this could be the making of a new disco dance...Originally posted by dragg:these people thrive on war.
Curses for Disobediencein short... enough curses for you to regret for not following GOD's teaching...
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come upon you and overtake you:
16 You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking him. [a] 21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess. 22 The LORD will strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you perish. 23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron. 24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The LORD will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms on earth. 26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to frighten them away. 27 The LORD will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The LORD will afflict you with madness, blindness and confusion of mind. 29 At midday you will grope about like a blind man in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do; day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and ravish her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to your enemies, and no one will rescue them. 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day, powerless to lift a hand. 33 A people that you do not know will eat what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel oppression all your days. 34 The sights you see will drive you mad. 35 The LORD will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured, spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 The LORD will drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your fathers. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone. 37 You will become a thing of horror and an object of scorn and ridicule to all the nations where the LORD will drive you.
38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it. 39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes, because worms will eat them. 40 You will have olive trees throughout your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off. 41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivity. 42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the crops of your land.
43 The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower. 44 He will lend to you, but you will not lend to him. He will be the head, but you will be the tail.
45 All these curses will come upon you. They will pursue you and overtake you until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the commands and decrees he gave you. 46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you and your descendants forever. 47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, 48 therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed you.
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, 50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young. 51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. 52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.
53 Because of the suffering that your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has given you. 54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, 55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. 56 The most gentle and sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter 57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the siege and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities.
58 If you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God- 59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. 60 He will bring upon you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. 61 The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. 62 You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God. 63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
64 Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known. 65 Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. 66 You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. 67 In the morning you will say, "If only it were evening!" and in the evening, "If only it were morning!"-because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. 68 The LORD will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you.
Where it comes to the giving of the land that is to be Israel's inheritance from G-d, the commandment of putting away (getting rid of) all that is in that land has very much with the definite danger to Israel for not doing so. Since G-d is jealous for His people, by not putting away the heathens in the land that Israel was to inherit, her people will become corrupted by the practices, traditions and religions in those peoples. So such forms of brutality (as the world sees it) became necessary for the time (bearing in mind all of man is already fallen by then)Originally posted by Shotgun:Wow, how did this become theological arguement?
From what I understand, those "-tites" that were to be "put to the sword" were some of the wickedest people around. Hence, God commanded the Israelites to ensure that their entire cities were wiped out to ensure their legacy of wickedness ended. Its similar to the Chinese saying, "zhan cao, chu gen." I have yet to find an example where a city was wiped out despite it being righteous.
Its similar to how we treat cancer. We kill the cancerous cells so that they would not spread.
Sounds a bit cold and harsh, but it worked out to prevent wickedness n sin frm spreading even faster.
dont every city have children and infants? should we put them to the swords as well?Originally posted by Shotgun:Wow, how did this become theological arguement?
From what I understand, those "-tites" that were to be "put to the sword" were some of the wickedest people around. Hence, God commanded the Israelites to ensure that their entire cities were wiped out to ensure their legacy of wickedness ended. Its similar to the Chinese saying, "zhan cao, chu gen." I have yet to find an example where a city was wiped out despite it being righteous.
Its similar to how we treat cancer. We kill the cancerous cells so that they would not spread.
Sounds a bit cold and harsh, but it worked out to prevent wickedness n sin frm spreading even faster.
Isreal now faces the same danger... with the arabs calling for the total destruction of isreal..Originally posted by panzerjager:Where it comes to the giving of the land that is to be Israel's inheritance from G-d, the commandment of putting away (getting rid of) all that is in that land has very much with the definite danger to Israel for not doing so. Since G-d is jealous for His people, by not putting away the heathens in the land that Israel was to inherit, her people will become corrupted by the practices, traditions and religions in those peoples. So such forms of brutality (as the world sees it) became necessary for the time (bearing in mind all of man is already fallen by then)
zhan cao chu gen... requires the will to carry out infanticide as well as mass massacre of entire cities and villages.Originally posted by Shotgun:Wow, how did this become theological arguement?
From what I understand, those "-tites" that were to be "put to the sword" were some of the wickedest people around. Hence, God commanded the Israelites to ensure that their entire cities were wiped out to ensure their legacy of wickedness ended. Its similar to the Chinese saying, "zhan cao, chu gen." I have yet to find an example where a city was wiped out despite it being righteous.
Its similar to how we treat cancer. We kill the cancerous cells so that they would not spread.
Sounds a bit cold and harsh, but it worked out to prevent wickedness n sin frm spreading even faster.
power ranking... according to the isrealis...Originally posted by beavan:hizbollah is answerable only to their god whereas Isreal is answerable to the world.
thus, they have to play by the new "rules" of war. so to speak, their hands are tied.
ayatollah of rockandrolla..Originally posted by tripwire:this could be the making of a new disco dance...
