We have been discussing the criminalization of Christmas celebrations by the Sultan of Brunei. Now, as if to show that Muslim extremists have no monopoly on crazy, Benzi Gopshtain (also reported as “Gopstein”), who heads the far-right Lehava organisation, has called for the same prohibition in Israel. Indeed, the statement of Gopstein and those of the Muslim clerics in Brunei seems almost indistinguishable.
The clerics insisted that “Some may think that [celebrating Christmas] is a frivolous matter and should not be brought up as an issue. But as Muslims and as a Zikir Nation, we must keep it (following other religions’ celebrations) away as it could affect our Islamic faith.”
They will get no argument from Gopshtain who said that Christians are “vampires” and “Christmas has no place in the Holy Land.” Gopshtain actually is more extreme than his Muslim counterparts who were willing to allow Christians to celebrate “in their communities.” (Though there is still a major difference from a wing nut like Gopshtain and the head of a country like the Sultan). Gopshtain insisted that such celebrations represent the “fall of the line of defence of the Jewish people for hundreds of years against our enemies, the Catholic Church.” He added “[t]he mission of those vampires and bloodsuckers remains. If Jews cannot be killed, they can be converted. We must remove the vampires before they drink our blood once again.”
Just in case you thought that this was a joke, Gopshtain has been repeatedly investigated for hate speech and there is a new call for such an investigation. Ironically, while Gopshtain is a hateful and grotesque person, I strongly disagree that such comments should be treated as criminal matters. In the free speech community, we are often faced with defending people with whom we disagree or people we despise. Yet, this is political and religious speech. Raw and hateful to be sure but it is still part of the debate over religious freedom. The solution to people like Gopshtain is more not less speech. It is not hard to expose his prejudice and intolerance. It is better for people like Gopstein to identify themselves and subject themselves to public ridicule than to force them underground.
The real debate should be over the public funding of extremist organizations by Israel. Gopshtain has been the public relations director of Hemla, which dedicates itself to “saving the daughters of Israel” from mixed marriages with Palestinian men. The state of Israel has supported the organization annually, public monies that have also supported Gopshtain.
Dieter, Good, informative comment.
Po,
Do you believe Israel has a legitimate claim to any territory in the ME? More specifically, any of the territory currently claimed by Israel.
If your answer was buried in the volume of words posted by you above then I missed it.
“Let the record show that I am the ONLY one among us (Nick, bam bam, KCF and you) to fully and unequivocally condemn terrorism by any and all sides.”
That might be because our culture does not support it, therefore there is no need to positively condemn it.
By the way, Olly, i sure hope you read the link i last pasted, it gives a perfect framing of the situation in Israel and how the Israeli society is held hostages by these rabbis who are turning it toward religious extremism, like in here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QiV9xn0RbI
I grew up in Amsterdam where I participated in many Sinterklaas festivities. One must not forget that the date of the festival of 5 December is not arbitrary. That has long been the day of a real Saint of the Catholic Church. Saint Nicholas is supposed to have saved several children from death hence he is celebrated as the protector of children.
“Zwarte Piet” is actually a rather powerful person. He carries a sac into which he can deposit very naughty kids at the command of Sinterklaas.
It is indeed strange that Sinterklaas is supposed to ride his white horse across the roofs of Dutch houses and that Zwarte Piet is descending through the chimneys to collect the food for the horse and leave behind the presents for the children. There is a fine painting by Jan Steen which describes the event in a Dutch household. Some believe that Piet is black because he descends through soot-rich chimneys from roofs of hoses into the living quarters.
It seems much more logical that Sinterklaas would ride through the streets accompanied by Piet and knock on doors to leave presents (Jukleklap in Scandinavia).
That Sinterklaas, unlike Santa Claus, does not come with a sleigh from the North Pole but from Spain by ship is understandable. For a long time the region which is now the Netherlands was under Habsburg/Spanish rule and the Saint would of course come by ship to a nation of seafarers.
