"We supposed that the Security Council would criminalize the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip"

He also said that other Palestinian factions would continue with resistance to the Israeli invasion “without regret.”

It is impossible to regret anything when you are dead.

"Israelis and Palestinians are all descendants of the same father, Abraham. One, descendants from the line of Ishmael, the other, the line of Jacob. So, stop the B.S. and sit down and make peace!"

People - I saw this posted on another site. Is it true about the "Ishmael" claim? I would appreciate any comments.

From article: new UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire has nothing to do with the welfare of Palestinians.

And exactly what has Hamas done for the 'welfare of the 'Palestinian' people, other than to bring calamity down on them...?

School lunch programs, and weapons training for children does not count...

Darcy...I don't doubt that we all are distant descendants of a lot of people besides Abraham.
If the bible is correct, we are all offspring of Adam and Eve.

This idea: Israelis and Palestinians are all descendants of the same father, Abraham. One, descendants from the line of Ishmael, the other, the line of Jacob. So, stop the B.S. and sit down and make peace!"

Is not too well thought out and amounts to the Rodney King slogan 'Can't we all just get along'?

The answer to that is 'No'. I have no intention of 'getting along' with Islam, or it's father jihad.

Israel has recently taken the position of 'no more Mr nice guy', and I agree...Cheers for Israel...

"People - I saw this posted on another site. Is it true about the "Ishmael" claim? I would appreciate any comments."

Darcy,

Yes, it's true. When Hagar, Sarah's servant was at the point of death in the desert, God promised her that the line of Ishmael would be a "great nation". By this, I think God meant great as in "large" rather than "exemplary".

In some early writings, those of Ishmael's line are referred to as "Ishmaelites". Since the advent of Muhammed's Islam scam, 'Muslim' and 'Ishmaelite' are more or less exchangeable terms for the same people.

People - a great Editorial in the Miami Herald by a writer who knows what she's talking about! Please, take a few and read:

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/844750.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted#Comments_Container

And, yes--Good for Israel! It's past time for the nice guy crap to end.

OK, so Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael.

But, Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with Abraham.

That's what I want clarified.

Al-Quds Brigades spokesperson Abu Ahmad said in a statement, “We supposed that the Security Council would criminalize the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and would call for their immediate withdrawal and lift the blockade and open the crossings.”... - from the article above.

-

Well, how about the A-rab-o-phile UN security council just cut through the bull and criminalize rocket-launching by Ham-ass into Israeli territory?

We "supposed" those A-rab-o-philes, see-no-evil-in-sharia, blame-Israel-and-the-West-for-everything hypocrites could never do that. It would upset their islamist paymasters way too much.

It is impossible to regret anything when you are dead.

Depends...

In Christian and Buddhist thinking, it's completely possible to regret. But given that you're finding yourself in a very hot and painful place (yes, Buddhism does have real Hell), it is impossible to actually do something meaningful about it.

At least they probably get to share the company of Mo and Allah, who according to these two religions have earned a looong stay there!

Proud Kafir, what Hamas does has long since been criminalized, just like the activities of Hezbollah.

The problem is enforcement. Noone, except the IDF, has the will to do so.

Actually the European Union supports Gaza extensively. They keep the Palestinians fed, freeing Hamas up to steal emergency supplies and shoot at Jews.

EU could trigger the collapse of Hamas quickly by terminating the aid. But there is no will to do so.

Keep up IDF! take out Hammas, next Fatta! yeah l spelled it that way because they are fat from Western hard earned tax payers money.. enough of this.. let their rich sowdi mastas pay up!

Of course the UN resolution is nonsense. Krauthammer gives, as usual, a clearheaded analysis:

" [Accepting the UN nonsense] would be a terrible mistake.

It would fail on its own terms. It would have the same elements as the phony peace in Lebanon: an international force that abjures any meaningful use of force, an arms embargo under which arms will most assuredly flood in, and a cessation of hostilities until the terrorist side is rearmed and ready to initiate the next round of hostilities.

