4,000 years ago from which Arabs, Jews and other people are descended. It pointed to the genetic unity of widespread Jewish populations and took issue with ideas that most Jewish communities were relatively recent converts like the Khazars, a medieval Turkish tribe that embraced Judaism.

Source, study by Doron, et. al (pdf), excerpt:

"Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium."

Orig, wiki, Ashkenazim Jews: DNA Evidence

Shai is an old freind and, even if I did not knwo him personally, I am very familiar with his work.

You are twisting his work completly out of shape. He complicates the history of Jewish ethnicity, ethnicity is complicated, always and everywhere as much a matter of identity as descent. But Shai would never deny that, in the category of literal descent, paternity and maternity, Jews today are descended from the Jews of ancient Israel.

And, of course, lots of people have converted to Judaism over the generations.

Joachim Martillo, you wrote:

"Ethnic Ashkenazim are so ashamed of their real origin as an autochthonous Eastern European and Southern Russian ethnic group [...]"

And you wrote:

"The true physical descendants of the sages of the Mishnah and the Talmud are Muslim and Christian Arabs of Palestine and Mesopotamia."

The Khazaria Hypothesis touted by an anti-Zionist. Color me surprised...

Chalk up another evidence--as if any more were needed--that the Left is the modern-day purveyor of racism, ethnic strife, gratuitous hatred, needless division for the purpose of political leverage, anti-Semitism, and all the rest of the things which once used to be, and the Leftists today say still are, the monopoly of the Right.

As for the Khazaria Hypothesis, you should know, that even if it passed the test of evidence (it does not), it would be of no effect, for Judaism (contrary to the present-day Leftist libel, a libel every bit as pernicious as the blood-libels of old) is not based on racial lineage. See the article by Steven Plaut (HaShem bless him):

The Khazar Myth and the New Anti-Semitism

There is still time for you to repent.

A hobby, Kerin?

You cnsider fomenting anti-Semitism, slandering the Jewish people, supporting the destruction of the state of Israel, and apologizing for terrorists a hobby?

What are your other hobbies? Firing missels at public schools? Setting off bombs at Passover seders? Strangling young women who have been raped by their uncles?

While ethnic Ashkenazim have considerable ancestry from Turkic and Southern Russian groups, the evidence does not support purely Khazar origin for ethnic Ashkenazim but only indicates that Khazar Turks were among the founder populations.

As Dr. Qumsiyeh and I pointed out, Hammer's use of self-identification is simply wrong method while the absence of known Israelites among modern populations means that his analytic reasoning is tautological. I have ground through his and other researchers data (after trying to sort out true origins of the subjects as best as I could) and find it much more consistent with multiple founder populations in Southern Russian and Eastern Europe, where we can actually compare ethnic Ashkenazim with modern populations. (There are also sophisticated inference techniques that were unused by Hammer and that can deal with the non-existence today of comparison genetic data from ancient Israelite populations.)

I can state with certainly that no Greco-Roman Palestinian population was among the founder populations of the modern ethnic Ashkenazim, who in Stolen and Occupied Palestine must be considered a criminal population of murderous genocidal thieves and interlopers both by the genetic analysis and by the history of their wrong-doing in Palestine as well as in the territory of the former Czarist Empire during the Russian revolution and during the first 30 years of Soviet rule.

I asked Shaye Cohen in person whether he believed that modern ethnic Ashkenazim were descendants of Greco-Roman Palestinian populations. He replied that there has been a lot of conversion both of individuals and groups.

I agree except that the nature of conversion is ill-defined before the crystallization of medieval Rabbinic Judaism at the time of Saadyah Gaon (i.e. the 10th century -- note that Rabbinic Judaism, which diverges far more from 2nd Temple religion than either Christianity or Islam, is the youngest of Abrahamic religions and not the oldest).

In any case, as I pointed out on my blog, the vast majority of people that followed Judean practices in Greco-Roman times lived outside of Palestine, and this Judean population like the Hellenistic population of the same time period simply did not have a single origin.

There are three things I can say about Zionist claims about the ancestral connection of modern Jews to Palestine.

1) They are false.

2) They are false.

3) They are false.

Joachim,

Have you consideed consulting a good psychiatrist? I ask because sometimes delusions (such as your delusions about Jewsish history and Israeli reality) intense, irrational anger (the type you and Kerin feel towards Jewish people) and oasessing of the type that drives you to post truly irrational ideas about Jews on our blog can be signs of mental illnesses for which there is help.

I doubt that I feel more intense anger about Zionist interlopers than ethnic Ashkenazim feel about German Nazis.

Practically anyone that lives for more than four months with Palestinians in Stolen or Occupied Palestine feels intense anger at the State of Israel, Zionist interlopers, and racist ethnic Ashkenazi American supporters of the State of Israel.

Because I, unlike most anti-Zionists, know Jewish history very well, I am better able and more willing to make allowances for mitigating circumstances.

I also consider the Talmud totally irrelevant in unstanding the behavior of Zionist interlopers and racist ethnic Ashkenazim. The behavior of both groups can be almost totally understood by comparison with genocidal Eastern European groups of any or no religion.

The solitary importance of the name Jesus used for the area is that the assertion, 'Jesus was from Palestine' is used falsely to prey on the ignorance of possibly well-meaning Christians.

