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Question
Based on the question of “Did the Israelites kill prophets?”, can you please identify which ones? Thank you!
Answer
Firstly, I really don't understand why some gentiles get excited over this topic! In the Bible I'm aware of only one case where the evil King Yoash killed a prophet, Zecharia, which testifies that it was very uncommon. The evil King Achav tried but didn't succeed to kill Eliyahu. Only according to several individual rabbinic sources (which as all midrashim, are by definition, debated and debatable, and surely not generally accepted by gentiles), do we find such a sin toward Isaiah, who according to individual midrashim (but not others), was killed by the evil king Menashe. But as I wrote previously, if other religions think of using this to hate all Jews, Judaism and Israel in general, they must look elsewhere. There are obviously some terrible sins found in Israel as in every nation (especially regarding God's eternal nation of Israel which has been around for almost 4,000 years, so the odds are that mistakes, including serious ones, will inevitably be found), but for those who absurdly think to use these individual sources and relatively rare actions to stereotype the Jewish people as always being evil, it is simply anti-Semitic and laughably not intellectually honest. Just as you and I and every individual makes mistakes over his lifetime (Kohelet 7, 20, "For there is no righteous man on earth who does only good and sins not"), obviously the Jews do as well. That's what free-will and accountability (reward and punishment) are all about. On the other hand, check out the jails in every land which the Jews ever lived, for there was clearly and unquestionably much (!) less crime, murder, rape, cursing, wife-beating, alcoholism etc. among Jews, compared to the gentiles in every single locale. I even personally remember gentiles telling our family that it's considered a good choice for them to choose a Jewish husband for precisely that reason (and they are clearly objective)! When anti-Semites absurdly accuse Israel of being the sinner and not the victim, that's just a sign of intellectual bias and ignoring the facts. Just as there are crackpot Holocaust deniers and clowns who think that Jews kill children and use their blood for matzoh (sic!), anyone accusing Israel of genocide testifies that either he doesn't know what that term means, or similarly raises serious questions regarding his own intelligence and integrity regarding checking facts. An especially nice and intelligent Jew, after seeing the Academy Award winning anti-Israel movie portraying the IDF as continuously tearing down the homes of "innocent" Palestinians, wrote "I'm embarrassed to be a Jew!". On the other hand, upon simply verifying the facts, it turns out that under the Oslo Accords (which the Palestinian leadership agreed to), Israel has full control over that Masafer Yatta area- known as Area C, and it was those Arabs and their illegal building who were the ones breaking the law, as opposed to the Israel who was simply upholding it. This unfortunate situation for which those Arabs themselves are clearly the ones responsible, leaves us no choice but to implement the law as every other country would do, and protect ourselves, even if it doesn't film well. What is the alternative? To let them do whatever they want and let ourselves be run over by that immoral and law-breaking ideology? I was then asked: "But why would people build in an area and spend so much money, where they know their homes will be legally torn down?" It's a great question for a rational situation, but when it turns out that the anti-Israel European Union supplies the Arabs with most of that building money, it makes more sense. A second point is that a similar question can be asked on a larger scale: why do the Gazans, Palestinians and Arabs in general constantly start wars and use terror against Israel which is much stronger, where they bezH "lose" time after time? The answer is clearly connected to their religious concept of Shahid (holy martyrs) and Jihad war, where even if they are killed and lose, they see it as a ticket to Heaven, so they believe they always gain! I've found that this mindset is so different from a western way of thinking, and that's why many American politicians simply can't understand that the Arabs are the aggressors, for it really doesn't make sense, why they keep starting up? On the other hand, the IDF is comprised of normative, democratic and nice educated Jewish people like our children, who are altruistic enough to volunteer leaving their families for months on end, but instead of thanks, some (even Jews, like Yuval Avraham, that movie's producer) are not even willing to present our side of the story (he knew very well that the easiest way to win awards in Berlin & Hollywood is "Israel-bashing", especially by an Israeli!). To start showing any scenario from just one lens, and without seeing the law, or the beginning of the story and the decades of irrational war and (!) daily Arab attacks on innocent Jews, is inevitably going to misinform and be very very biased. Accordingly, the Arab producers at the Academy Awards couldn't even mention (!) our innocent kidnapped hostages being held and starved in sub-human conditions in Gaza, and some got angry at Yuval Avraham who did, which testifies to their selective "humanism". A more objective movie which I myself cannot stomach to watch but is apparently important for the internationally confused to personally see, is the real-time Hamas self-videos which can be found online, where they proudly present and even brag about their sadistic attacks and mutilation of 1200 innocent Israeli citizens on one (!) day! Some of the seemingly unfortunate "No Other Land" scenes were fabricated (see proof on YouTube, but they couldn't even fabricate similar accusations against the IDF ever doing such "atrocities" that Arabs have been doing to us for over 50 years), but the Oct. 7th ones are unfortunately real and not fabricated. If you wish to see the whole picture, the latter is surely more real and objective, and it is our boys in the IDF who have been altruistically giving their lives day and night for 17 months, who are precisely the "good guys", and definitely not the "bad guys". Ironically "No Other Land", would be a much more fitting title for a movie about Israel, as opposed to the other 22 Arab lands, but the first thing one must verify is which side are the victims and which side, the "bad guys", for it makes a 180-degree difference.
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