Understand More About Middle East History

"Why has the Israeli–Palestinian conflict been so intractable for so long? Fareed talks with Palestinian scholar Ahmad Khalidi, Israeli historian Benny Morris, former US diplomat Edward Djerejian, and more about the attempts, missed chances, and future prospects of establishing a lasting peace in the region."

Click on the link below for an in-depth analysis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from an historical perspective from experts from both sides:

The Road to War in the Middle East

Islam: A "Religion Of Peace?"

Many sources have stated that Islam has never gone through its Reformation like Christianity has (link). However, how successful have so-called "Reformations" been? Every major religion seems to have factions on the conservative-liberal spectrum. That said, there seems to be a particular problem with Islam regarding peacefully existing in nations with secular governments (link). This article from the Friendly Atheist Blog seems to sum up the problem:

However,

Based on the above, it is my opinion that there will never be peace where Islam is the majority religion until the present "Revelations" are over-written OR the majority of Islam just truly "Reforms" to the point of being secular in culture.

Oil And Vinegar

"If you pour oil and vinegar into the same vessel, you would call them not friends but opponents." - Aeschylus

The recent history of the Palestinians and Israelis is essentially one of cultural and religious friction because of three main factors:

• Islam has never had an "Enlightenment" like Christianity and Judaism have gone through. (link)
• Christianity has had a violent and oppressive history against Jews essentially since its history blaming them for killing Jesus and calling them "God/Christ Killers". (link)
• Far Right Jews gaining control of Israel. (link) 

Politicide: What Is Happening In The USA,The Middle East, And Around The World

"Politicide is the deliberate physical destruction or elimination of a group whose members share the main characteristic of belonging to a political movement. It is a type of political repression and one of the means used to politically cleanse populations, another being forced migration. It may be compared to genocide or ethnic cleansing, both of which involve the killing of people based on their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group rather than their adherence to a particular ideology." (Wikipedia)

Click on the link below for an interview with an expert on this form of discrimination/killing. It is essentially what Trump and the Republicans are doing in the USA and what both factions are doing in the Middle East:

From Trump’s Speech to Israel-Gaza: Jason Stanley on the Politics of Language

A Deep and Wide Look At Foreign Affairs By A True Expert

"Fareed Zakaria is the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a foreign affairs columnist at the Washington Post. He joins Preet to discuss the regional and global dynamics of the Israel-Hamas War, the appropriate role for the United States in the Middle East, the state of play in Ukraine, and the politics of the Southern border."

Click on the link below for an important podcast presenting a global down-to-a-local perspective on foreign affairs. Yes, it begins analyzing the Middle East problems but then expands into virtually all the main international issues affecting humanity:

Unraveling Foreign Affairs

Why Taking Sides In The Israel-Palestine Conflict Is Not Wise

"Violence and oppression are destructive and corrosive to both the victim and perpetrator and this goes a long way toward explaining many of the dynamics at play in the holy land between Israelis and Palestinians."

I have posted several times on the Israel-Palestine Conflict (link). Click on the links below for examples summarizing the point made in the title of this blog post:

Israel and Palestine are less complicated than you think: Standing for international law while condemning crimes against humanity, war crimes, antisemitism, and apartheid.

John Oliver's summation is similar

A human rights lawyer, a Jewish resident of Israel, gets it

Broken News: Understanding traditional media and social media reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

The Media And Gaza

"Media literacy is a basic requirement for understanding the war in Gaza, as propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation are being distributed for both ideological and financial reasons."

Click on the links below for a prime example of why one needs to tune up one's science-based thinking when analyzing media reports on serious events:

Broken News: Understanding traditional media and social media reporting on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza

(https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/25/western-media-failures-say-more-about-the-west-than-gaza)

How About A Secular Country For All?

