Quote:
Originally posted by NousDefionsDoc
Jewish is a religious label - Israeli is comparable to "American", not Jew.
There are probably one or two Christian Israelis living over there somewhere.
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Judaism is a religion, but Jewish is both a religious and ethnic label. If you are an atheist, you don't stop being a Jew, and if you or your wife is an atheist Jewish woman, your children are still Jews.
I suupose there are some Jews for Jesus in Israel, but most Christians in Israel (about 2% of the population) are Arabs (plus the small number of Greeks and others at various holy sites). Almost one-fifth (around 1.1 million) of Israel's population are Israeli Arabs. There are more democratically elected Arab leaders in Israel than there are in the entire Arab League, and Israeli Arabs, while having various grievances against their government, are not prime recruiting sources for Palestinian terrorists. In 2003, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 3,838 terrorist attacks were perpetrated against Israeli targets (down from 5,301 in 2002). Four of these implicated Israeli Arabs, but these were among the bloodiest - 45 of the 213 Israelis killed in 2003 were in these 4 attacks. Israeli forces uncovered 43 Israeli Arabs in 26 terror cells in 2003, compared to 78 Israeli Arabs in 35 terror cells in 2002.
Jews and Arabs don't have that much in common. Their languages may both be Semitic, but they are as different as English and Spanish, both Indo-European cousins. A fair number of Israeli Sephardic Jews came from Arab countries (or are their children) and have more culturally in common with Arabs than other Jews, but they represent a minority. Of Israel's 5 million Jews, about 475,000 speak Arabic dialects (mostly Moroccan, Iraqi, Tunisian, Yemeni and Libyan Jews who emigrated or were expelled from those countries) and that number shrinks daily as they die or assimilate. Judeo-Arabic speakers are no more Arabs than Ladino speakers are Spaniards.
Modern Jewish culture, even among many Sephardim, is much more of a Western culture. Although Judaism and Islam are both "law-based" religion (in contrast to Christianity, a "faith-based" religion), many of their teachings and attitudes toward who can make law are very different. Also, Islam was heavily influenced by certain Christian sects of Arabia.
GH, regarding martyrdom, Islam's approach to martyrdom has little in common with Judaism's approach, or Christianity's for that matter. Martyrdom in Judaism is a last ditch resort, and goes against all religious teaching (pikuach nefesh - saving or preservation of life - is probably the highest Jewish value). Christianity was born in an act of martyrdom and martyrdom figures heavily throughout church history - St. Polycarp, St. Agnes, Perpetua, St. Edmund, Thomas a Becket, the recently canonized Orthodox saint Yevgenii Rodionov, etc. - but most Christian martyrdoms, following Christ's example, were acts of self-sacrifice in the name of one's faith, rather than killing others. That is quite different from Islam's approach.
Still, I would point out that this holy war-style martyrdom was a factor in the Crusades and does have scriptural support (see, e.g., Hebrews 11:32-34: "And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of ... the prophets who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.").
The approaches to martyrdom in various religions is a complex topic and I feel I am giving it short shrift. Suffice to say, it is difficult to compare today's suicide bombers to traditional Islamic views on martyrdom (closer to the Crusader or "Onward Christian Soldiers" mentality). It is far more difficult, and a little insulting, to compare them to Jewish or Christian martyrs.