Friday, March 14, 2008
The Ten Commandments for Israel & Palestine
Haaretz has an op-ed article today that was very refreshing to read. The author did a great job, I can't really add anything that would improve it. Perhaps this could be the "declaration of principles" Bush and Condi are trying to get Abbas and Olmert to agree on? What I wouldn't give to see both sides sign off on this document.
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He nearly got there, but his introduction clearly exhibited the authors own lack of understanding of the palestinian community, for he sells the conflict as a 'islam vs. judaism', when it is anything but. It is Zionism vs. eveyone who gets in their way. Palestinians are made up of muslims, christians and jews. all of whom oppose the zionist state and its occupation. This is not a trivial point.
Commandment 10: "The man of the cloth who dismisses the beliefs of the other, the history of the other, the validity of the other's faith-based claim to this land, is not a man of God. "
we (muslims and christians) do not have a faith based claim on palestine... it is the natural claim of people living there, and who have lived for over 2 thousand years. This applies to Palestinian jews, but I list them seperatley for it is my understanding that Jews have a faith based claim on Palestine (their promised land) when the Messiah returns to release them from the exile, and to restablish Palestine. This is not the zionist claim, not the zionist aim in Palestine. Their aim is to establish a land for Jews, and to reenter the european domain as an independenent jewish state and people. So that they will be respected, and be freed from the subbordinate status that the europeans subjected them to (this is what I got from the book "From Hertzl to Rabin: a history of Zionism"). The two claims are NOT the same.
other than that, the commandments are sensible. cannot really disagree with anything else.
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