Lastly, the overwhelming majority of the Dutch do not associate Zwarte Piet with racism.
Olly:
“You have used that “fire-bombed” example before. What are the facts of the event? Who is suspected of doing it and why has the Israeli government determined it should not be prosecuted?”
Po is an unreliable narrator. He’s claimed to be Mexican American while simultaneously an African immigrant, a truly unusual combination. He also claims to support Israel’s right to exist, while also consistently posting anti-Zionest comments, which, by definition, is a cause devoted to the existence of Israel. One of his examples of Israeli “genocide” against Palestinians included the case of a girl who was arrested. Upon further research, I determined that she wielded a knife against the police, a sadly common occurrence in Israel.
I’ve limited my comments to my position that I oppose wrongdoing no matter who engages in it, and that the law should be applied equally to all. However, I don’t comment on any of Po’s examples anymore, after I discovered several of them were like the one I referenced, where he conveniently left out the fact that the girl went after the police with a knife. In order to make any judgement, you would have to do your own research into the matter and try to find out the facts impartially.
If you try to discuss any topic with Po, you will find yourself against the wall of apparent brain washing, attempts at moral equivalency with murderous terrorists, and he’ll revert to name calling. I find him to be very extremist, and find any communication with him pointless.
karen, i would do the same thing were I you…If I cannot answer a basic moral question, I’ll blame the other guy for my moral deficiencies.
Let the record show that I am the ONLY one among us (Nick, bam bam, KCF and you) to fully and unequivocally condemn terrorism by any and all sides.
Do you condemn the firebombing of the sleeping family as terrorism?
Gopshtain is an extremist, illustrating the common denominator of extremism as hate, intolerance, and trying to force one’s views on others.
I also agree with Professor Turley that the best defense against bad speech is good speech. I believe in Free Speech, and I would no more want to criminalize his insane remarks, than I would the 9/11 deniers, the anti-Zionists, or any other speech with which I vehemently disagree.
Hopefully Gopshtain will limit his hatred to speech, and not violence.
With less than one percent of the US population Muslim, all this seems like nothing more than Trump fodder.
Po,
From 10,000 feet the ME conflict seems to be where we are headed in this country. That IS the fundamental transformation we have entered and as long as the people lay down and allow the extremists to drive policy then this will only get worse. None of this will get resolved by giving demagogues any legitimacy. The DoI gives us sound principles to live by IF we want to get back on track.
Olly says:
You know Po, we have extremists in the United States that depending on the current administration will not be prosecuted.
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Olly, this answers it perfectly and comprehensively. I wonder how bambam and kfc will answer it. let me guess.. they won’t.
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“Genocide announced
Bombs would fall under other circumstances, but when influential rabbis call for the total annihilation of the Palestinians the world watches without blinking, writes Saleh Al-Naami
“All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts.” This was the religious opinion issued one week ago by Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, director of the Tsomet Institute, a long-established religious institute attended by students and soldiers in the Israeli settlements of the West Bank. In an article published by numerous religious Israeli newspapers two weeks ago and run by the liberal Haaretz on 26 March, Rosen asserted that there is evidence in the Torah to justify this stand. Rosen, an authority able to issue religious opinions for Jews, wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites that attacked the Israelite tribes on their way to Jerusalem after they had fled from Egypt under the leadership of Moses. He wrote that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.
Rosen’s article, which created a lot of noise in Israel, included the text of the ruling in the Torah: “Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys.” Rosen adds that the Amalekites are not a particular race or religion, but rather all those who hate the Jews for religious or national motives. Rosen goes as far as saying that the “Amalekites will remain as long as there are Jews. In every age Amalekites will surface from other races to attack the Jews, and thus the war against them must be global.” He urges application of the “Amalekites ruling” and says that the Jews must undertake to implement it in all eras because it is a “divine commandment”.
Rosen does not hesitate to define the “Amalekites of this age” as the Palestinians. He writes, “those who kill students as they recite the Torah, and fire missiles on the city of Siderot, spread terror in the hearts of men and women. Those who dance over blood are the Amalekites, and we must respond with counter-hatred. We must uproot any trace of humanitarianism in dealing with them so that we emerge victorious.”
