The recent Gaza/Israel drama is but the latest case of bloodletting atrocities in the Middle East… a serial fracas that has been going on for about 2,500 years.
For those who believe in the Bible, God gave the Hebrews the green light to violently take Palestinian lands from the long-time occupants of that area and even assisted Joshua and his armies in the task. (Curiously, the Commandments that “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property” and “Thou shalt not steal” were ignored by God and his holy warriors.)
Historically, the seizure of the those “promised lands” probably didn’t occur as portrayed in the Biblical myth. However, in Judaism, the faithful cling to this fanciful tale as a bedrock of belief and entitlement.
There was, obviously, a significant presence of Jews in Palestine by the 6th century B.C. because that was the period where Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II’s army wiped out the small Hebrew kingdom of Judah, obliterated King Solomon’s temple, and sent approximately 10,000 Jews off to exile in Babylon.
So much for the “promised land”.
Later, under the Persian leader Cyrus the Great, Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem and were allowed to build the Second Temple on the site of the original temple. That edifice stood for about 500 years until the Roman Empire got fed up with the rebellious Jews in Palestine, brutally beat them into submission, leveled the Second Temple “so that no stone remained standing”, and forced a large portion of the Jewish population to flee to other Mediterranean/European countries. That exile or voluntary migration of Jews out of the Holy Lands is known as the “diaspora” and explains how so many Jews ended up in countries such as Spain, France, Germany, Poland and Russia.
Again, so much for the “promised land”.
Eventually, the Roman Empire died out, Muslim Arabs came to wield power in the Middle East, and relatively few Jews remained in Palestine. The Catholic Church, under Pope Urban II in 1095, ignited a series of military campaigns to wrest control of the Holy Lands from Muslim control. The several “crusades” continued for a couple hundred years with Islamic forces eventually driving out the European invaders.
Once again, the God of Abraham had, seemingly, supported the attempted theft of Palestinian lands and… had failed once more. Importantly, Muslims throughout the Middle East were angered by this action and carry the resentment to this day. “Why does everyone want to take our lands from us?”
The Middle Ages in Europe were rough on the immigrant Jews who had settled there, as the various nations were heavily Catholic, and their leaders developed a very cruel antisemitism which relegated Jews to the very bottom level of society. Jews were blamed for all manner of problems (including causing the Plague, stealing babies and drinking their blood, and undercutting the economy through lending practices) and were often segregated from society into ghettoes.
This was the situation when Adolph Hitler (a staunch Catholic) rose to power chiefly on his White Nationalist (Nazi) objective of purifying the German nation of Jewish people. For about ten years, under the Third Reich, Hitler’s Nazis ran a genocide program in Germany and countries captured during World War II, resulting in the extermination of about 6 million European Jews.
When the war was ended, the victorious Allies realized the full extent of the horror (now known as the “Holocaust”) and they felt shame and embarrassment that so-called “Christians” had engineered this holy terror against Jews.
Perhaps as some sort of apology to the Jews (or perhaps to remove many of the survivors from Europe itself, as antisemitism still lingered in the Christian population), the Western powers came up with the brilliant idea to “give” the Jews their own homeland, where they could live and worship as they pleased.
Unfortunately, their plan involved superimposing a new Nation over Palestinian lands that had been occupied by Muslim Arabs for twelve hundred years. The Jewish nation of Israel was founded in 1948, whereupon (the very day after the new nation was founded) all neighboring Arabic nations went to war with Israel.
Luckily for Israel, its antagonists were not very skilled militarily and the new nation survived. There have been numerous other wars and skirmishes over the ensuing 75 years. The most recent edition, the Hamas’ terrorist attack of Israel from neighboring Gaza and Israel’s brutal military response, continues unabated as of this writing.
There can be no happy ending to this story. The nation of Israel is the “last stand” of Jews: they were “promised” this land by God and (later) the United Nations, they have a strong military with nuclear weapons, and they will fight to the death to protect their nation. On the flip side, Muslims throughout the Middle East resent the Jewish “trespassers” who control the holy city of Jerusalem. The existence of Israel is akin to a boil on the ass of Islam, and the surrounding Muslim nations will not be happy until that festering sore is removed.
Unfortunately for Israel and the rest of the world, several of its Middle Eastern neighbors have oodles of petroleum-derived money and give generously to terrorist groups like Hamas who like to torment the Jewish state and its allies. The 9/11 attack on targets in America was carried out by another Muslim terrorist group (Al Queda) with ties to the oil-rich Saudi monarchy.
Rinse and repeat.
The most we can hope for in the recent Gaza conflict is that it doesn’t metastasize into a regional or worldwide conflict. World War I was triggered by an assassin’s bullet in an obscure Balkan country. It would be a shame if a local terrorist act brought some major actors into play. The United States, a close ally of Israel, is trying to head off any escalation of the conflict by stationing an aircraft carrier in nearby Mediterranean waters. This should discourage the theocracy in Iran from getting its hands any dirtier than they already are.
The whole mess is like a cafeteria food fight that never ends.
“God, if you’re listening, please do something!”