"First, in the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, about three-quarters of Americans, including 80% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans, would choose a democratic Israel that’s no longer Jewish, over a Jewish Israel without full citizenship and equality for non-Jews living under its authority." (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-do-americans-feel-about-zionism-antisemitism-and-israel/)

Why aren't more people who find what is going on in the Middle East abhorrent addressing the need for a political solution? There is much more heat than light on the subject. The survey in the above link presented a surprising finding to me: the majority of both major US political parties want a democratic SECULAR Israel!  The proposed maps for a Two-State Solution look too segregated and unequal to me to realistically expect the Palestinians to accept. Why not a ONE-State solution that is secular, representative, and democratic? The Palestinians probably would balk at the name "Israel" and the Israelis would probably balk at the name "Palestine", so how about a new name?

Why Jews Have Been Hated For 2,000 Years

The conflict in the Middle East between the State of Israel and the Palestinians is relatively new in the history of the Jewish people. After the beginning of Christianity, there was a movement called the Jewish deicide:

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"Jewish deicide is the notion that the Jews as a people will always be collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, even through the successive generations following his death.[1][2] A Biblical justification for the charge of Jewish deicide is derived from Matthew 27:24–25. Some rabbinical authorities, such as 12th-century scholar Maimonides and, more recently, ultranationalist Israeli rabbi, Zvi Yehuda Kook (1891–1982), have asserted that Jesus was indeed stoned and hanged after being sentenced to death in a rabbinical court.

"The notion arose in early Christianity, the charge was made by Justin Martyr and Melito of Sardis as early as the 2nd century.[3] The accusation that the Jews were Christ-killers fed Christian antisemitism[4] and spurred on acts of violence against Jews such as pogroms, massacres of Jews during the Crusades, expulsions of the Jews from England, France, Spain, Portugal, and other places, and torture during the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions."

"In the catechism that was produced by the Council of Trent in the mid-16th century, the Catholic Church taught the belief that the collectivity of sinful humanity was responsible for the death of Jesus, not only the Jews.[5] If one were to claim that only the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ death, the logical corollary to this would be that Jesus’ redemptive suffering, death and resurrection was for the sins of Jews alone and not all of humanity, as is taught by the Church. In the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Catholic Church under Pope Paul VI issued the declaration Nostra aetate that repudiated the idea of a collective, multigenerational Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Jesus. It declared that the accusation could not be made 'against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today'.[1]

"Most other churches do not have any binding position on the matter, but some Christian denominations[which?] have issued declarations against the accusation.[6][7][8]"

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_deicide)

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"CHRISTIANITY’S UNDERSTANDING OF ITS ORIGINS centers on the New Testament, particularly the poetic rendering in the gospels of the arrest, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus, which is traditionally known as the Passion.5 In the gospels’ rendition and as interpreted for centuries, the Jews are perceived as 'the Christ killers,' a people condemned forever to suffer exile and degradation. This archcrime of 'deicide,' of murdering God, turned the Jews into the embodiment of evil, a 'criminal people' cursed by God and doomed to wander and suffer tribulation to the end of time. No other religious tradition has condemned a people as the murderers of its god, a unique accusation that has resulted in a unique history of hatred, fear, and persecution. When it came to Jews, the central doctrine of Christianity, that Jesus was providentially sent into the world to atone by his death for mankind’s sins, was obscured."

(https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781403979124_2)

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"After a few centuries of freedom from harassment during the Carolingian period (800-1000), the Jews of western Europe began to suffer new indignities as the crusades came on. The Muslims were the 'infidel' targets in the attempted recapture of the holy places in Palestine. However, the pillage and slaughter committed by Christian mobs against Jews on the way linger long in Jewish memory."

" - - - Martin Luther in his early days naively imagined that the Jews, to whom he was attracted by his studies, would flock to the Church in his reformed version. When nothing of the sort happened, he denounced them in a set of pamphlets written in vituperative fury. He had produced the early, favorable "That Christ Was Born a Jew" in 1523, but after he turned on this so-called "damned, rejected race," he wrote Against the Sabbatarians (1538) and On the Jews and Their Lies (1543)."

