Peace requires de-politicizing the Bible and the Quran

A single state for Arabs and Jews in Palestine is the durable long-term solution.
Politicizing Genesis 15:18 politicized the Quran; instigating a religious war that could last for a thousand years.
The Zionist dream of an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine is unsustainable, unless the Palestinians vanish.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in Arab countries peaceably for centuries. In Coningsby, Benjamin Disraeli, first and so far the only Jewish British Prime Minister (1868 and 1874-1880), described in glowing terms the “halcyon centuries” in Muslim Spain where the “children of Ishmael rewarded the children of Israel with equal rights and privileges with themselves.” Sultan Bayezid-II (1481-1512) encouraged thousands of Jews to settle in the Muslim Ottoman Empire following their expulsion from Spain. That the migration of 850,000 Jews from Arab lands around 1948 was due to Arab maltreatment of Jews is an unfair charge. The migration happened during Israel’s creation, when more than 500 Palestinian villages were de-populated and about 800,000 became refugees.
Islam venerates Judaism. The Quran made Abraham as the first Muslim. Islam is the Religion of Abraham. The Quranic Chapter 14 is named after Abraham and, to Joseph the Quran names Chapter 12. Today, Jewish derived Arabic proper names are common.
Feeling powerless, the Arab masses invoked hostile Quranic Verses, recounted stories of the Prophet’s troubled relationship with the Jewish tribes in Medina, drew lessons from substituting Friday for the Sabbath and the direction during prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca. For thirteen centuries, however, these events were non-issues.
Politicizing the Bible pushed frustrated moderate Arabs into orthodoxy and the orthodox into Jihadism. Witness the growth of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among other Islamist groupings.
Had Zionism adhered to the stipulation in the 1917 Balfour declaration: “Nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine,” this conflict would not have developed.
The Bible and the Quran must be de-politicized.
The two-state solution is capricious:
First, demographically, a purely Jewish state is unachievable.
Secondly, issues like Jerusalem, borders, security for Israel and for Palestine, water rights, settlements, and the refugees’ right-of-return are intractable. When Bill Clinton, Ehud Barak, and Yasser Arafat attempted in July 2000 to tackle these issues at Camp David, the negotiations collapsed, leading to the second intifada.
Thirdly, even if a miracle patches up a two-state agreement, the extremists on both sides would undermine it.
Fourthly, the Arab masses will shun a Zionist state. Judging from Israel’s peace treaties with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), relations among the Egyptian and Jordanian masses and Israelis have failed to develop beyond small diplomatic missions.
Western democratic and secular ideals and Jewish sense of justice should inspire a single, democratic, and secular state:
First, the intractable obstacles would disappear.
Secondly, a single state will commingle Palestinians and Jews into an inseparable mix. Arabs would no longer have an excuse to boycott their Jewish “cousins.” Economic, cultural, educational, and social interaction would follow.
Thirdly, a single state solution would allow Arabs and Jews access to the entirety of Palestine.
Durable peace requires the genuine welcome of the Arab masses of the Jewish people. The Jews who had lived among Arabs could be a positive factor. Both peoples share customs, habits, values, food, music, dance, and, for the older generation, the Arabic language.
In provoking the enmity of their age-old Muslim friends, Zionism has disserved the long-term strategic interests of the Jewish people. In Christian Europe, by contrast, centuries of maltreatment of Jews culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust.

Dear Cybertiger,

This is my last post since I just accidentally fell into this list.

I am a devotee of www.israel21c.com. Please visit it on occasion. Will you do so, just for the sake of my having taken my time to engage you?

Dear Cybertiger,

1) There have been Jewish children as well who were slaughtered with the purpose of scaring the Jews into giving up their state. The Jews will not give up their country.

2) You remove from context my concern about the child writing on the artillery round. I explained in my post that I doubted the veracity of the picture given that I know of no circumstance in which a Jewish child would be allowed to approach live rounds.

3) We live in an imperfect world, but apparently your support for Israel would only be forthcoming if its government and people were perfect. Use the same criterion for the Palestinians. Failure to do so places in the camp of the anti-Semites. Reciprocity in all human relations!

In 1939 Britain recognised in a White Paper that the scale of immigration into Palestine was threatening the very existence of the indigenous population, contrary to the promise of the Balfour Declaration. Several other countries noticed the same. Thus when in 1947 the fledgling United Nations agreed to vote on whether or not a new country called Israel should be created by partition of Palestine, there was a grave danger that the required two-thirds majority in favour of partition would not be achieved. Only frantic pressure exerted by Zionists upon the USA and via the USA upon Liberia, Haiti, and the Phillippines secured the required majority.

This railroading action was seen by Americans themselves as disgraceful. In December 1947, the US State Department requested that a presidential statement be issued, admitting the undue pressure, and promising prosecution of future offenders and a review of existing legislation since it had been invoked to stop the bullying of small countries and had proved incapable of stopping it. (RG59, Office of Near Eastern Affairs Palestine, Box 1, Merriam to Henderson, Top Secret, 11 December 1947.)

Zafir Khan, the Pakiston delegate to the UN, claimed that had the partition vote been taken on Weds 26 Nov. 1947, it would have been 26 to 16 (instead of the eventual 26 to 13) and thus been defeated. But a delay was secured by Zionists directly from President Truman (RG59, Decimal Files 1945-9, Box 2183, 501). During the delay Liberia, Haiti and the Phillippines were ordered to vote Yes, Liberia being threatened via its main source of export income, the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company (Forrestal Diaries, Box 4, vol.9).

Keyword: "Railroad, verb: 1) to convict with undue haste and by means of false charges or insufficient evidence; 2) to push through hastily or without due consideration" (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Meaning 2 has thus led to the horror of meaning 1) for the Palestinians. They have been falsely branded criminals when in point of fact they are the victims of fraudulent hijacking of a UNITED NATIONS vote, followed by armed force in 1948 to enforce the fraud.

"Indeed, I don't know of a single other country on earth that would continue to supply an enemy entity with all of these supplies while its citizens are being targeted on a daily basis by rockets and mortars as Israeli citizens are. Does anyone here know of such a country?"

I am still waiting for an answer!"

then *here* is your answer - Iraq is still trading oil with the USA.

as for other examples, simply look to all the other occupations across the globe - russia is supplying chechnya with vital supplies, china tibet.

what you seem to fail to grasp, is that those laws that force Israel to assume responsibility for the people under their military, economic and social occupation, was to write into international law rules backed by force that would prevent such instances as hitler's 'lebensraum' nightmare, as well as what happened to warsaw's jews.

these laws were specifically aimed at preventing the worst horrors of the early 20th century.

is it not therefore of concern to you, that these specific international laws that at preventing the excesses of Nazi Germany, that you feel these laws put an 'unfair' burden upon Israel, that in fact it *should* be able to invade, occupy, and then round up and deny basic essentials to a neighbouring people, that you are so convinced of your human, racial, social and moral superiority that *you* are free to act as Nazi Germany had done?

how often to you check your own 'moral mirror'? Do you even have the ability left to be that self-honest with yourself?

because i can tell you it is of concern to *me*.

yes, for the palestinians, of course, but also i remember all those good people i met in israel, on kibbutz and around the country, and i shudder with horror the almost inevitable holocaust you are herding them into.

they do not deserve such spokespeople as yourselves, they deserve people like chloe, and before it is too late, i desperately hope they get some.