The U.N.-mandated disarmament of Hezbollah in Lebanon is a well-known farce. Not only have foreign forces not stopped Hezbollah's massive rearmament. Their very presence makes it impossible for Israel to take any preventive military action, lest it accidentally hit a blue-helmeted Belgian crossing guard.

The "international community" is now pushing very hard for a replay in Gaza of that charade. Does anyone imagine that international monitors will risk their lives to prevent weapons smuggling? To arrest terrorists? To engage in shootouts with rocket-launching teams attacking Israeli civilians across the Gaza border?

Of course not. Weapons will continue to be smuggled. Deeper and more secure fortifications will be built for the next round. Mosques, schools and hospitals will again be used for weapons storage and terrorist safe havens. Do you think French "peacekeepers" are going to raid them? "
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/01/09/obscuring_gaza

Hamas must be totally eliminated. Israel would be doing everyone, including President elect Obama, a big favor by this. The UN is acting surprisingly stupid, even for them. Have people forgotten what a Islamic terrorist organization is? They should all be destroyed.

What we are observing is La Grande Montatura, the Big Fakery, Fakery of every sort, being "mounted" in Hamas, and aided and abetted by those Westerners who have a long record of being viciously anti-Israel. These include Mads Gilbert and another Norwegian doctor, both of whom have been on record as approving of the 9/11/2001 bombings, and have been tireless workers in the vineyard of the most extreme left-wing, and now nicely antisemitic, groups. And CNN and the egregious BBC do not tell listeners about what they are on record as having said, what their background is.

Nor do they tell us about the kind of people, the non-Arabs that is (and almost everyone in place is an Arab working for any U.N. connected organization in Gaza, but you would hardly know this from the solemn interviews with John Ging and suchlike, who provide a facade, for the uninformed, of presumed, but in truth utterly phony, "objectivity," Why, just today, at 9:10 a.m., on the BBC, listening to the most transparently absurd charges -- such as that the Israelis "deliberately" coaxed innocent civilians out of their apartments, and then "deliberately" placed them in a single building, and then "deliberately" shelled that building. Yes, how true, we have 60 years of familiarity with how the Israelis conduct war, and how they treat Arab prisoners, and of course this corresponds -- doesn't it? -- to everything they have ever done, and of course we also have 60 years of noting what the Arabs do when they make war on the jews of Israel, and the scrupulosity with which they try always to avoid causing harm to civilians, and the way they treat any Israeli, soldier or civilian, whom they take prisoner, are truly a model for how to behave, as the U.N. will be the first to tell you.

No, of course we know perfectly well the long history of nonsense and lies by the Arabs, the charges that turn out to be utterly false, and that we have heard from the PLO, and Hezbollah, and Islamic Jihad, and Hamas, and so too, of course, have the Americans, charged with behaving like Nazis in Iraq -- are we supposed to have forgotten the endless re-runs on Al-Jazeera showing the "victims" of those American Nazis. Look, give anyone a camera, and a hospital ward, and a handful of real or pretend victims of violence, and if you are clever enough to can practically make the hapless Infidel army look as bad as the Nazis on the Eastern Front. It doesn't take much cleverness.

Note, for example, how that "Israel attacks U.N. school" story is still out there. And any one ill-informed, in other words 99% of the world, would simply think: my goodness, those Israelis attacked, deliberately attacked, a school? And with teenty-tiny children at their desks? And a U.N. school, that is a school that is obviously on the up-and-up, with no possible connection to terrorists? And they did this for no reason? And they killed people?