"Germany was populated with more Jews than any country in Western Europe when Hitler came to power. It also had the same ugly heritage of anti-Jewish sentiment as all Christian Europe. The short-lived Weimar Republic could not deliver Germany from the severe economic hardships it experienced after World War I. Jews had been the Republic’s strong supporters and a few of them were the architects of its constitution, a fact that Hitler capitalized upon. Huge inflation in 1923 and the depression of 1929 increased Germany’s problems. Some leading capitalist families, gentile and Jewish, managed to escape these problems, but the eyes of the angry populace were trained on the Jews rather than the gentiles."

(https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/initiatives/ethics-religion-holocaust/articles-and-resources/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries/christian-persecution-of-jews-over-the-centuries)

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My comment on the above:

It is clear to me that, without Christianity, the Jews would not have been subjected to the horrors of the last two centuries. Ah, religion. Isn't it wonderful?

It is also clear to me the irony of the strongest supporters of the State of Israel, besides conservative Jews, are conservative Christians. Could it be because of how they interpret Scripture regarding "The End Times?"

The History Of The Israel - Palestine Conflict And Territorial Rights

One cannot fully understand the motives of the players in the Middle East until one understands its history. Click on the links below for videos providing a good start:

How Zionists Came to Palestine Under British Protection

Britain in Palestine 1917-1948

History of the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Whose Land Is It? Palestine Or Israel?

How Britain Started the Arab-Israeli Conflict

The Problem With the Middle East's Borders

Why the Middle East’s Borders Guarantee Forever War

Current Bad Actors:

The evil of Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists

The evil of Israel's Ultra-Orthodox

The evil of Evangelical Christians regarding Israel

More:

Podcast: Summary of the full spectrum of thought on the issues

Article: The Moral Deficiencies of a Liberal Education

Territorial Rights:

The discussion over who has rights over territory is the history of civilization and NO culture is "right" anywhere on the planet. It is more than time for humanity to grow up and learn to live together peacefully as a united human family.

At its base, the problem is tribalism and its bedfellow religion. As civilization has evolved from clans/tribes into wider communities, the residual of this basic social structure remains deep in our psyche. Today, with the findings of science, we know that race and religion are false and harmful human constructs. History clearly shows that cooperation trumps tribalism and individualism in the flourishing of humanity.

Science must be THE tool we use to inform our innate reason, wisdom, and common humanity!

Israel: There Is No Excuse For USA Support Of Apartheid

"Israel's politics have been upended by the return of Netanyahu as Prime Minister, put in office with the help of extremely far-right factions who have now pushed through reforms to the Israeli Supreme Court that fundamentally undermine their democracy. All this while they were already a farce of a democracy due to the maintenance of an apartheid-like system of differing rules applying to different residents based on ethnicity."

Click on the link below for a podcast exposing a country that should not be allowed to hoodwink the USA with its religious bigotry (heads up, Evangelical ideologues). 

Israel's Political Upheavals (and more)

A Rarity: Jewish Support For Palestinians

"Why is dreaming of return laudable for Jews but pathological for Palestinians? Asking the question does not imply that the two dreams are symmetrical. The Palestinian families that mourn cities such as Jaffa or Safed lived there recently, and remember intimate details about their lost homes. They experienced dispossession from Israel-Palestine. The Jews who for centuries afflicted themselves on Tisha B’Av – and those who created the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, in response to rising nationalism and antisemitism in Europe – only imagined it."

Click on the link below for information that one will not usually get from most US media, let alone conservative propaganda.

A Jewish Case For Palestinian Refugee Return

Israel And Palestinians: The Truth

 "Today we take a look through a wide-angle lens at the current flareup of the conflict in Israel and Palestine including a discussion of disparate power dynamics, lived experience in Palestine, the creation story of Hamas, understanding the definition of apartheid and recognizing how the reactions in American politics and media are shifting."

Click on the link below for one of the best unbiased looks at this conflict:

Losing support for the indefensible