Not content to allow the raving moonbats of Christianity to have all the attention, a group of Jewish moonbats have decided to throw their tinfoil hats into the ring and make their case. Their argument? The hurricane was sent by God as punishment for our support of the Israeli pullout from Gaza. And who's reporting it? The Worldnutdaily, of course:
"Katrina is a consequence of the destruction of [Gaza's] Gush Katif [slate of Jewish communities] with America's urging and encouragement," Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, told WND. "The U.S. should have discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from implementing the Gaza evacuation rather than pushing for it and pressuring Israel into concessions."
Lewin is one of many rabbis in Israel and abroad who have been making similar statements both in private and in speeches to their congregations.
Rabbi Joseph Garlitzky, head of the international Chabad Lubavitch movement's Tel Aviv synagogue, recounted for WND a pulpit speech he gave this past Sabbath:
"We don't have prophets who can tell us exactly what are God's ways, but when we see something so enormous as Katrina, I would say [President] Bush and [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice need to make an accounting of their actions, because something was done wrong by America in a big way. And here there are many obvious connections between the storm and the Gaza evacuation, which came right on top of each other. No one has permission to take away one inch of the land of Israel from the Jewish people."
Can someone stage an intervention to explain the logical fallacy of post hoc reasoning to these morons? The next inevitable step is to hear from Muslim clerics who think that the hurricane was God's punishment for our support of Israel. Don't these whackos realize how much they sound just like the people they think are demon-possessed infidels? Oh, and wait, it gets better. Listen to the "coincidences" listed in support of this ridiculous claim:
* Close to 10,000 Jews were expelled from their homes in the Gaza Strip and parts of northern Samaria. Katrina's death toll is now expected to reach at least 10,000.* America's population ratio to Israel is about 50:1. Ten thousand Jews who lost their Gaza homes is the equivalent of about 500,000 Americans who are now reported to be displaced as result of Katrina.
* Gaza's Jewish communities were located in Israel's southern coastal region; America's southern coastal region now lies in ruins.
* The U.S. government called on Louisiana residents to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm. The Israeli government, backed by statements from U.S. officials, demanded Gaza residents evacuate their homes.
* Katrina, written in Hebrew, has a numerical equivalent of 374, according to a biblical numbering system upheld by all traditional Jewish authorities. Two relevant passages in the Torah share the exact numerical equivalent: "They have done you evil" (Gen. 50:17) and "The sea upon land" (Exodus 14:15).
* Bush, from Texas, and Rice, from Alabama, were the most vocal U.S. backers of the Gaza evacuation. Hurricane Katrina hit the states in between Texas and Alabama - Louisiana and Mississippi.
* Similarity in scenes: Many residents of Jewish Gaza climbed to their rooftops to escape the threat of expulsion, while residents of the Gulf Coast climbed on their own rooftops to protect themselves from the rising waters. Jewish Gaza homes described as beautiful and charming were demolished this week by Israel's military. Once beautiful homes in New Orleans now lie in ruins.
* The day Katrina hit, Israel began carrying out what was termed the most controversial aspect of the Gaza withdrawal - the uprooting of bodies from the area's Jewish cemetery. There have been media reports of corpses floating around in flooded New Orleans regions.
* Citizens of Israel were barred from entering Gush Katif; people were only allowed to leave Jewish Gaza. As Katrina was making landfall U.S. authorities barred citizens from entering the affected areas. People were only allowed out.
* Gush Katif was an important agricultural area for Israel, providing the Jewish state with 70 percent of its produce. A New Orleans port that exported much of the Midwest's agricultural production was destroyed by Katrina...
Perhaps the first to publicly connect Katrina to the Gaza evacuation was famed Israeli conspiracy theorist Barry Chamish, who sent a mass e-mail noting, "GUsh is like GUlf, and KATif is like KATrina. If you take 'KAT' from KATif and KATrina, you are left with 'IF' and 'RAIN.' If you support Gush Katif evacuation, it will rain."
I think it speaks for itself, doesn't it?
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The next inevitable step is to hear from Muslim clerics who think that the hurricane was God's punishment for our support of Israel.
It's apparently already been done by the whack-job Muslim far right.
From Reuters (September 4, 2005):
DUBAI (Reuters) - The al Qaeda group in Iraq on Sunday hailed the hurricane deaths in America as the "wrath of God," according to an Internet statement.
"God attacked America and the prayers of the oppressed were answered," said the statement, which was posted on an Islamic Web site often used by the insurgent group fighting the U.S.-backed Iraqi government.
The statement's authenticity could not be verified.
"The wrath of the All-powerful fell upon the nation of oppressors. Their dead are in the thousands and their losses are in the billions," said the statement from the group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has a $25 million U.S. bounty on this head.
"Only recently America killed and starved whoever it wanted, but today it is appealing for oil and food," it added.
The hurricane on the U.S. Gulf coast killed hundreds but as rescue work continues the final toll could be in the thousands.
Zarqawi's group is at the forefront of a raging insurgency since the U.S.-led war in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein. Nearly 1,900 U.S. soldiers have been killed since the invasion.
President Bush has vowed to keep U.S. troops in the country as part of the U.S. "war on terror" to prevent attacks on U.S. soil.
This is why I'm glad that we sent all of our religious nutcases to Israel, so that the rest of us Jews in America didn't have to listen to them. You Christians should do the same, find someplace to send your religious nuts to get rid of them.
God's really into politics these days.
"God's really into politics these days." He seems to be more into arms dealing Matthew.
Those wacky rabbis sure can rant, eh?
Not unlike Christians blaming gays, abortion, etc. Unfortunately, some of them really have a voice in DC. (Granted, a few of those rabbis are influential in their home country...)
Let me know what you think of my own interim critique of Katrina. God may have caused Katrina, but humans bungled the before and after. So far, haven't drawn much on Jewish law and ethics. Well, I guess I can denounce incompetence, gross negligence, lying and political smoke and mirrors etc without scriptural aids.
Good anysis!
Fun stuff!
The statement's authenticity could not be verified.
Like we really have to verify the "authenticity" of a statement like that?
And God's destroyng New Orleans because he's pissed about Israel's withdrawal from Gaza? With a God like that, who seems to be struggling with anger issues, or just bad aim, who needs Satan?
Not only is it theological wingnuttery, but it's even bad theology. These people need to go back and read the book of Job. Shorter Job: don't second-guess God, especially when you are tempted to blame the victim of a catastrophe.