Well, I guess that would be your ultimate choice after all. Whether u would want to follow the world, (take a look around, we aren't getting any better), or choose to go with what is eternal.Originally posted by tripwire:by the way... what about us? should we follow GOD or follow the world opinion?
now that is so trueOriginally posted by cmeptb:The conflict was never about religion. It's about land & power politics, the religion part is only a tool for the so called religious leaders to manipulate the masses to die so that these leaders can get into power.
War Stirs Worry in Israel Over State of Military
Many Say Failure to Silence Hezbollah Sends Bad Signal
By Doug Struck and Tal Zipper
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, August 19, 2006; A10
JERUSALEM, Aug. 18 -- Sgt. Lior Rahamin's Israeli reserve unit had not trained in two years. When its members were called up for the Lebanon war, they didn't have straps for their guns, spare ammunition, flak jackets or more than one good radio. There were other shortages: Twice their operations were canceled because they had no water to take; once they went two days without food.
"Hezbollah didn't surprise us. We were surprised by the Israel Defense Forces," said Rahamin, 30, a paratrooper who was wounded fighting in Lebanon in 1997 and who volunteered to go with his unit again. The next time they call, he said, "we will not show up."
From the failure to get food and water to the troops, to complaints of an uncertain war plan and overconfident generals, the Lebanon war is fast being viewed within Israel as a major stumble. Military and political leaders already are trading blame; some are expected to lose their posts. Officers say the mistakes show weakness in the military, the Israel Defense Forces, known as the IDF. Many Israelis worry that the failure of the military to squash the Hezbollah militia will make their country more vulnerable to other enemies.
"For four weeks we failed to defend ourselves against daily bombardments against our cities. This is a failure that never happened before," said Yuval Steinitz, a Likud Party member and former chairman of parliament's defense committee. "This is going to send a bad message."
Such fears were fueled by a strident speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the end of the war, promising to follow Hezbollah's model to retake the Golan Heights. Less than 24 hours after the cease-fire, he boasted that Hezbollah had "defeated the legend of the army that had never been defeated."
Brig. Gen. Ido Nehushtan, a member of the Israeli army's general staff who is taking over as head of planning for the military, defended the outcome of the operation. "This was a unique war," he said in an interview Friday. "You can't judge it in a traditional way. Our war was much more like a war on terrorism than a war against an army. . . . It's not realistic to expect any white flag coming from the bunker."
Nehushtan insisted that the military did not expect to stop the Katyusha rocket attacks on Israel -- only to try to cripple Hezbollah.
"To stop the rain of Katyushas, you would have to take every inch of the land. The objective was to deal Hezbollah a significant blow," he said. "They have lost heavy numbers and a huge amount of infrastructure."
The complaints that have emerged as Israel's soldiers return from the field have heightened the country's concerns about the state of its army and the judgment of its leaders.
"If we would have gone in with more foot soldiers, we would have done more," said Avi Hubara, 40, a schoolteacher and reservist who volunteered to go to Lebanon to fight. "But the politicians were scared to make decisions. It was a failure. We got people killed. There was lots of friendly fire. We did not hurt the capability of the Hezbollah. We did not return the kidnapped soldiers. We did not win."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his defense minister, Amir Peretz, have little military experience and are now the target of scathing criticism for faults in the operation. The Knesset, the Israeli parliament, is demanding a judicial investigation of the conduct of the war. Public opinion of the government and military leaders has plunged in the polls, and the returning soldiers are glum.
"Led Astray," said a headline in the Haaretz newspaper. "Why We Didn't Win," the largest-circulation daily, Yediot Aharonoth, pondered in bold type. There is much blame for the military, as well as for political leaders. The returning reserve soldiers tell of confusion, contradictory orders and missing supplies and equipment.
"We were getting ready to board the bus in Lebanon with faces painted for combat, but they called us back," said Sgt. Yuval Drori, 30, a reservist who works at a software company. "Another time we were at the border, with bullets in the chambers, but they canceled again. The mission changed every 30 minutes. There was a great sense of a big mess."
"In the last six years, there hadn't been any preparation" for putting soldiers into combat, said a retired major general, Shaul Givoli, director of the Council for Peace and Security near Tel Aviv. "Even the rations had expired."
Critics list a variety of miscues, some acknowledged by the army. "We made some mistakes in preparation," a high-level military officer said in an interview. "We need to recheck our intelligence, our logistics, the readiness of reserves."
From the outset, Israel tried to wage the war largely from the air, instead of sending a large ground force into Lebanon quickly. The bombardment created scenes of devastation in Lebanon. Israeli army officers insist that the operation brought serious damage to Hezbollah's infrastructure, supplies and manpower. But the bombing did not stop the rain of rockets fired by Hezbollah fighters.
Israeli forces also were surprised by the effectiveness of Hezbollah and its missile armaments, which hit an Israeli ship, may have downed a helicopter, and penetrated about 20 of Israel's most modern tanks.
