The West and Israel, are the problem

Thanks for engaging and debating and giving your honest thoughts and conclusions.  It is always good to hear from you.

It does seem that the Arab nations have the greatest claim on the Holy Land.  YET ... !

I am not sure that it is useful to think in nationalistic or even racial terms.  Modern Muslims are the former Christians, Jews, polytheists.  “Arabs” as such would never have been more than a small part of the population.  I think that this sort of nationalism is a major source of the problem!

Please explain what you mean by "this sort of nationalism is a major source of the problem!"

By nationalism do you mean Zionism?  A homeland for the Jews who will sometimes, reluctantly, allow other peoples as long as they toe the Israeli/Zionist line.  The Jews must remain in charge and the Arabs, the Palestinians and everyone else must accept Jewish control in Israel.  Is that the problem?

Or, is this the problem?  There are 193 nations each of whom should be content with the boundaries recognised by the UN and are not meant to win more land from acts of aggression, as happened when we Brits were 'forced out' (Jeremy Bowen in 'The Making of the Modern Middle  East'p 19) of Palestine to make way for the State of Israel.  We were defeated by terrorism, by lawlessness, by violence.  Should we not have held our ground with the help of the surrounding nations until the UN, with the Arab and Western nations, came to a negotiated settlement as to how the land was to be shared out?  Jewish aggression was rewarded with the 1948  State of Israel because this aggression was excusable and, anyway, Israel would be OUR Western, democratic 'colony' in the heart of the majority Arab/Muslim Middle East to protect and project our interests.

Another mistake was when Ariel Sharon gave tiny Gaza to the Palestinians without their agreement or that of any neighbouring  nation.  A sorry scrap thrown to the Palestinians from the rich man's table, so that Israel could continue settling, illegally, in the Occupied West Bank with a slightly clearer conscience.  So generously giving Gaza away was a second unilateral action that has turned out to be a disaster, along with Israel being seen as a firm ally of Western Judeo-Christian imperialism in the Middle East.  Israel is seen by some as a cuckoo in the nest.  Seen as the Christian West throwing its weight around in the mainly Muslim Middle East.  What a recipe for disaster!  Israel, a nation with everything, with every material blessing imaginable but is unable to live in peaceful co-existence with its neighbouring nations.  A failed state that has lost the message of the Good Samaritan that we all have to live by.  We all live as brothers/sisters of the one human family or, we perish as fools.

Israel even has the cheek to tell the Palestinians to become a second Singapore while holding them down with a firm boot on their neck!

A 76 year tragic history of control, coercion, of stealing land that was meant to be for a Palestinian state.  A tragic history of intermittent warfare, always totally victorious of course but, somehow, it fails to bring them peace.  I wonder why?  Asymmetric warfare every time but it never wins them friendship and respect, as we saw on the 7.10.23 atrocity.  Warfare that is, regrettably, found in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures but where killing is meant to be forbidden by both faiths, by both Yahweh and the Son of God.  Such disobedience leads to death for all sides, for the lot of us, if ecocide doesn't get us first!