Governor

But most Jews are not.

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pullmeunder

The religious boundaries are what is causing the fighting, you can place the blame on whatever force you wish, but the fact is that the fighting could not exist without the friction between the two religions. When you have two groups of people occupying the same territory who both hold opposing views yet both vehemently believe theirs is the right belief there is going to be some sort of conflict.

In a sense i agree with you, if everyone shared your conception of a loving, peacefull god the world could be a much better place. But if you look at the doctrines of judaism, christianity, and islam, the last thing you'll find is a god of love, and if interpreted as the fundamentalists do you have a recipe for disaster. True, it is possible to interpret these religions in a way that teaches peace and sensible morality, but i could say the same for dr. seuss. I hate to target religion as a force of evil when i see the potential it has for good, but realistically monotheism has done more bad than good over the years and there is no doubt the world could be better off without it, or at least fundamentalism.

You can't have traditional monotheistic religion without fundamentalism, because unfortunately there will always be those who will take the books literally, and these books are extremely dangerous when interpreted literally, as we are seeing now.

I just think there are so many great sources for peace and morality out there that these books are not really of any value other than for historical reference.

As for the current situation, i really don't know what to think, it's just a bad, bad situation that is only going to get worse.

Sorry for rambling, but fundamentalism really makes me angry.

Roach

Freedom of choice.


Unless your mother was a jew then you too or (two) are a jew.


It is your basic religious war ,and it's been going on since a few years after mohammed created islam.


Both should have studied their hinduism a bit closer ,before creating their gods.(and the men they treat as such)

Jimmy Coonan

It's not religion that's causing the fighting, at least not for the Palestinians, although the religious component certainly makes it a lot more vehement. That's like saying the war between the colonists and the Indians were about religion. The Israelis may think Israel was given to them by God, just like the colonists thought being Christian made them superior to all non-Christians. But the Palestinians, like the Indians, were just there, and want to stay where they've always been.

j-wonder

there is no religious argument to Israel's claim on its territory...

the religious argument comes from muslims who want to reclaim the entire world for Islam, starting with pushing Israel into the sea....they've tried dozens of times in the past 50 years....

I don't know how you can deny that Israel has played the game as it was supposed to over and over again... Israel always obeys mandatory UN resolutions, as Palestine and Lebanon have not, Israel continued to withdraw from occupied territories, and got chants of death to Israel and burning of flags in response....

at some point if this conflict is not to continue for centuries the Palestinians and the broader arab world will have to accept Israel as legitimate...already Egypt, Jordan and Saudia Arabia are our allies....Iran and Syria really are becomming more isolated.....if you want to stop a problem like Hamas or Hezbollah you need to slice the root.... and the root is far away from the front lines, in Tehran and Damascus, and other places too....

who knows if this will be THE event that starts it, but this conflict is completely inevitable simply because of the attitude and behavior of the Arab side.... radical muslims will willingly die for religion and faith, Israelies (jews) dont want to die anymore, they just want peace...there is no religious agenda in Israel, its just a sovereign country trying to protect itself....

snapshot

So only after israel was created have the muslims tried to reclaim the entire world?Not exactly a glowing review of the land of Is.

That may be. However, no one said they'd have to take it lightly.
I think your jewness is clouding your judgment. Just because there's no religious agenda doesn't mean they aren't willing to die for their cause. You could easily argue both sides have just as much of a right to engage in battle if the other is willing to die.

You're really obviously and blatantly one-sided. You don't even try to sound like to empathize with the other side. Can you at least try to pretend like that arabs are allowed to be pissed that israel is only 50 years old and an oasis of americanism that sitrs up the middle east?

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Jimmy Coonan

No religious claim? Huh? Israel was created specifically as a place where Jews could live. It was majority Arab until 1948. As for UN resolutions, Israel has been in constant violation of them since 1967, when the UN passed a resolution telling them to evacuate the West Bank and Gaza. They stayed there, occupied it, and started building settlements. Israel's token evacuation of the occupied territories means nothing when the West Bank is still criss-crossed by settlements and military outposts, and when Israel has done everything it can to destroy the Palestinian economy and make it impossible for a Palestinian government to function. It is true that foreign radicals in Iran and Syria are trying to manipulate this conflict to their own ends, but this isn't about Islamic fundamentalism. Fatah is not a fundamentalist party, Yasser Arafat wasn't a fundamentalist, and Hamas would never have been elected if the Palestinian Authority had been able to provide the basic services a government is supposed to. Thanks to Hamas and Hezbollah, it looks like this may be heading in the direction you're talking about unfortunately, but it would never have gotten this far if Israel had treated the Palestinians with any decency at all over the past 60 years.

