The conflict between Arabs and Israel in the Middle East seems to be endless. Since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 there have been several wars between them. Most people in Europe, North America, and the rest of the world believe this to simply be a political or ethnic conflict and do not understand its religious implications. Although many Israelis might also not see it as a religious problem, there is a religious angle to it.

According to the Bible, God promised the land of Canaan to the Hebrews, who eventually defeated the existing peoples and took possession of the land (Canaan) thousands of years ago. So from the Judaeo-Christian perspective, if you believe the Bible, you should probably think that God appointed the Jews to live where they are today. A visit to any archaeological museums in Israel will confirm that the Hebrews lived in that land for many centuries.

Canaan comprised 7 city-nations; only two were coastal cities, while the others were inland. Canaan was located, in what today includes, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and parts of Syria. None of the people living in these city-states were Philistines, who came from the island of Crete and have a Greek origin, not today’s Arabs nor Semites living there. The Philistines lived in the southern part of Canaan in an area then known as Philistia (in southwest Israel), which included the five city-states of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, and Gath. All these were coastal cities. The Philistines disappeared from the historical and archaeological record by the late 5th century before Christ. In fact, we mostly know of the Philistines through Biblical references.

This whole area of Canaan at some point became part of a Roman province. After the Romans suppressed several revolts in Judea, they finally killed and/or exiled most of the Jews in 135 AD, renamed it Palestine, and encouraged immigration from other peoples (today’s Arabs Palestinians). Although maybe you do not want to tell that fact to a Palestinian who is convinced his ancestors were Philistines, not ordinary Arabs.

Eventually, that land became part of the Ottoman Empire (without any distinct or separate territorial or ethnic identity), then part of the British mandate of Trans-Jordan (which included today’s Jordan and Iraq), and now it is the State of Israel with the Palestinian territories. The British were the ones first making a distinction between Palestine and Trans-Jordan (In early 1921, before the convening of the Cairo Conference, the Middle East Department of the Colonial Office declared their intention of defining Palestine and making it a national home for the Jewish people).

In 1948, the United Nations determined that the territory of Palestine should be divided into two separate countries. The Jews would take one area and the Palestinian Arabs the other. The Jews happily accepted this resolution, although most of their land was in the South (which included the Negev Desert!). Although the best land was for the Arabs, their answer at that moment was a call to exterminate the Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The Palestinians took arms and joined the armies of 5 surrounding Arab countries to exterminate all the Jews.

Removing Jews (and Christians too) from Arab lands is considered a religious duty in the Koran. The people of the Book (Jews and Christians) are unbelievers and are enemies of Allah. That is why in the 1940’s over 500.000 Jews were living in North Africa, but today there is none. So the question is, where are the Jews from all the Arab lands today? They were all expelled or killed. Israel is also considered an Arab land, so their religious duty is to expel or exterminate the Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and create an area free of Jews as they did in North Africa (and the Nazis did in all the territories they occupied in WWII). That is why unless a person knows history the phrase “from the river to the sea” does not seem offensive. But the Muslims see it as another Crusade. Crusades were religious wars fought with Christians for control of religious sites and land.

My mechanic has a sticker that says “infidel” over a USA flag on his truck. I asked him what that meant and he told me he had been a tank mechanic for the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to him, everybody there referred to the American troops as the infidels. The word infidel means a person who does not believe in religion or who adheres to a religion other than one’s own. Not only the insurgents but also the civilian population saw the American soldiers primarily from a religious perspective as crusaders. For the Western mindset, this is mainly a political, economic, or even a racial or ethnic struggle, but not for the Islamic mentality.

From an Arab perspective, for most of them throughout the region, this is primarily a religious conflict. That is the reason why in many of the videos the terrorists can be heard chanting “Allahu akbar” (god is the greatest). In Islam, martyrs who die recovering occupied Muslim lands are to be admitted to Paradise after they die for the cause, as terrorists or suicide bombers for instance. So there is no shortage of martyr wannabes. However, I understand most of these martyrs are on drugs when fighting their battles, as compared to Jesus, who rejected a cup with wine and myrrh given as a sedative to reduce his suffering (Matthew 27:34).

