This is a great article!
“The Paranoid, Supremacist Roots of the Stabbing Intifada”:
Islam is not the enemy. It is not Islam which is standing in the way of peace. It is extremism on both sides. I am aware of the fact that many of the terrorists attack us without God on their minds. I am aware that many of the attacks are motivated by a hatred of Jews, a motivation unconnected to religious or territorial factors. However, religion, as always, and religious partisanship, is the tool being used by Palestinian leaders, even secular ones like Abbas, not just Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to control their people, to whip them up into a fury. By the same token, Jewish religious Zionist settlers, and their supporters and defenders, are also to blame for the impasse and conflagration which is spreading through our villages, town and cities, killing Jews and others in its wake.
Some of those inciting the violence, on the Palestinian/Israeli Arab side and Jewish side, actually believe the religious claptrap, some know it’s nonsense but are using religion as the age-old, tragically well-proven instrument to control those around them.
It is impossible to get through to people who defend the “This is our land….this is our site” position on the basis of the irrational belief that a supernatural being, “God”, gave it to them. There can be no talking, no getting through to people, whose beliefs are irrational. There is utter intransigence on both sides.
BLINKERED BELIEF IN GOD AND THE BIBLE/TORAH/KORAN AS THE WORD OF GOD, AS LITERAL, NOT ALLEGORICAL/METAPHORICAL, IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH COMPROMISE, RATIONALE AND DEMOCRACY.
Yes, the resort to violence is far, far more prevalent amongst our Arab citizens and neighbours but we have dreadful elements within our own communities who are adding fuel to the fire. These intransigents on the Israeli side, religious and political intransigents, are, whilst genuinely angering some Palestinians, providing the terrorists with an excuse, or rather with a justification, for their conduct behind which they can hide when they carry out the atrocities which they would do without the ‘provocation’ but which allow them to do the acts without condemnation in the name of freedom fighting
We, Israeli Jews, can’t sit back and stick our feet under the table in self-satisfied arrogance – we are part of the problem and must accept that we have a role to play in the pursuit of a better future.
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