When God saw man dividing the earth into countries he had laughed at another human folly. And now both Israelis and Palestinians want to claim God for their own. Both the Jews and the Palestinians want to occupy land in the name of Yahweh and Allah. Unfortunately, God has yet not been known to interrupt conference-sessions for putting forward His opinions. We have only the facts to go on. There is a country called Israel and there are people whose nation is not acknowledged by the Jews. They are not called Palestinians but simply, ‘terrorists’ by Israel. Moreover, as the ContraCosta Times reports, orthodox Israelis like Aaron Blumenfeld know for a certainty that every bit of Palestinian land belongs to the Jews because the Old Testament says so. Problem is, the Arabs feel that Allah has given them all the land they occupy. The UN demarcation in 1947 of the Palestinian territory is rejected by the Arabs. The Middle East conflict cannot be anymore resolved on earthly plains for both the parties now routinely quote the divine.
The Bush regime is avowedly Christian and anti-Islamic. This has prompted both acolytes of President Bush and his critics to talk of a war of civilizations between the Christian and the Muslim countries. Israel’s conservative right wing gets full support from the US which sees the Jewish religion as integral to its own heritage. So when the UN partition was effected in Palestine, the Muslims had a short shrift of things. This provided the immediate excuse for the terrorism unleashed on Israel by the Palestinians. So instead of peace, the UN under the control of the US just propagated violence in the Middle East. While the ancient people fight, a relatively new upstart nation tries to secure its oil rights in the Gulf. The Rabbis are goaded to protect their orthodoxy while newer Fulbright scholarships for Islamic studies in the US invite Arab scholars to become more established in their own religions. Nothing really wrong with these efforts except for the fact that the US is herself a secular nation. She teaches her own citizens to be liberal and tolerant while encouraging others to obsess with God.
Via: ContraCosta Times
Image: Synergise
