It seems that Israel cannot be mentioned without some comment about conflict or war. To many poorly educated people, this fact seems proof of Israel’s fault. After all, one country with so many enemies cannot be in the right, can it? I am not Jewish, but I respect and honor the Jewish people. And no, the conflict does not prove Zionism or any other far-fetched scheme. It boils down to religious differences that stem from a family feud. Arabs tend to hate Jews and Jews tend to look down on Arabs. This is where Biblical history plays an important role.
There are no Arab manuscripts that date as old or older than Judaic manuscripts. The Muslim faith came into being centuries after Jesus Christ died and rose from the dead. Muslim revisionist history came into play afterward to combat the claims of one branch of the Middle Eastern family. Thousands of years before Christ, Abraham had two sons: Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael was firstborn to Abraham, but Isaac was the firstborn through Abraham’s actual wife, Sarah. That Ishmael was born at all was the result of a lack of faith and trust in God’s word by Abraham and Sarah. They tried to help God out by having Abraham sleep with a maid. God had promised to give Abraham a land. God promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the sands of seashor and the stars in the night sky. Sarah was barren, and they saw no way for God’s promises to come true. And although Ishmael was born out of wedlock, I believe God has a special love for Ishmael and his descendants (Arabs).
Sadly, Ishmael and his mother were cast out of the family, left to survive in the desert. God spared their lives and made them prosper, but the family wounds never healed. Brother against brother, for thousands of years. One received the promised inheritance – a beautiful land now encompassing both Israel and Palestine. The other was left to fend for himself. One possesses the holy city of Jerusalem. The other will stop at nothing to take it away. There is nothing more dangerous than sibling rivalry. Both clamor to convince the world of their right to the holy land (the land of their forefather Abraham’s inheritance). But all historical evidence points to Israel’s sovereign right to the land. I do not say that spitefully. I regret that Ishmael was cast away.
But in that part of the world and in that time, the father was king of the family. His word was law. It was the Romans who drove the Jewish people out of Israel in the first century A.D. It has been called the Diaspora (dispersion). Nearly 1900 years later, Israel officially reclaimed its land and became recognized as a sovereign nation. In the meantime, all the surrounding Arab nations have thousands of years of wounds, malice, and vengeance left unhealed. Little bitty Israel has stood firm despite the hatred of Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and more. True, Israel has had the support of the United States of America, but not much else. One little country in the middle of a hornets’ nest of violence. Yet they have a supernatural protection.
A nation of their size in their situation should have been wiped off the map within a couple years. Yet they stand. Before you follow the liberal bandwagon and criticize Israel, take the initiative to do an independent study of the events leading up to today’s war and find out for yourself why everyone but America seems to hate Israel. Sometimes, the majority is proof of logic and sound reasoning. Other times, it is the majority that has weak character and follows the crowd of popular opinion. It is in those moments you must take your responsibility seriously to know who you listen to and what you believe. Israel occupies such a small sliver of the Middle East, yet militant Muslims will fight to the death to take it back.
Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia each contain so much more land that you could fit dozens of Israels inside them, if not more. So why do they argue and go to war? Is the land itself holy? Do they really hate Jews? Who does the land belong to? These are the right questions.