j-wonder

What does 1948 have to do with a religious claim? The United Nations (the world) agreed to create Israel, not for a religious claim, maybe in the Jews minds it was but how was it a reliigious claim to China or Britain? thats bulshit that is used to "attempt" to justify continued persisten terrorist and militant attacks against Israel by radical muslims who fight the same exact types of wars at EVERY BORDER THEY SHARE WITH NON MUSLIMS....

the 2 state solution was supported by israel and CLEARLY SO as they evacuated dozens of settlements in gaza last summer.... what do they palestinians do? they continue rocket attacks and call for the destruction of Israel.....

guess what else? there are disputes between religious groups around the world, from india to ireland, the answer to these problems is not to dissolve the countries that are causing resentment....what is the point of that? from 1948 as you speak of, there was an intention to include the palestinian natives (and the jewish natives who lived there also) in the process.... the arabs have NEVER wanted anything to do with the process....

if there was no israel, the front between muslim radicals and the west would simply shift....

j-wonder

I feel sorry for people who are suffering wherever they are in a general way.... but you have to hold groups accountable for their actions....and far from being "one-sided" on this issue I am espousing a certain view..... which is that the palestinians, by themselves, have nothing to do with the broader conflict in the middle east....Israel is the closest target, but America and Europe are the main targets....

its one thing to "feel sorry for" people, but to allow crazy radcial brainwashed and poor people (who you might very well feel terribly sorry for) to have an equal and fair say in world events when they do not follow any of the rules that others are bound by is like giving children "all the rights with none of the responsibilies" they think it is their right to a state of palestine, Israel and America AGREE but they insist that it must be done peacefully and without the continued agression against its neighbor....why do they have the right to demand things but not the responsibility to cease killing innocent people in suicide bombings..?

Jimmy Coonan

How can you say it wasn't about religion? Look at the Balfour Declaration. It specifically says that Britain supported the idea of creating a national home, in Palestine, for the JEWISH people. The large majority of whom, obviously, follow the JEWISH religion. I don't even see the point you're trying to make, it seems so obvious that everybody involved knew it was about religion. Look how it is used today politically. Christian conservatives in the US think we have to support Israel because the Bible says so, and many Christians and Jews think God gave them the right to that land. Europe, for their part, didn't want to deal with the millions of displaced Jews who were there because of the Holocaust. Israel says it supports a two-state solution, but it hasn't been willing, at least not since 1967, to allow the Palestinians a state that has defensible borders. And then they fill undisputably Palestinian territory with settlements from the '70s on. As for India, which you mentioned, it was partitioned into India and Pakistan for exactly this reason. Two countries with governments, functioning economies and semi-realistic borders. That hasn't worked out so well, but it would have been a lot worse if the English had left that all one country when they left.

The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is often tied to the War on Terror in ways it shouldn't be. This isn't about the conflict between Islamic fundamentalism and the West. Look at the history of Fatah. It was founded in the 50s and 60s, by Palestinians, with little outside help. Not by religious fanatics, by people who wanted a foreign occupier out of their country.

snapshot

I'm all for taking different perspectives for the sake of arguments, but not for the sake of justifying continued violence. I'd rather try to find the solution that nobody's tried other than talk about the problems my side has with yours, which hasn't seemed to get anybody anywhere yet. You keep trying though.

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j-wonder

whats your solution? i think supporting israel has a much better hope for peace in the long run then support for terrorists.

snapshot

my solution is getting personally, politically involved to learn more about it. doesn't make for good conversation though.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that society has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
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j-wonder

its nice to dream about crazy shit like creating a lasting peace in the middle east.... the trouble is , the people in the middle east who are alive now could never all live in peace.... it doesnt matter what you do, unless you hold guns over their shoulders they simply will not live in peace....the only hope for idealistic utopian peace is generations of mutual respect, prosperity, and understanding...... and its very dificult to keep those long term goals in mind when there are suicide bombers hitting your cities daily....

realism is making a comeback.

snapshot

i think no matter how right you may be now, if you were in there making the decisions your mindset would surely be disimilar from the one you have now. this is like my coup de gras of argumental tactics for me succeeding in my logic. i don't really follow.

i can't rationalize the realism in taking your particular stance. I don't know what motives there are or what you have to accomplish by choosing that side other than defending the defence of democracy. But who's attacking?

bah, i give up. you win. i lost it.

/ill get you next time gadget. next time.

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We are all atheists about most of the gods that society has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.
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