Public criticism was intense after Israel broadened the ground war inside Lebanon in the last two days before the cease-fire. More than 30 Israeli soldiers were killed during the fighting that weekend to seize ground that the army then abandoned Monday morning when the cease-fire took effect.
The senior Israeli officer, who helped plan the last-minute push, said the ground operation was valuable. The officer, speaking on grounds that he not be identified by name, said that the outlines of the cease-fire were not known when the order to go ahead was given and that the battles helped shape the final agreement.
But the coming cease-fire was clear to those in the field. "We were called up to go in, and on that night I told my friends, tonight and tomorrow people will die for nothing," said Drori, the reserve sergeant. "The cease-fire agreement was there, and everybody knew what was to be achieved, and people will die.
"It seemed the IDF was trying to drop every single bomb in its arsenal. You could hear the blasts and bombs whistling around you. Then at 7:55 Monday morning, it all went still. Those last 30 casualties were in vain."
Drori's squad escorted combat bulldozers. Then the bulldozers left to be refueled and did not come back. "Nobody told us about it. We finally called the army engineering commander, and he told us to come back because the bulldozers are parked. He said we did a great job. In fact, we didn't do anything."
Gerald Steinberg, who heads the conflict management program at Bar-Ilan University in suburban Tel Aviv, said: "The screw-ups could have been avoided. The hesitations and lack of leadership -- go in, don't go in, go there, go here. We all knew almost daily of troops being told to go in, then being called back. Had the war gone well, that would have been forgotten. But it didn't.
"Then in the last couple days, a mad rush when we all knew there was going to be a cease-fire. We lost 33 soldiers, and so many crippled and badly wounded. Wasn't there a better way to do it?"
Many Israelis see a more ominous consequence of Israel's missteps. The failure of Israel to silence Hezbollah, followed by the claims of triumph from the militia, Syria and Iran may leave the perception of weakness, they feel.
"The only lesson Israel's enemies can possibly have been learning is that after decades of defeat and frustration, they have found the means to effect the demise of the Jewish state. They need only acquire greater rocket and missile capabilities," the editor of the Jerusalem Post, David Horovitz, wrote Friday. "It was brought about by a level of arrogance and complacency probably unparalleled since the" victory in the 1967 war led to Israel being caught unprepared for a surprise attack in 1973, he said.
Writing in the Haaretz newspaper this week, columnist Reuven Pedatzur agreed. "The IDF's failure is eroding our national security's most important asset -- the belligerent image of this country, led by a vast, strong and advanced army capable of dealing our enemies a decisive blow if they even try to bother us," he wrote.
"In Damascus, Gaza, Tehran and Cairo, too, people are looking with amazement at the IDF that could not bring a tiny guerrilla organization to its knees for more than a month," he said. "What happened to this mighty army?"
Knesset member Steinitz said Israel had long relied on a doctrine that when attacked, it had to counterattack deep into enemy territory "and defeat the enemy almost at any cost. Now, in the last decade or so, we developed a culture of strategic war that is less costly to human life. Instead of looking for a knockout, we are looking to gain points. I think it's a mistake."
Others contend that any potential opponent looking at the devastation wreaked by Israel on Lebanon will not see that as evidence of weakness.
"The destruction in Beirut and southern Lebanon do create anger, but they also create deterrence," Steinberg said. "Israelis are coping with this. It's not a sense of denial. It would be a mistake if Hezbollah or others look at Israel as a weakened society. Israeli society is very determined to see this through, and prepared to fight another war."
Zipper reported from Tel Aviv. Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Reservists: Officers stopped us attending protest against war
By Nir Hasson
Some 160 infantry reserve soldiers are accusing their commanders of preventing them from participating in a demonstration against the war in Lebanon, which they called a "debacle." The soldiers said they had been used as "sitting ducks."
"I've been in the army and reserves for 26 years and what happened this time was not merely a fiasco, it was a complete debacle. We felt like tin soldiers in a game of Olmert and Peretz's assistants and spin masters," said Avi, a soldier in the brigade.
At noon yesterday 160 brigade soldiers signed a request to take part in the demonstration that would call on the resignation of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz. However, their release was put off until today, preventing them from reaching the protest.
They wanted to protest not only the army's moves in Lebanon but the decisions of their commanders, whom they accuse of sending them needlessly to their death.
"They sent us into a village they knew 15 Hezbollah fighters were holed up in at mid-day, we were like sitting ducks, it was total insanity. Two of our comrades were killed because of that. We are being used as though we were in the Chinese army, where it doesn't matter how many are killed," he said.
A few dozen demonstrators arrived at Rabin Square yesterday to take part in the protest that had been organized on Internet sites.
They called for Olmert's resignation and blasted halting the war before its goals were achieved.
Ariella Miller, one of the protest's initiators, said she was not acting on behalf of any political body. "We are family people who used the Internet to form a group. When we went to war they promised us to bring back the soldiers and restore Israel's deterrent force."