How so? Israel ‘settles’ there in what they call their holy land. Hamas yells Allah Akbar as they kill and take hostages. Are you trolling?
No, it has almost nothing to do with religion. The only part of the Israeli-Palestinian crisis that actually tangibly relates to a religious dispute, is the contesting claims over Jerusalem (because it’s holy to both Judaism and Islam).
Literally the entire rest of the conflict is based on competing nationalist claims.
Yes, even though Hamas is yelling “Allahu-akbar”. Believe it or not, they’re not fighting because of their religion, they’re fighting because of their political goals (namely in Hamas’ case AFAIK the destruction of Israel). They do also happen to be religious, but the primary conflict is a political one.
Hamas’s goals are both political and religious.
They’re explicitly fighting to establish a Muslim theocracy, under sharia law.
It’s not akin to something like the American revolution, where you had a number of religious people fighting to establish a secular country.
It’s more like the Maccabean revolt against the Selucids, where the Jewish leaders were the priests, and ended with the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty where the high priest became king.
Would you really argue that the Maccabean revolt had nothing to do with religion?
They do not want to just destruct Israel, they want to kill all Jewish people and want a purely Muslim country. Anti-semitism in the area existed before Israel was created and is a reason why it was created in the first place.
It’s just often ignored because Jews aren’t a group that people sympathise with. There are also many more Muslim people and even hinting that you do not support everything Palestine does, as a Muslim or not, can make you a target for lots of hate. There are even people who will tell you that you “aren’t a real Muslim” if you support a two-state-solution.
Religion is the coat of paint put on top of an occupation that is actually the root cause here.
Both the Zionists and the Jihadists claim to be inspired by their religion, but the actual cause of the decades-long conflict has little to do with religion and much more to do with decades of occupation and oppression.
It’s a race war if anything. Religion is used to fuel it. But Israel doesn’t care about its gods. It only cares about people within its tribe controlling its country. Eventually Israel will have to choose between being Jewish controlled and being democratic, even. Because demographics are trending against there being a Jewish majority forever. They will ditch democracy. I mean, they already have by deliberately disenfranchising millions of Arabs from it. An apartheid democracy isn’t a democracy, it’s an oligarchy. Anyway, no, it’s not about the Jewish god. If you think Judaism is a religion, straight up, you don’t understand it. The Arabs also cling to their religion because it’s the one thing no one can take away from them. It’s also very effective at controlling people.
Hamas is literally an offshoot of the Muslim brotherhood.
Fatah is reasonably secular. But Hamas is fighting a literal jihad against Jews. To Hamas, this is very much a religious war to establish a Muslim theocracracy over all of Israel.
Holy land my ass. Where does it say it’s okay to kill people in their holy texts? They literally have one commandment against murder (thou shall not kill. Anyone? Anyone?). Genocide much?
As far as Islam goes, murder is again a top sin. In the Qur’an. How can you justify killing people?
I do agree thought that this is about infighting in the region and religion is a pretext to justify atrocities.
They literally have one commandment against murder (thou shall not kill. Anyone? Anyone?). Genocide much?
It’s better translated as “don’t murder” than “don’t kill” - it uses the Hebrew verb רצח which refers to immoral unlawful killings (i.e. murder), not killing in general.
In Judaism, for example, the rabbis ruled in the Babylonian Talmud that it’s OK to kill someone who is actively trying to murder someone else.
As far as where in the Torah it says to kill people, there’s a bunch of places. For example, here’s one commandment from deuteronomy 21:
If a man has a wayward and rebellious son, who does not obey his father or his mother, and they chasten him, and [he still] does not listen to them, his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place. And they shall say to the elders of his city, “This son of ours is wayward and rebellious; he does not obey us; [he is] a glutton and a guzzler.” And all the men of his city shall pelt him to death with stones, and he shall die. So shall you clear out the evil from among you, and all Israel will listen and fear.
Edit: As an aside, the rabbis weren’t too keen on actually stoning kids, so they clarified the conditions to make it basically impossible to do.
The Biblical story of the battle of Jericho certainly seems to condone mass murder of civilians if they’re of the wrong ethnicity. I’m less familiar with the Quran but I’ve read many times that it condones killing in certain contexts as well. All Abrahamic religions are rooted in barbarism.
From the Hamas Covenant itself:
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hamas.asp
Also see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgement_Day_in_Islam
I guess Israel stealing houses from Palestinian land is part of this so called religious war.
Do you think ruthlessly killing civillians is helping anyone to unsteal anything?