To my amazement, much of the unrest in the Palestinian territories has not been caused by the precarious situation of the population there, as I would have imagined, but rather by perceived abuses to their sacred sites, like the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. For instance, in April 2023, Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the mosque, prompted by reports that Jews planned to sacrifice a goat at the site (which is forbidden by Israeli law).

Islamic terrorist organizations have done the impossible to destroy the Jews living in Israel. But for the most part, they have not been very successful. But the one thing, that all Islamic terrorist organizations have proven to be masters at is the use of propaganda and the employment of useful idiots in the Western World (apart from torturing, raping, and killing people).

The left has always supported the Arab cause, no matter what this is, and I can see that the media and LGTBQ community have also been enlisted. But Islamist extremists’ favorite sport is to throw gays off the top floor of buildings to their deaths, so I found it puzzling that the gay community supports the Islamic extremists, as if they were defending a righteous cause

Somehow, they have been able to make their cause a righteous one. Human rights and democracy are Western values that do not exist in most of the Muslim world. But the different terrorist organizations play these values to cast Israel as a monster. When in reality, they are the ones using civilians to hide behind. Not even the Nazis hid behind women and children.

For instance, people condemned Hamas’ brutal attack on Oct. 7 2023 for a few days. But after that, Israel became the monster killing children in Gaza. It is as if the Americans and the British would have been the monsters for bombing Japan and Germany during WWII. In that case, it was a deliberate policy to bomb civilians. In the case of Gaza, Hamas widely used women and children as human shields, so it was very hard not to produce casualties among civilians. Nonetheless, not many complained in WWII about the policy of bombing German and Japanese civilians since the government that represented those civilians were aggressors which enjoyed popularity among those civilians. And so it was with Hamas in Gaza.

Hamas was democratically elected to office in Gaza. What kind of people would elect terrorists as their government leaders? Not surprisingly, the people of Gaza have been terrorized by Hamas since they took over Gaza. But somehow the world blames Israel for what happened in Gaza. What about Hamas rampaging through southern Israel? What about the idiots who elected them to govern Gaza? Do they bear any responsibility for their own situation today? The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor so they lost any right to complain. Hamas, the legitimate government of Gaza, brutally attacked Israel, then hid behind women and children, and accused Israel of war crimes. The difference between WWII and today is the way the useful idiots have been manipulated. I wonder what Winston Churchill would think of that situation.

So, what is in the mind of the Judaeo-Christian God regarding the continuous conflict in the Middle East? So far, the Arabs have fought 7 wars against Israel, but Israel is still there. In 1948, the United States expected the Jews to be destroyed in 2 weeks, but they defeated 5 combined Arab armies and survived instead. Before 1948, there was extreme poverty in that land and the existing Arabs had a precarious existence at best. Today, Israel is the only superpower in the Middle East and it is, like the Bible says, a land of milk and honey. Israel is accused of running an apartheid state, but 1.5 million Israeli Arabs enjoy full political inclusion, while most Arabs have no political freedoms of any kind.

In fact, Arabs are voting with their feet. The worst punishment Israel can give to an Israeli Arab is to send him to live in an Arab land. They have more rights in Israel than anywhere in the Arab world. In some of these Muslim lands, women cannot even drive a car. The largest producers of refugees are Muslim nations and the largest recipients of refugees are the infidel Christian nations. The Muslim refugees would rather live with the infidels that have those pesky ideas of human rights, democracy, and freedom, which are completely absent from Islamic life. But after they arrive in their new home country, many of them refuse to assimilate, some even radicalize. How ironic is that? If Allah is god, he needs to step up to the plate because so far, he does not deserve all that fanatic fervor he is shown.

Finally, a Two-State solution is a dream existing only in the minds of the United Nations and some naive politicians. This is not a political problem, but rather a religious one, and the reason why a Two-State solution has never been accomplished, regardless of how many times everyone has tried, and will never be accomplished. Everybody needs to understand that if the Jewish God (Yahweh) appointed the Jews to live in Israel, nobody would be able to remove them from that land ever. So stop trying!