The true outrage is that most of those authorised to issue Jewish religious opinions support the view of Rabbi Rosen, as confirmed by Haaretz newspaper. At the head of those supporting his opinion is Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, the leading religious authority in Israel’s religious national current, and former chief Eastern rabbi for Israel. Rosen’s opinion also has the support of Rabbi Dov Lior, president of the Council of Rabbis of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Safed and a candidate for the post of chief rabbi of Israel. A number of political leaders in Israel have also shown enthusiasm for the opinion, including Ori Lubiansky, head of the Jerusalem municipality.
There is no dispute among observers in Israel that the shooting in Jerusalem three weeks ago that killed eight Jewish students in a religious school was pivotal for Jewish authorities issuing religious opinions of a racist, hateful nature. The day following the Jerusalem incident, a number of rabbis led by Daniel Satobsky issued a religious opinion calling on Jewish youth and “all those who believe in the Torah” to take revenge on the Palestinians as hastily as possible. A week following the operation, a group of leading rabbis issued an unprecedented religious opinion permitting the Israeli army to bomb Palestinian civilian areas. The opinion is issued by the “Association of Rabbis of the Land of Israel” and states that Jewish religious law permits the bombing of Palestinian civilian residential areas if they are a source of attacks on Jewish residential areas. It reads, “when the residents of cities bordering settlements and Jewish centres fire shells at Jewish settlements with the aim of death and destruction, the Torah permits for shells to be fired on the sources of firing even if civilian residents are present there.”
The opinion adds that sometimes it is necessary to respond with shelling to sources of fire immediately, without granting the Palestinian public prior warning. A week ago, Rabbi Eliyahu Kinvinsky, the second most senior authority in the Orthodox religious current, issued a religious opinion prohibiting the employment of Arabs, particularly in religious schools. This religious opinion followed another that had been issued by Rabbi Lior prohibiting the employment of Arabs and the renting of residential apartments to them in Jewish neighbourhoods. In order to provide a climate that allows Jewish extremist organisations to continue attacking Palestinian citizens, Rabbi Israel Ariel, one of the most prominent rabbis in the West Bank settlement complex, recently issued a religious opinion prohibiting religious Jews involved in attacks against Palestinians to appear before Israeli civil courts. According to this opinion, they must instead demand to appear before Torah courts that rule by Jewish religious law.
Haaretz newspaper noted that what Rabbi Ariel was trying to achieve through this religious opinion has in fact already taken place. The first instance of such a court in Kfar Saba ordered the release of a young Jewish woman called Tsevia Teshrael who attacked a Palestinian farmer in the middle of the West Bank. And there are Jewish religious authorities that glorify killing and praise terrorists, such as Rabbi Yitzhaq Ginsburg, a top rabbi in Israel who published a book entitled Baruch the Hero in memoriam of Baruch Goldstein, who committed the Ibrahimi Mosque massacre in 1994 when he opened fire and killed 29 Palestinians as they were performing the dawn prayer in Hebron in the southern West Bank. Ginsburg considers his act “honourable and glorious”.
The danger of these religious opinions lies in the fact that the religious authorities issuing them have wide respect among religious Jewish youth. And while only 28 per cent of Israel’s population is religious, more than 50 per cent of Israelis define themselves as conservative and grant major significance to opinions issued by Jewish religious authorities. According to a study conducted by the Social Sciences Department of Bar Elon University, more than 90 per cent of those who identify as religious believe that if state laws and government orders are incongruous with the content of religious opinions issued by rabbis, they must overlook the former and act in accordance with the latter.