Well, let's start with the "school" business. It is as irrelevant that the building is used for a school as it is that Lee Harvey Oswald fired on Kennedy from the Texas Book Depository. What counts is that the building was not being used as as a school at the time. That's one. The second is that the Israelis did not "attack the school." They fired near the school, at those who had fired at them. This caused secondary explosions, I gather, from within the school, and what could explain that, other than the storing of weapons? And we should further note that we have been told that "women and children" were "among" the victims, but just as we were told therer were 40 dead and then, later, 30 dead, we still don't know -- and given the constant lying by people raised in a tradition of constant lying, that is liers who outdo even the normal lying of the societies where lying is a given, societies suffused with lying that is deemed perfectly acceptable to obtain what one wishes (for this see "The Arab Mind" or see the testimony of all kinds of field anthropologists who have spent years in Arab countries, or if you wish, just look at the testimony, about Islam and deception, by such defectors from the faith as truth-telling Magdi Allam) -- how many non-able-bodied males were among those victims, or how many of those males were in fact not "civilians" at all, for in the context of Gaza, the very word is not exactly one that can easily be applied with certainty, where anyone at all can, and often does, join this force or that force, a clan's militia, or Fatah, or Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, or just goes out and starts fighting. How can the "U.N."'s staff -- Arab or deeply sympathetic to the Arab side, for no one else is hired by UNRWA or any of the other U.N. bodies (and it is surely absurd, for example, to quote, as if worthy of being listened to, any Arab spokesman for the kangaroo court of the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission -- have we not read, at this very site, over and over again about the travesty of its deliberations, in the speeches reproduced here by David Littman, Roy Brown, and others? For god's sake, basta con this nonsense).

This morning I listened to the BBC speaker, voice dripping with hostility and sarcasm whenever he interviewed someone willing to offer the Israeli view, deeply respectful when someone came on, with the "U.N." label attached -- a label that means, at this point, is not merely not a guarantee of objectivity, but almost certainly a guarantee of the reverse, of complete bias, hiding behind the camouflage of those initials "U" and "N" -- hearing someone connected to the U.N., to some human rights part of it (it hardly matters what phony succursale it was), and of how the Israelis had done this, or done that, cold-bloodedly ordered people out of their apartments, and then into another building, only to then shell that building. Now a moment's thought tells anyone, or should, just what an absurd charge this is. For if the Israelis were cold-blooded killers, they wouldn't bother moving people from one place to another, apparently unharmed, but just kill them where they were. And if the Israelis were cold-blooded killers, then why would they spend such an enormous effort phoning up every individual phone in Gaza -- and no one denies that they have done this, not even Hamas, not even the "U.N." -- nor would they have leafletted Gaza warning civilians to leave certain areas. Why, for god's sake, the Israelis even warned members of Hamas that their apartments would be bombed -- it is known, for example, that that Hamas cleric who was killed had received the warning, but had wanted to die as a "martyr" and to take his whole family with him, even insisted that they remain (at least one family member chose not to do so). Doesn't that tell us all we need to know about the efforts Israel is making to minimize civilian casualties? Hasn't Israel always done so? Doesn't it have a long record, we can look at, to see that that is so? Conversely, do not the Arabs have a long record of staging things, of making una montatura (a most useful Italian word), of recycling corpses (see Jeffrey Goldberg's testimony of how he saw, on previous occasions in Gaza, Hamas people unwrapping a dead child's body, and taking it here and there, for yet another ghoulish photo op in yet another site, in order to multiply in the public's mind the number of victims).

And then this same lady from some "U.N." office spoke of another charge -- the charge that an adult and several children had been found, under some rubble, where she claimed they had lain for days, while those Nazi-like Israelis had done nothing? Now how verisimilar is that? How likely is it, knowing what we know about the Israelis and the treatment they give even to Arab terrorists who, having killed Israelis and themselves been wounded, have been taken to Israeli hospitals, again and again and again, and as we know, from many decades of this, given exactly the same level of care as are Israelis themselves? Are we expected to forget that, and to believe the Arab, and the "U.N." version, of events?

