Spirit of Nature by Betty RubinsteinI was astounded too when I learned what Israel translated into. The sources (and here as well) I checked explain it by separating its two parts:
1- Isra (or the hebrew verb sara).
2- El, which is a short form for "the God" il-Elah.
So the 2nd is obvious, but what about the 1st part? They seem to point to the meaning of "Dominion" and "Rule". But then they go into really ugly blasphemous meanings where Jacob (who's name is Israel) supposedly fights and overcomes the Angel of God. And by extension, "He who dominated God". Which I think is ridiculous.
But from a Muslim's point of view, I think the meaning makes perfect sense if it simply means "Dominated".
So Isra -El would become "Dominated by God". Which in arabic is simply: Abd Allah.
So the prophet Jacob pbuh was simply named 3abdalla :)
Another translation for "ysera" mentioned was: "striven or saved".
Again I reject the meaning of "striven against God" which they suggest, but the latter is ok with me: "Saved by God"
I'm not sure which of the two is correct, "Dominated by God" or "Saved by God". But I like both.
Now, what started this whole question in my head was that I recently added a guy to my MSN contacts whose very NAME is Israel. I chat with Israel from time to time these days!
feels weird doesn't it?
So what's the background? who and why? the plot shall thicken I promise you.
About 1 year ago our ISP was facing a problem with people who consume lots and lots of bandwidth using bittorrent. They're usually 2-4% of the total number of users, yet they consume as much as 20-25% of the total pipes.
No devices existed at the time that cached the files which you get through bittorrent. Caching is so simple and useful, it basically means when more than 1 user tried to download the same file, then the system would save the huge file locally on its disks so the 2nd time it would not have to pull it through the expensive international links. Saving lots of bandwidth in the process.
However, we found 3 companies that did it for Bittorrent, and only 1 of them worked well enough to be used in a live network serving half a country.
The product worked so well and I loved it so much that I took it as my personal crusade to resell it to other ISP's in the region!
The catch was that the company that makes it originated in Israel. And dealing with Israeli companies is illegal according to Kuwaiti law. And also morally I would feel very uncomfortable handing cash to people who support bombing ghazans so brutally and so on and so forth.
The company did everything it can to "mask" it's true identity, by basing its main office in Boston US, changed the numbers of all it's support employees to US numbers. Yet, strangely the support engineers would "wake up and sleep" in sync with the middle-east's timezones?
Ya3ne i7na mo aghbiya or naive lhaddaraja.
Now, when it comes to my own moral dillema here, if there was a "Mexican" company for example that made a similarly effective product, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat. but there isn't.
So I decided to not only buy it with a strong conviction, but also to resell it and believe in it and add my own sales/marketing markup on top >:-P
I'm even giving a presentation this coming Thursday in Bahrain to other ISPs in the middle east showing them how this system benefited our network.
Either go all the way, or not at all. There is no middle ground.
What do you guys think? am I doing something wrong here?
1- Isra (or the hebrew verb sara).
2- El, which is a short form for "the God" il-Elah.
So the 2nd is obvious, but what about the 1st part? They seem to point to the meaning of "Dominion" and "Rule". But then they go into really ugly blasphemous meanings where Jacob (who's name is Israel) supposedly fights and overcomes the Angel of God. And by extension, "He who dominated God". Which I think is ridiculous.
But from a Muslim's point of view, I think the meaning makes perfect sense if it simply means "Dominated".
So Isra -El would become "Dominated by God". Which in arabic is simply: Abd Allah.
So the prophet Jacob pbuh was simply named 3abdalla :)
Another translation for "ysera" mentioned was: "striven or saved".
Again I reject the meaning of "striven against God" which they suggest, but the latter is ok with me: "Saved by God"
I'm not sure which of the two is correct, "Dominated by God" or "Saved by God". But I like both.
Now, what started this whole question in my head was that I recently added a guy to my MSN contacts whose very NAME is Israel. I chat with Israel from time to time these days!
feels weird doesn't it?
So what's the background? who and why? the plot shall thicken I promise you.
About 1 year ago our ISP was facing a problem with people who consume lots and lots of bandwidth using bittorrent. They're usually 2-4% of the total number of users, yet they consume as much as 20-25% of the total pipes.
No devices existed at the time that cached the files which you get through bittorrent. Caching is so simple and useful, it basically means when more than 1 user tried to download the same file, then the system would save the huge file locally on its disks so the 2nd time it would not have to pull it through the expensive international links. Saving lots of bandwidth in the process.
However, we found 3 companies that did it for Bittorrent, and only 1 of them worked well enough to be used in a live network serving half a country.
The product worked so well and I loved it so much that I took it as my personal crusade to resell it to other ISP's in the region!
The catch was that the company that makes it originated in Israel. And dealing with Israeli companies is illegal according to Kuwaiti law. And also morally I would feel very uncomfortable handing cash to people who support bombing ghazans so brutally and so on and so forth.
The company did everything it can to "mask" it's true identity, by basing its main office in Boston US, changed the numbers of all it's support employees to US numbers. Yet, strangely the support engineers would "wake up and sleep" in sync with the middle-east's timezones?
Ya3ne i7na mo aghbiya or naive lhaddaraja.
Now, when it comes to my own moral dillema here, if there was a "Mexican" company for example that made a similarly effective product, I'd switch to it in a heartbeat. but there isn't.
So I decided to not only buy it with a strong conviction, but also to resell it and believe in it and add my own sales/marketing markup on top >:-P
I'm even giving a presentation this coming Thursday in Bahrain to other ISPs in the middle east showing them how this system benefited our network.
Either go all the way, or not at all. There is no middle ground.
What do you guys think? am I doing something wrong here?
2 comments:
hmm...personally, i try to boycott as many products linked with israel. but mark my words "i TRY". as long as there isn't an alternative, i think you should go ahead with it. and remember, it is not "7aram" to deal with them. so best of luck to you. may you have luck with this venture!
Off-topic-I like the picture.
Will read the post when the words will sink in, enshalla, hehe.
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