What grants the racist religious opinions a deeper and far-reaching impact is the fact that for the last decade followers of the Zionist religious current, who form nearly 10 per cent of the population, have been seeking to take control of the army and security institutions. They are doing so through volunteering for service in special combat units. The spokesperson’s office in the Israeli army says that although the percentage of followers of this current is low in the state’s demographic makeup, they form more than 50 per cent of the officers in the Israeli army and more than 60 per cent of its special unit commanders. According to an opinion poll of religious officers and soldiers supervised by the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya and published last year, more than 95 per cent of religious soldiers and officers say that they will execute orders from the elected government and their leaders in the army only if they are in harmony with the religious opinions issued by leading rabbis and religious authorities.
Wasil Taha, Arab Knesset member from the Tajammu Party led by Azmi Bishara, says that these religious opinions lead to the committal of crimes. He mentions religious opinions issued by a number of rabbis in mid-1995 that led to the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at that time. “If that’s what happens when religious opinions urge attacks against Jewish leaders such as Rabin, what will the situation be like when they urge attacks against Palestinian leaders and the Palestinian public?” he asks. “We, as Arab leaders, have begun to feel a lack of security following this flood of religious opinions, and we realise that the matter requires a great deal of caution in our movements as we are certain that there are those who seek to implement these opinions,” he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
Taha dismisses those who ask about the role of the government and Israeli political cadre in confronting these extremist religious opinions. “The ministers in the Israeli government and the Knesset members compete to incite against the Palestinian public and don’t hesitate to threaten expulsion of the Palestinians who live on their land in Israel and carry Israeli citizenship outside of Israel’s borders, just as former deputy premier Avigdor Lieberman and representative Evi Etam did,” Taha said. He notes that Palestinian citizens within Israel have begun to take extreme precautionary measures since the issue of these religious opinions, including security measures around mosques and public institutions and informing officials of public demonstrations so that members of Jewish terrorist organisations can be prevented from attacking participants. Taha holds that the sectors of the Palestinian population most likely to be harmed by these religious opinions are those living in the various cities populated by both Jews and Palestinians, such as Haifa, Jaffa, Lod, Ramleh and Jerusalem.
Palestinian writer and researcher Abdul-Hakim Mufid, from the city Um Fahem, holds that the religious opinions of rabbis have gained major significance due to the harmony between official rhetoric and that of the rabbis. Mufid notes that official Israeli establishments have not tried to confront the “fascist” rhetoric expressed in these religious opinions even though they are capable of doing so. “Most of the rabbis who issue tyrannical religious opinions are official employees in state institutions and receive salaries from them. And the state has not held these rabbis accountable or sought to prohibit the issue of such opinions,” he told the Weekly.
Mufid points out that when the official political institution is in a crisis, the Zionist consensus behind these religious opinions grows more intense, and offers as an example the religious opinions relied upon by Rabbi Meir Kahane in the early 1980s to justify his call to forcefully expel the Palestinians. Mufid adds that Israel in practice encourages all those who kill Palestinians, and points to the way that the Israeli government dealt with the recommendations of the Orr Commission that investigated the Israeli police’s killing of 13 Palestinians with Israeli citizenship in October of 2000. The government closed the file even though the commission confirmed that the police had acted aggressively towards the Palestinian citizens. Mufid suggests that what makes the racist rhetoric the rabbis insist upon influential is the silence of leftist and liberal voices, and the lack of any direct mobilisation against it.”
http://www.islamagainstextremism.com/
Po,
“Do you believe Israel has a legitimate claim to any territory in the ME?” More specifically, any of the territory currently claimed by Israel.
“TAXI..TAXI”
“JT is a big boy, he can handle criticism. He’s a heavyweight, he doesn’t need welterweights defending him.”
Nick, glad to see you came around and adopted my exact words to you. It took a year, but we are there. progress!
Since he chided you for being disruptive and an all around nuisance, you are being quite rough on him:)
Where is your previous adulation of him?
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Olly, I am just glad that our Christian brothers and sisters are stepping up and denouncing the mistreatment of Palestinians. More and more are supporting the BDS movement, and in light of this rabbi’s hatred of Christmas, they are obviously right.