And then there is something else. You don't have to know a thing except this: it makes no sense for Israel to want to increase the number of civiilian casualties, and it makes perfect sense for Israel to wish to limit them, to keep them to a minimum, and that is what those warning phone calls and those warning leaflets are all about, as was the pinpoint bombing against 50 Hamas targets in the first few minutes of the campaign. Furthermore, a moment's thought should tell any person of sense that Hamas has shown again and again that it has no compunction about using Arab "civilians" or even real civilians as cannon-fodder. It has no compunction about murdering, in cold blood, members of Fatah, or those related to them, for example, and has done so during this campaign, as Arabs have testified, and as it did in its own previous war against Fatah, throwing people from buildings, murdering them, doing whatever it wished. And it has done the same against some of the powerful families, the clans, of Gaza, that dared to defy Hamas. Why, then, would anyone think for a minute, when we have tesitmony after testimony from those Arabs who dare -- though usually anonymously -- to tell us what Hamas does, should we give any credence to those who would have us believe that Hamas is not moving heaven and earth to increase those civiilian casualties, and why would not Hamas itself not be engaged in simply murdering people, and attributing their murder to Israeli soldiers? We know from all the evidence, such as the map found by the Israelis the other day, that Hamas has been booby-trapping apartment buildings in Gaza, so that should an Israeli shell fire back at Hamas members who fire at them, or should Israeli soldiers enter a building to find Hamas members, the whole thing might explode, killing the Israelis, but also killing whatever civilians are in the building, and as far as Hamas goes, that's fine, that's okay, that helps The Cause.

In any case, I waited until the end of these absurd charges to catch the name of this "spokesman" for some "U.N." group -- human rights or somesuch phony thing, and I heard her name: Allegra Pacheco.

Ah! I said to myself. Allegra Pacheco. Of course. That explains a great deal, that explains everything.

You don't know Allegra Pacheco? Well, then, just google her name. Mads Gilbert in female clothing.

No matter how Hamas and its willing collaborators attempt to muddy the moral waters, through the convenient likes of Mads Gilbert, John Ging and now, introducing… Allegra Pacheco.

Darcy:

That was very good no nonsence article from the Miami Herald opinion page.

Al-Quds Brigades spokesperson Abu Ahmad said in a statement, “We supposed that the Security Council would criminalize the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and would call for their immediate withdrawal and lift the blockade and open the crossings.”...
..................

Translation: really, we thought that the UN was an even bigger dhimmi tool than they have turned out to be. Oh well, we don't need those Infidels, anyway.

Darcy wrote:

"Israelis and Palestinians are all descendants of the same father, Abraham. One, descendants from the line of Ishmael, the other, the line of Jacob. So, stop the B.S. and sit down and make peace!"

People - I saw this posted on another site. Is it true about the "Ishmael" claim? I would appreciate any comments.
...

OK, so Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael.

But, Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with Abraham.

That's what I want clarified.
..........................

Darcy, one of the few Biblical traditions that all the "people of the book" do generally agree on is that Abraham's son Isaac--and through him, his son Jacob--founded what would become the Jewish (and then Christian) nation, and his son Ishmael founded what would become the Arab nation.

Abraham's wife, Sarah (or Sarai) was barren, so she gave Abraham her maidservant Hagar. Hagar gave birth to Ishmael. Then Sarah hears from the Lord that she will conceive, after all. She gives birth to Isaac.

But then the traditions part company. In the Torah and old Testament (same books), Abraham is called on by the Lord to sacrifice the thing which is dearest to him--his legitimate son with his wife, Sarah--Isaac. He is saddened, but goes out to sacrifice his son. Seeing how he will obey the Lord in everything, God has an angel stay his hand at the last minute, and supplies a ram for him to sacrifice, instead.

The Muslim tradition is very similar--but with a very big difference. In this version, it is *not* Isaac whom Abraham is called to sacrifice, but his firstborn son, Ishmael, who he had with Hagar. Why is this important? Because in this version, the son who is dearest to Abraham is the father of the Arab--read Muslim--nation, and not the father of the Jewish and Christian nations.

In other words, in the Muslim version, the founder of the "three Abrahamic faiths" chose Islam, not Judaism and Christianity.