Aside from the obvious - the lack of ANY mention of this usage in the Christian Gospels - it poses another problem. 'Eretz Plishtim' is an unlikely phrase for the Jesus presented in these documents to have used for that purpose. His extensive apparent knowledge of and self-evident usage of the Hebrew Bible argues against this. 'Eretz Plishtim' was used exclusively in the Hebrew Bible to denote the land where Philistines lived. That Jesus would have departed from that usage seems improbable.

An argument based on Syria Palaestina as a possible usage (for the general region) from Herodotus might be more likely, but again the evidence for Jesus actually using this or in any way regarding it as correct is entirely absent.

The usage by Jesus of Israel appears often to be more ethnic (in the sense of the people of Israel) than theological. On any side of this debate there is little evidence for how Jesus actually described the region.

The point here is that the statement, "Those who support Christianity know that Jesus was from Palestine," has no basis. The subsequent statement about the last two millennia is mostly unargued as this has been the case since the second century - but that doesn't have an impact on the first statement about what 'supporters of Christianity' supposedly 'know'. The first statement's use seems designed to suggest that supporters of Christianity would make baseless leaps in the absence of fact. This has no discernible purpose that I can see. Perhaps it is intended to somehow suggest that Christians should have some linguistic or racial motivation to support the harmful work of Sabeel.

Joachim,

Actually, your behavior is typical of individuals suffering from Bipolar Type II.

Your acceptance of crank literature and propaganda as reliable sources, the obsessing about a political issue (haunting this blog and posting quotes at short intervals is obsessive behavior) passionately propagating outlandishly exaggerated stories about one particular area of public affairs are common behaviors of this mental disorder.

It is quite common for individuals with Bipolar Type II to fixate in this exaggerated way on a political issue, becoming angry when their irrational views are challenged and feeling reinforced when others, either professional propagandists or other obsessed individuals, reinforce their irrational view of society.

This can be treated, and you can begin to lead a more normal life, freed of the irrational behavior and ideas.

I hope that you will seek help.

Which crank literature do you think I am reading?

I studied with Professor Twersky at Harvard, and I use primary sources where possible.

Ethnic Ashkenazim, who self-indoctrinate themselves continuously with nonsense, suffer cognitive dissonance when they must face the truth.

The Rebellion of Bogdan Chmielnicki (Uk. Богдан Зиновій Михайлович Хмельницький or Ru. Богдан Хмельницкий) provides an important case in point. Someone like Lucy Dawidowicz tells us in The Golden Tradition that the rebellion killed over 150,000 Jews/ethnic Ashkenazim. Jewish and Holocaust studies professors often use the Chmielnicki Rebellion as a prefiguration of the Holocaust and a sign of blood-thirsty Ukrainian anti-Semitism.

Ukrainian nationalist academics argue that at most 4000 Jews died in the Rebellion almost entirely as collateral damage. After reviewing the literature, I have the impression that 10-15,000 is a better estimate and that the killings were not solely as collateral damage. Not all of Chmielnicki's forces observed jus in bello, but for the most part Chmielnicki targeted the Polish elite and not Jews.

The Dawidowicz version, which has no connection to the facts, is the predominant view of ethnic Ashkenazim and has been a mainstay of ethnic Ashkenazi anti-Slavic racism for about 300 years. The rabbinical class probably encouraged the falsehood as a barrier against conversion while ethnic Ashkenazi businessmen used it as a rationalization for abusive practices against Ukrainian peasants.

Ethnic Ashkenazim to this day engage in self-indoctrination about Chmielnicki and Ukrainian peasants just as they do about Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. Because of the prominence of ethnic Ashkenazim in US print, broadcast, and entertainment media as well as in academia, ethnic Ashkenazi prejudices are beginning to taint US culture pervasively.

Here is an example of cognitive dissonance from Shulamit Reinharz (Yehuda Reinharz' wife).

http://www.thejewishadvocate.com/this_weeks_issue/columnists/reinharz/?content_id=3316

The ethnic Ashkenazi anti-Gentile/anti-Catholic polemic (a/k/a the pogrom and persecution version of Jewish history) was not true in Central and Eastern Europe, and it certainly was not true in the Arab and Muslim world.

Joachim,

Among your studied elisions the relatively recent genetic evidence is of notable, is of primary consequence. Other issues are evident as well but the genetic evidence is - due to its underlying biological/physical science substrate - less given to leveraged interpretations, distortions, circumlocutions, etc., though such leveragings reflect merely one category among your offerings. The category comprising elisions and occlusions would be another, bluffs and misdirections another still. Other categories still come to mind, some overlapping, some more definitive and discrete.

Joachim, you crack me up.

Citing "Ukranian nationalist academics" as a reliable source on the Jews. They are a bunch of pogram-deniers. this is not a respectable academic specialty.

These Ukranian nationalist academics hired Ku Klux Klan leader and certified (certifiable) anti-Semite David Duke, Herr Grand Wizard himself, to teach, drum roll... Zionist History.

Ukranian nationalist academics as a reliable source. C'est très amusant.

For those who do not understand why this is absurd, take a look at this write up of the crackpot anti-semitism of some Ukranian universities:

http://www.forward.com/articles/david-duke-offers-antisemitism-101-at-a-ukra/

I grant that Martillo takes himself seriously. The severely disturbed often do.

crank, crackpot or merely vile

nothing joachim martillo writes should be accepted as accurate or evidence-based.