By the way, Jesus AS is a revered figure in Islam, and so is his mother Mary. There is a quranic chapter named Mary, and the Muslim name Issa/Insa, is Jesus’ name in Islam.
Representatives of 11 churches and faith-based organizations submitted evidence to the US State Department on Wednesday of specific gross violations of human rights by Israeli forces.
They are demanding that the Obama administration apply US laws that would halt military assistance to the Israeli units responsible.
Israel, the largest beneficiary of US military aid, currently receives about $3 billion a year. This could rise to nearly $5 billion per year under a package currently being considered by the Obama administration.
The groups that met with US officials include the American Friends Service Committee; the Mennonite Central Committee US; Global Ministries of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ; Pax Christi USA and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
JT isn’t the only one fixated on religion. The big difference is, JT will move on to other topics. And, pointing out a fact, that someone is obsessed w/ something of late, is not an “ad hominem.” Although, liberals often call facts that don’t comport w/ their world view, “ad hominem, racist, sexist, etc.” JT is a big boy, he can handle criticism. He’s a heavyweight, he doesn’t need welterweights defending him.
By the way, here is the link.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-hiding-killers-who-burned-palestinian-family-alive-minister-reveals
Additionally, would Nick, Bambam, KCFleming and Tom Nash each please condemn the firebombing as a terrorist act?
The Zwarte Piet character is part of the annual feast of St. Nicholas, celebrated on the evening of 5 December (Sinterklaasavond, that is, St. Nicholas’ Eve) in the Netherlands, Curaçao and Aruba and on 6 December in Belgium and Luxembourg, when sweets and presents are distributed to children. The characters of Zwarte Pieten appear only in the weeks before Saint Nicholas’s feast, first when the saint is welcomed with a parade as he arrives in the country (generally by boat, having traveled from Madrid, Spain). The tasks of the Zwarte Pieten are mostly to amuse children, and to scatter pepernoten, kruidnoten and strooigoed (special sinterklaas candies) for those who come to meet the saint as he visits stores, schools, and other places.
History
Origins
Strooigoed and kruidnoten mix for scattering
According to Hélène Adeline Guerber and others,[4][unreliable source?] [5][unreliable source?] the origin of Sinterklaas and his helpers has been linked by some to the Wild Hunt of Odin. Riding the white horse Sleipnir he flew through the air as the leader of the Wild Hunt. He was always accompanied by two black ravens, Huginn and Muninn.[6] Those helpers would listen, just like Zwarte Piet, at the chimney – which was just a hole in the roof at that time – to tell Wodan about the good and bad behaviour of the mortals.[7][8] Due to its speculative character, however, this older “Germanic” theory has little support among present-day scholars, although it continues to be popular in non-scholarly sources. At the same time, it seems clear that the Saint Nicholas tradition contains a number of elements that are not ecclesiastical in origin.[9][10] According to E. Boer-Dirks, “Nieuw licht op Zwarte Piet. Een kunsthistorisch antwoord op de vraag naar de herkomst”, Volkskundig Bulletin, 19 (1993), pp. 1–35, this tradition is derived from German folkloristic research of the first decades of the 19th century (p. 2). This happened relatively early; already in 1863, the Dutch lexicographer Eelco Verwijs is found comparing the feast of St. Nicholas with Germanic pagan traditions and noting that the appearance of Wodan and Eckart in December reminds him of that of St. Nicholas and “his servant Ruprecht” (De christelijke feesten: Eene bijdrage tot de kennis der germaansche mythologie. I. Sinterklaas (The Hague, 1863), p. 40). An older reference to a possible pagan origin of a “St. Nicholas and his black servant with chains”, apparently in a Dutch setting, is found in L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, Nederlandsche volksoverleveringen en godenleer (Utrecht, 1836), p. 74 (“…de verschijning van den zwarten knecht van St. Nikolaas met kettingen, die de kinders verschrikt, … acht ik van heidenschen oorsprong”).
