I was going to make the suggestion that the Indian issue be taken to its own thread, then I read enough of it to see that how the issue related indeed to the subject.

I think it can be argued however that the Jewish people are at once the Indians AND the settlers in this long long scenario. Not for nothing did the phrase "Next Year in Jerusalem" reverberate through the centuries.

For myself and Little Hawk, the non-obligatory Star Trek reference: In The Omega Glory it is the Americans who have been displaced for generations, not by the Indians, but by the Reds (Communists) and who reclaim the land for the Yanks on a parallel world. But they take to the hills and live like the Indians and come to resemble Indians until their day of reckoning, conveniently when Capt. Kirk is available to read for them the words to their ancient document, The Constitution.

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"Who Is A Jew?"

In an unrelated development, but apropos of the thread, I heard this morning the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the non-Orthodox conversions of several petitioners to the Court should be recognized as valid toward allowing them Israeli citizenship as Jews. Most if not all of the people involved obtained their conversions overseas (from Israel). Until this era, the legal definition of who is a Jew has been under the purview of Orthodox rabbis. this has led to a severe dichotomy between those who hew to the Orthodox approach, and - everybody else. On the one hand, Orthodox law allows anyone with a Jewish mother to claim Jewish-ness. So all sorts of otherwise secular Jews have been and are allowed into the country, including Russians (and plenty others) who eat pork and celebrate some sort of Christmas. On the other hand, conversion to Judaism only along Orthodox lines is a tough row to hoe, because the formal strictures of the faith as defined by Orthodoxy require adherence to customs and lifestyles that few secular Jews adhere to.

There are enough repercussions from this event as to make 'interpreting' it worthy of an encyclopedia, but if Guest, Allen is still around, I'd appreciate if he would weigh in with his take on this. And in fact, if he's going to be around for a while I'd invite him to sign up permanently with Mudcat.