> I find this sort of statement very odd in what otherwise sounds like a lightweight but timeless telling of what they've found.
Correct. Times of Israel [1] shares some other quotes and connects this particular purpose statement not to the research but to the response:
> Since the study results were publicized last week, there have been hundreds of “interesting reactions” on Hebrew social media and news sites, Stiebel said. [...] “It is interesting how personally people take this. These are events that happened 2,000 years ago! Masada is a kind of mirror into Israeli society – how we look at Masada shows a lot of the political and social changes society has undergone.”
Where the quote in question is in the [...] above, with some other remarks.
So the comment that this is part of “Israeli DNA and the Zionist ethos” I think is not meant to necessarily denigrate those ideas, but just to comment on the fact that stories are important, we take them as part of our identity, these research results don’t have to threaten the soul of the narrative (i.e. there's no claim that the siege didn't happen or wasn't brutal or didn't last longer than expected), but you do have these kinds of nationalist conservative factions who register even the slightest tweaks to their internal narratives (3 years to 3 months) as personal attacks on their own identities. He's just labeling the group that is most prone to this, but I don't think he means the labeling to be pejorative. (Roughly the Christian equivalent is that I know a lot of folks who use “fundamentalist” and esp “fundie” as pejorative, but I also know a bunch of Christians who bear that title proudly.)
i assume you've created a negative association with zionism (from the news?) but that is far from the case.
zionism is the belief that the jews have the right to live in their ancestral homeland (ancient judea), which is not at the expense of anyone else.
any jew that's gone on birthright visits Masada, it's a right of passage. the vast majority of jews around the world are zionist and believe israel is the original homeland of jews, which historically is true.
now if there's an argument to be made that there should be no religious centric nations, well then we should hold the christian and muslim majority states to the same standard, no?
I think that's the contentious part, as the establishment of modern Isreal has come at great expense to many others- I don't think their religious nature in and of itself is much of an issue with most of their critics. Though I'm not sure that's what the original commenter was implying
>zionism is the belief that the jews have the right to live in their ancestral homeland (ancient judea), ///which is not at the expense of anyone else.///
The negative association is there because Zionism is no different from Islamism. In both cases Fascist ideologies have coopted religion to dominate people deemed inferior.
To be fair, not all definitions of Zionism refer to colonizing the area around jerusalem. More generally, zionism is around creating a jewish state and controlling their own destiny.
The historical timeline for the siege is unreliable, but somehow the number of soldiers is rock-solid accurate? And, further, it is known that they were able to complete their siege works unharried? This paper at best provides a best-case estimate. At worst, it's trying very hard to find evidence to support a fashionable belief that the siege was short.
Readit News
I find this sort of statement very odd in what otherwise sounds like a lightweight but timeless telling of what they've found.
> I find this sort of statement very odd in what otherwise sounds like a lightweight but timeless telling of what they've found.
Correct. Times of Israel [1] shares some other quotes and connects this particular purpose statement not to the research but to the response:
> Since the study results were publicized last week, there have been hundreds of “interesting reactions” on Hebrew social media and news sites, Stiebel said. [...] “It is interesting how personally people take this. These are events that happened 2,000 years ago! Masada is a kind of mirror into Israeli society – how we look at Masada shows a lot of the political and social changes society has undergone.”
Where the quote in question is in the [...] above, with some other remarks.
So the comment that this is part of “Israeli DNA and the Zionist ethos” I think is not meant to necessarily denigrate those ideas, but just to comment on the fact that stories are important, we take them as part of our identity, these research results don’t have to threaten the soul of the narrative (i.e. there's no claim that the siege didn't happen or wasn't brutal or didn't last longer than expected), but you do have these kinds of nationalist conservative factions who register even the slightest tweaks to their internal narratives (3 years to 3 months) as personal attacks on their own identities. He's just labeling the group that is most prone to this, but I don't think he means the labeling to be pejorative. (Roughly the Christian equivalent is that I know a lot of folks who use “fundamentalist” and esp “fundie” as pejorative, but I also know a bunch of Christians who bear that title proudly.)
[1]: https://www.timesofisrael.com/masada-legend-upended-the-roma...
zionism is the belief that the jews have the right to live in their ancestral homeland (ancient judea), which is not at the expense of anyone else.
any jew that's gone on birthright visits Masada, it's a right of passage. the vast majority of jews around the world are zionist and believe israel is the original homeland of jews, which historically is true.
now if there's an argument to be made that there should be no religious centric nations, well then we should hold the christian and muslim majority states to the same standard, no?
I think that's the contentious part, as the establishment of modern Isreal has come at great expense to many others- I don't think their religious nature in and of itself is much of an issue with most of their critics. Though I'm not sure that's what the original commenter was implying
Somewhat dubious.
Dead Comment
Romans: Git 'er done.