Illustration from Jan Schenkman’s book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht
In medieval iconography, Saint Nicholas is sometimes presented as taming a chained devil, who may or may not be black. Although no hint of a devil, servant, or any other human or human-like fixed companion to the Saint is found in visual and textual sources from the Netherlands from the 16th until the 19th century,[11] Zwarte Piet and his equivalents in Germanic Europe, according to a long-standing theory,[12] originally must have represented such an enslaved devil, forced to assist his captor. This chained and fire-scorched devil somehow re-emerged in the 19th-century Netherlands in the likeness of a Moor, as a servant of Saint Nicholas.[13] A devil as a helper of the saint can still be found in the Austrian Saint Nicholas tradition, in the character of Krampus.
The introduction of Zwarte Piet did coincide, by and large, with a change in the attitude of the Sinterklaas character. The latter had been quite severe towards bad children himself, and had in fact often been presented as a bogeyman when he was still a solitary character;[10] moreover, some of the same terrifying characteristics that were later associated with his servant Zwarte Piet were often attributed to Saint Nicholas himself.[14] The depiction of a holy man in this light was troubling to both teachers and priests. Sometime after the introduction of Zwarte Piet as Sinterklaas’ servant, both characters adopted a softer character.[15] The lyrics of older traditional Sinterklaas songs, still sung today, warn that while Sinterklaas and his assistant will leave well-behaved children presents, they will punish those who have been very naughty. For example, they will take bad children and carry these children off in a burlap sack to their homeland of Spain, where, according to legend, Sinterklaas and his helper dwell out of season. These songs and stories also warn that a child who has been only slightly naughty will not get a present, but a “roe”, which is a bundle of birch twigs, implying that they could have gotten a birching instead, or they will simply receive a lump of coal instead of gifts.
In 1850, Amsterdam-based primary school teacher Jan Schenkman published the book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht (“Saint Nicholas and his Servant”), the first time that a servant character is introduced in a printed version of the Saint Nicholas narrative. The servant is depicted as a page, who appears as a dark person wearing clothes associated with Moors. The book also established another mythos that would become standard: the intocht or “entry” ceremony of Saint Nicholas and his servant (then still nameless) involving a steamboat. Schenkman has the two characters arrive from Spain, with no reference made to Nicholas’ historical see of Myra (Lycia, modern-day Turkey). In the 1850 version of Schenkman’s book, the servant is depicted in simple white clothing with red piping. Starting with the second edition in 1858, the page is shown in a much more colorful page costume reminiscent of the Spanish fashion of earlier days, looking much the same as he does at present. The book stayed in print until 1950 and has had considerable influence on the current celebration.[16] Although in Schenkman’s book the servant was nameless, Joseph Albert Alberdingk Thijm already made reference to a dialogue partner of Saint Nicholas with the name “Pieter-me-knecht” in a handwritten note to E.J. Potgieter in 1850.[17] Moreover, writing in 1884, Alberdingk Thijm remembered that in 1828, as a child, he had attended a Saint Nicholas celebration in the house of Dominico Arata, an Italian merchant and consul living in Amsterdam. On this occasion Saint Nicholas had been accompanied by “Pieter me Knecht …, a frizzy haired Negro”, who, rather than a rod, wore a large basket filled with presents. In 1859, Dutch newspaper De Tijd noticed that Saint Nicholas nowadays was often accompanied by “a Negro, who, under the name of Pieter, mijn knecht, is no less popular than the Holy Bishop himself”.[18][19]
In the 1891 book Het Feest van Sinterklaas, the servant is named Pieter. Until 1920 there were several books giving him other names, and in contemporaneous appearances the name and looks still varied considerably.