Here is Rembrandt's powerful and disturbing "Sacrifice of Isaac":

http://www.blesok.com.mk/Images%5CGallery%5C22%5Crembrandt_01.jpg

Darcy:

That was a very good no-nonsense article from the Miami Herald opinion page.

Posted by: Mackie at January 9, 2009 10:53 AM

Yes, I know! Thanks for reading, Mackie! I made lots of comments to that Editorial, if you'd like to read them.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/844750.html?mi_pluck_action=comment_submitted#Comments_Container
Posted by: darcy [TypeKey Profile Page] at January 9, 2009 9:33 AM

"Hamas, labeled a terrorist organization by the United States, ...came to power by winning hearts and minds with its tough anti-Israel stance and its widespread social welfare network. Once in power it has kept its warm side hidden.... Hamas would not create the kind of state most Palestinians want."

Darcy, with all due respect, this is the state that they voted for, and want. They passed legislation making crucifixion legal for infidel crimes three weeks ago. They want the muslim hegemony and that is the vast majority of muslims and arabs.

So, for all the articles good points, that last one is the fly in the ointment, that makes it false. Most 'palestinians' are arabs who want not only the end of any and all Israel but the creation of misery for jews. That's their goals. That's their 'vision'. And it's not just Israel- but the whole infidel world. And it's all laid out by Abu Abbas's 'vision' in the plo charter. Take over whatever they can of Israel until they can wipe it away.

Which is why the wars go on. We in the west don't want to face any of the obvious and think we can sell them a different vision.

They don't want it and are selling us a different one to assuage western guilt.

Mark

Nice to see you here again, Mark. I've never forgotten your story about the Tibetan monk, long ago, who told you that Islam was "a devil's religion".

Good point about the PLO / PA Charter.

Dating from the 1960s, it has exactly the same goals as the Hamas Covenant, just a bit more cleverly masked under 'nationalist' and 'socialist' jargon borrowed from the west. However, Jacques Ellul saw right through it, when he took it to pieces, bit by bit, in a chapter of his book, 'Un Chretien Pour Israel".

He summed up the PLO Charter thus: "a perfect expression of the Jihad".

gravenimage, thanks for the story of Ishmael. It's one of the best stories in the Bible, and is found in Genesis 15-22. And reading it today provides some good insights about the ongoing conflict in the ME.

Here are the passages from the Contemporary English Version (my comments are in italics).

Genesis 15 (Hagar and Ishmael)

At the start of the principals names are Abram and Sarai.

1Abram's wife Sarai had not been able to have any children. But she owned a young Egyptian slave woman named Hagar, 2and Sarai said to Abram, "The LORD has not given me any children. Sleep with my slave, and if she has a child, it will be mine." Abram agreed, 3and Sarai gave him Hagar to be his wife. This happened after Abram had lived in the land of Canaan for ten years. 4Later, when Hagar knew she was going to have a baby, she became proud and was hateful to Sarai. 5Then Sarai said to Abram, "It's all your fault! [b] I gave you my slave woman, but she has been hateful to me ever since she found out she was pregnant. You have done me wrong, and you will have to answer to the LORD for this." 6Abram said, "All right! She's your slave, and you can do whatever you want with her." But Sarai began treating Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away.

(So, Sarai invites Abram to sleep with her slave girl Hagar, and when he dutifully complies Sarai becomes abusive. Abe's in a tough spot here.)

7Hagar stopped to rest at a spring in the desert on the road to Shur. While she was there, the angel of the LORD came to her 8and asked, "Hagar, where have you come from, and where are you going?"

She answered, "I'm running away from Sarai, my owner."

9The angel said, "Go back to Sarai and be her slave. 10-11I will give you a son, who will be called Ishmael, because I have heard your cry for help. And later I will give you so many descendants that no one will be able to count them all. 12But your son will live far from his relatives; he will be like a wild donkey, fighting everyone, and everyone fighting him."

(Here is the prediction that Hagars as-yet unborn son, will be a trouble maker.)

