Posted on 05/22/2024 9:36:16 AM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
They were up in bad weather over a mountainous terrain. Also Iran’s leader visiting Azerbaijan isn’t commonplace. Probably just an oopsie, rather than an act of jihad by the pilot.
I think a big reason the jewish population is small results from the fact that to be truly Jewish, your mother had to be a Jew. Most other religions grow by conversion or conquest. I’m not aware of any significant period when Jews were welcoming converts, and for the past 2,000 years they have not done much in the way of conquest. Mohammed had some conflicts with Jews, but I think he mostly won. Also, both Islam and Christianity have been aggressive with conquest and conversion.
And, yes, they have been treated cruelly for many centuries—Russian pogroms, Spanish conversion or expulsion, Nazi genocide, US and British prejudice and legal barriers. This just a sample, and that is all since the fall of Rome whose rulers got in their own wacks like Masada.
As a culture there are two, I can think of offhand who, person per person by any metric punch well above their weight. The first is the Jewish culture. Lay out all the Nobel Prizes by culture and I’ll bet Jews outnumber or at least equal the other cultures combined. If you see a Muslim, like Yassar, it was a political gift and not a contribution to mankind.
The second is the Druze. But corner a Druze and you’ll quickly discover that for all practical purposes they’re more culturally Jewish than anything else. Their actual religion and beliefs are practically secret, and I think that’s because they live amongst...uhm, culturally hostile, cruel animals who are so culturally different they might as well be from Klingon territory. Fortunately for the Druze the people they live amongst are so disinterested in learning about their neighbors that the Druze are able to walk amongst them like the Star Trek Federation people can walk around on a Borg ship as long as they aren’t perceived as a danger.
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