Palestine

Jews and Muslims believe in the same God. Israeli soldiers who are true believers must not forget that God has forbidden the killing of innocent people and the use of violence and cruelty, and has ordered us to be tolerant, understanding, and peaceful. The Torah commands Jews to establish peace and security, not to occupy the lands of others and spill blood. The people of Israel are described as "a light unto the nations" in the Torah. As the "Rabbis for Human Rights" declare: We are told: "Justice, justice, you shall pursue" (Deuteronomy 16:20). Why is the word justice said twice? Because, according to our tradition, one is to pursue a just cause by just means. In defending ourselves, we must always hold on to the prophetic vision of decency and humanity. The survival of the Jewish people will be determined not only by its physical acumen, but also, by its moral steadfastness. the Israelis continue to treat the Palestinians as they do now, they may be unable to account for that to God. Similarly, those Palestinians who kill innocent Israelis may also be unable to account for those murders. Is it not a duty in the eyes of God to put an end to the fighting, which is dragging both sides deeper into unending violence? Say: "O People of the Book! Let us rally to a common formula to be binding upon both us and you: That we worship none but God; that we associate no partners with Him; and that we erect not, from among ourselves, Lords and patrons other than God." (Qu'ran, 3:64) This is our call to the Jews, a People of the Book: As people who believe in God and obey His commands, let us come together in a common formula of "faith." Let us love God, the Lord and Creator of all of us. Let us abide by His commands. Let us pray to God to lead us further on the path of righteousness. Let us bring love, compassion, and peace to each other and the world, not hostility, bloodshed, and anguish. That is where the solution to the Palestinian tragedy and other conflicts in the world lies. The deaths and suffering of so many innocent people remind us every day what an urgent task this is. How Can the Palestinian Issue Be Resolved? 1) Israel must immediately withdraw from all the territories it occupied during the 1967 war and end the resulting occupation. That is an obligation under international law, various U.N. Security Council resolutions, and mere justice itself. All of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip must be recognized as belonging to an independent State of Palestine. 2) East Jerusalem, the site of significant places of worship belonging to three divinely revealed religions, must be administered by the Palestine authority. However, it must have a special status and be turned into a city of peace that all Jews, Christians, and Muslims can visit comfortably, in peace and well-being, and where they can worship in their own sanctuaries. Palestine broke free from Ottoman rule after the First World War with the help of the invading British army, but could never achieve the state of peace and security that it had enjoyed under the Ottomans. Over the course of nearly a century, thousands of innocent people have been killed by Israeli terror, massacres, and torture. Millions of innocent Palestinians have been forced from their homes and their homeland and sentenced to live in poverty, at the brink of starvation, in refugee camps. All efforts to solve this oppression and cruelty, played out before the world's eyes, and to build a sustainable regional peace have failed. The phony peace initiatives carried out under the auspices of Western governments have proven to be of no use, other than to buy time for Israel to carry out new tactics for depopulating the territories it occupied. First of all, we must realize that the events in Palestine are much more than merely a ware between Arabs and Israelis. A struggle for existence is being waged by the Palestinians, whose lands and rights were removed forcibly by occupying Israeli forces. What is more, the lands in question contain sites that are sacred to Muslims. Palestine is very important to Muslims because of Jerusalem, the Muslims' first qibla, and the site of the Prophet Mohammed's miraculous mi'raj (night journey). Furthermore, Palestine is sacred not only to Jews and Muslims, but to Christians as well. For these reasons, it is folly to try and keep Palestinian lands, Jerusalem in particular, under the authority of an exclusively nationalist political entity or to recognize the rights of only one religious or national group. Palestine must be a land where Jews, Christians, and Muslims can live together in peace and fulfill their religious duties as they wish. A merciless struggle continues today between the two peoples living in the land of Palestine. On the one hand, the well-equipped Israeli army is carrying out a policy of all-out destruction; on the other, radical Palestinian groups are carrying out suicide bombings against helpless Israeli citizens. This book will discuss the grave error of trying to solve existing problems through violence, and how a real solution might be devised. Here one important fact must not be ignored - the Palestinians are being subjected to cruelty and humiliation while the entire world watches. While Palestinian civilians daily find themselves the targets of Israeli soldiers' bullets, while millions of people spend many years in hunger and poverty in refugee camps, while many Muslims (including women) are tortured in Israeli prisons, there are grave responsibilities incumbent upon all Muslims who believe in God and fear the Day of Judgment. The first responsibility is to fight the racist, intolerant, Social Darwinistic ideologies that form the basis of all unfairness and injustice in the world. As you read these lines, know that the struggle of thousands of beleaguered Palestinians to remain on their lands continues in all of its violence. The occupying Israeli forces may be bombing Palestinian cities or refugee camps. Possibly, children will be going to school under helicopter fire, and families who were forced to flee over 50 years ago will still be trying to scratch out an existence in the refugee camps. In any part of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, or Jerusalem, Palestinians today will endure oppression and cruelty mostly because they are "Muslim." Jews against Israeli terrorism This does not oppose and criticize Judaism or Jews, but rather the racist Zionist ideology and its defenders. All the tragedy that has happened - and continues to happen - in Palestine is traceable to the application of the Zionist ideology by its leaders. It is Zionism that causes the Israeli army to fire rockets on children playing in schoolyards; sprays bullets on women harvesting their gardens' crops; and makes torture, violence, and skirmishes daily parts of Palestinian life. Throughout the world today, quite a few intellectuals, politicians, and historians oppose Zionism. Various Christian and Jewish thinkers and authors condemn it and the Israeli governments' Zionist policies, as do various academics in Israeli universities such as the late Israel Shahak or Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, who criticize Israeli violence directed against Palestinians and who maintain that peace can be acheived only when Israel forsakes its Zionist ideology. Noam Chomsky, himself a Jew, has written many books and articles that are highly critical of Zionism and the policies of those countries that support it. A group of Jewish academics, the self-proclaimed "new historians," has been exposing the "sacred lies" embedded in official Israeli policy, and the truths associated with them, since the early 1980s. Its members, namely, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Avi Shlaim, Tom Segev, Baruch Kimmerling, Simha Flappan, and Joel Miqdal, are provoking strong reactions from Jews with Zionist leanings. They deal with the following "sacred lies": Arabs are racially inferior to Jews, Israel is a small country trying to sur