13Hagar thought, "Have I really seen God and lived to tell about it?" So from then on she called him, "The God Who Sees Me." [e] 14That's why people call the well between Kadesh and Bered, "The Well of the Living One Who Sees Me." [f] 15-16Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar gave birth to their son, and he named him Ishmael.

(Abram was 86 years old. Keep this age in mind.)

(There is then a 13 year gap in the narrative.)

Genisis 17 (Sarai conceives, when Abram is 99 years old, Sarai is 86.)

1Abram was ninety-nine years old when the LORD appeared to him again and said, "I am God All-Powerful. If you obey me and always do right, 2I will keep my solemn promise to you and give you more descendants than can be counted." 3Abram bowed with his face to the ground, and God said:

(Abram's name is changed to Abraham, and God makes the same promise to him about his yet-to-be-born son as he did about Ishmael.)

4-5I promise that you will be the father of many nations. That's why I now change your name from Abram to Abraham. 6I will give you a lot of descendants, and in the future they will become great nations. Some of them will even be kings. 7I will always keep the promise I have made to you and your descendants, because I am your God and their God. 8I will give you and them the land in which you are now a foreigner. I will give the whole land of Canaan to your family forever, and I will be their God.

(Circumcision is introduced.)

9Abraham, you and all future members of your family must promise to obey me. 10-11As the sign that you are keeping this promise, you must circumcise every man and boy in your family. 12-13From now on, your family must circumcise every baby boy when he is eight days old. You must even circumcise any man or boy you have as a slave, both those born in your homes and those you buy from foreigners. This will be a sign that my promise to you will last forever. 14Any man who isn't circumcised hasn't kept his promise to me and cannot be one of my people.

(Sarai gets a new name, Sarah.)

15Abraham, your wife's name will now be Sarah instead of Sarai. 16I will bless her, and you will have a son by her. She will become the mother of nations, and some of her descendants will even be kings.

17Abraham bowed with his face to the ground and thought, "I am almost a hundred years old. How can I become a father? And Sarah is ninety. How can she have a child?" So he started laughing. 18Then he asked God, "Why not let Ishmael [b] inherit what you have promised me?" 19But God answered:

No! You and Sarah will have a son. His name will be Isaac, [c] and I will make an everlasting promise to him and his descendants. 20I have heard what you asked me to do for Ishmael, and so I will also bless him with many descendants. He will be the father of twelve princes, and I will make his family a great nation. 21But your son Isaac will be born about this time next year, and the promise I am making to you and your family will be for him and his descendants forever.

22God finished speaking to Abraham and then left.

(There is a circumcision party! Kinda tough when you're 99 years old!)

23-27On that same day Abraham obeyed God by circumcising Ishmael. Abraham was also circumcised, and so were all other men and boys in his household, including his servants and slaves. He was ninety-nine years old at the time, and his son Ishmael was thirteen.

Genesis 18 and 19 (An interlude for the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.)

Genisis 20 (Another interlude involving Abraham passing off Sarah as his sister, with ensuing complications.)

Genesis 21 (The story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael and Sari's soon-to-be-born son resumes.)

1The LORD was good to Sarah and kept his promise. 2Although Abraham was very old, Sarah had a son exactly at the time God had said. 3Abraham named his son Isaac, 4and when the boy was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, just as the LORD had commanded.

5Abraham was a hundred years old when Isaac was born, 6and Sarah said, "God has made me laugh. [a] Now everyone will laugh with me. 7Who would have dared to tell Abraham that someday I would have a child? But in his old age, I have given him a son." 8The time came when Sarah no longer had to nurse Isaac, [b] and on that day Abraham gave a big feast.

(Here's where big spit happens happens. Remember, Ishmael is 14 years older than his little brother Isaac. He gets his mother and himself booted out of camp with only some bread and water. Sarah makes sure Abraham's inheritance goes to Isaac, leaving nothing to Ishmael.)

