Mitchell Bard has a very good article about the roots of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. "It's the religion, stupid," he says. But he is careful to note that it is not Islam itself that rejects Israel; rather, given the Abraham Accords, it is clear that there are specific radical Islamic forces, such as Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, that drive a fanatical religious opposition to Israel that is not necessarily shared by all Muslims or even all Palestinians.
A quote:
I was thinking about the libel comparing Israel to Afrikaner South Africa, and it occurred to me that the rebuttals, including mine, leave out a central argument. In South Africa, Afrikaners considered the country theirs—that blacks were inferior, and that they should rule over them. By contrast, Israelis acknowledge Palestinian claims to part of the land, do not consider them inferior and do not want to be their masters. It is actually the Palestinians who believe that the land belongs to them, that they are superior to Jews, and that they should control the lives of Jews.
To be more accurate, it is not all Palestinians, but Islamists such as Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad.
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Let me be clear. The war is not between Islam and Judaism or Islam and Israel. The proof is that Muslim nations have made peace with Israel. This is not a contradiction because those countries—Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates—are the least fundamentalist and their leaders also fear Islamists. The most vocal opponents of peace with the Jews are the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.
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The conflict with the Palestinians cannot be resolved so long as their leaders are driven by a religious rather than a political agenda. You cannot reach compromises with people who believe that Allah has given them marching orders to reconstitute the Islamic empire and, ideally, expand it throughout the world.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...