20th and 21st century
Josephine Baker meeting Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (V&D Amsterdam, 22 November 1957)
According to a story from the Legenda Aurea, retold by Eelco Verwijs in his monograph Sinterklaas (1863), one of the miraculous deeds performed by Saint Nicholas after his death consisted of freeing a boy from slavery at the court of the “Emperor of Babylon” and delivering him back to his parents.[20] No mention is made of the boy’s skin colour. However, in the course of the 20th century, both fictional and non-fictional narratives started to surface in which Zwarte Piet was considered a former slave who had been freed by the Saint and subsequently had become his lifelong companion.[21]
According to another popular explanation that came to prominence in the later decades of the 20th century, Zwarte Piet is a Spaniard, or an Italian chimney sweep, whose blackness is due to a permanent layer of soot on his body, acquired during his many trips through the chimneys.[10] and J. Helsloot, “De strijd om Zwarte Piet”, in: I. Hoving, H. Dibbits & M. Schrover (eds.), Cultuur en migratie in Nederland. Veranderingen van het alledaagse, 1950-2000 (Den Haag, 2005), pp. 249–270; 265.[22]
Though a large majority of the overall populace in both the Netherlands and Belgium is in favor of retaining the traditional Zwarte Piet character,[23][24][25][26] studies have shown that the perception of Zwarte Piet can differ greatly among different ethnic backgrounds, age groups and regions.[27]
Upwards of 90% of the Dutch public don’t perceive Zwarte Piet to be a racist character or associate him with slavery and are opposed to altering the character’s appearance, with many of the ethnic Dutch considering Zwarte Piet to be an integral part of their culture, childhood and holiday traditions.[28] This correlates to a 2015 study among Dutch children aged 3-7 which showed that they perceive Zwarte Piet to be a fantastical clownish figure rather than a black person.[29] However, the number of Dutch people who are willing to change certain details of the character (for example its lips and hair) is reported to be growing.[30][31]
Opposition to the figure is mostly found in the most urbanized provinces of North- and South Holland, where between 9% and 7% of the populace wants to change the appearance of Zwarte Piet. In Amsterdam, the nations capital, most opposition towards the character is found among the Ghanaian, Antillean and Dutch-Surinamese communities, with 50% of the Surinamese considering the figure to be discriminatory to others, whereas 27% consider the figure to be discriminatory towards themselves.[32] The predominance of the Dutch black community among those who oppose the Zwarte Piet character is also visible among the main anti-Zwarte Piet movements, Zwarte Piet Niet and Zwarte Piet is Racisme which have established themselves since the 2010s. Generally, adherents of these groups consider Zwarte Piet to be part of the Dutch colonial heritage, in which black people were subservient to whites and/or are opposed to what they consider stereotypical black (“Black Sambo”) features of the figure, such as bright red lips, curly hair and large golden earrings.[33]
The public debate surrounding the figure can be described as polarized, with some protesters considering the figure to be an insult to their ancestry and supporters considering the character to be an inseparable part of their cultural heritage.[34] Recent years have seen a number of incidents in which anti-Zwarte Piet demonstrators have been arrested by the police for disturbing the peace, as well as threats being made towards prominent figures in the anti-Zwarte Piet movement by supporters of the character.[35][36]
The folks in the Nederlands have a good manner of dividing Xmas from the religious holiday and the economic one. Santa is called Sintur Klaas. I beleive it is the 5th of December that they name Sintur Klaas Day. He arrives with a little helper who is a black african midget named Swarte Peet. They might deliver one gift to child.
What we have in America now is a Koch Brothers version of Xmas.
I suggest that we adopt the Netherlands version. Separation of Sintur and State and separation of religion for myth and separation of midgets from big fat guys but integration of the gift of giving.
Thank you Tom. It would be good to know Po’s answer to the BTW question I posed to him.
Satanists have always hated Christmas.
Olly…..I answered at least part of your question above, in response to Po.
Po,
You have used that “fire-bombed” example before. What are the facts of the event? Who is suspected of doing it and why has the Israeli government determined it should not be prosecuted?
BTW, do you believe Israel has a legitimate claim to any territory in the ME?
You know Po, we have extremists in the United States that depending on the current administration will not be prosecuted. They will even give them space to work in. That does not make it state-sponsored but most certainly state-enabled. Our weaponized, administrative state certainly persecutes its own list of “unbelievers”.