9-10One day, Sarah noticed Hagar's son Ishmael playing (mocking Isaac), and she said to Abraham, "Get rid of that Egyptian slave woman and her son! I don't want him to inherit anything. It should all go to my son." 11Abraham was worried about Ishmael. 12But God said, "Abraham, don't worry about your slave woman and the boy. Just do what Sarah tells you. Isaac will inherit your family name, 13but the son of the slave woman is also your son, and I will make his descendants into a great nation."

14Early the next morning Abraham gave Hagar an animal skin full of water and some bread. Then he put the boy on her shoulder and sent them away.

They wandered around in the desert near Beersheba, 15and after they had run out of water, Hagar put her son under a bush. 16Then she sat down a long way off, because she could not bear to watch him die. And she cried bitterly.

17When God heard the boy crying, the angel of God called out to Hagar from heaven and said, "Hagar, why are you worried? Don't be afraid. I have heard your son crying. 18Help him up and hold his hand, because I will make him the father of a great nation." 19Then God let her see a well. So she went to the well and filled the skin with water, then gave some to her son.

20-21God blessed Ishmael, and as the boy grew older, he became an expert with his bow and arrows. He lived in the Paran Desert, and his mother chose an Egyptian woman for him to marry.

Genesis 22 (The sacrifice verses. Note that Ishmael is not part of this drama at this point - he has already been banished along with his mother. This one the places where Islam disputes the story of Abraham. In their narrative, it is Ishmael who is sacrificed.)

1Some years later God decided to test Abraham, so he spoke to him.

Abraham answered, "Here I am, LORD."

2The LORD said, "Go get Isaac, your only son, the one you dearly love! Take him to the land of Moriah, and I will show you a mountain where you must sacrifice him to me on the fires of an altar." 3So Abraham got up early the next morning and chopped wood for the fire. He put a saddle on his donkey and left with Isaac and two servants for the place where God had told him to go.

4Three days later Abraham looked off in the distance and saw the place. 5He told his servants, "Stay here with the donkey, while my son and I go over there to worship. We will come back."

6Abraham put the wood on Isaac's shoulder, but he carried the hot coals and the knife. As the two of them walked along, 7-8Isaac said, "Father, we have the coals and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"

"My son," Abraham answered, "God will provide the lamb."

The two of them walked on, and 9when they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar and placed the wood on it. Next, he tied up his son and put him on the wood. 10He then took the knife and got ready to kill his son. 11But the LORD's angel shouted from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am!" he answered.

12"Don't hurt the boy or harm him in any way!" the angel said. "Now I know that you truly obey God, because you were willing to offer him your only son."

13Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in the bushes. So he took the ram and sacrificed it in place of his son.

14Abraham named that place "The LORD Will Provide." And even now people say, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided." [a] 15The LORD's angel called out from heaven a second time:

16You were willing to offer the LORD your only son, and so he makes you this solemn promise, 17"I will bless you and give you such a large family, that someday your descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the grains of sand along the beach. They will defeat their enemies and take over the cities where their enemies live. 18You have obeyed me, and so you and your descendants will be a blessing to all nations on earth."

19Abraham and Isaac went back to the servants who had come with him, and they returned to Abraham's home in Beersheba.

--------------------------------------

Isaac went on to become the father of the Jews (and therefore also the Christians), and Ishmael went on to become the father of the Arabs and Islam). Since they all started with Abraham, this is why they are called the "Abrahamic Faiths."

Ishmael was apparently a nasty and mean spirited boy, and his temperament probably didn't improve when, after spending the first 14 years of his life as the favorite son of Abraham, he was suddenly demoted, he and his mother were kicked out of the family by Sarah, and the inheritance Ishmael thought would be his was given to his baby brother Isaac.

As mentioned above, in the Muslim version of this story it is Ishmael, not Isaac, that God challenged Abraham to sacrifice as a test.

So now you have the rest of the story.

Foreskin feels REALLY good. HIS body HIS decision.

>> Islam has nothing whatsoever to do with Abraham. That's what I want clarified.