My question is: hasn’t it always been? I’m not trying to Occam’s Razor the whole history and while I’ve heard it said it’s about land rights, well, the land rights are based on religious claims, right? (Note: link is biased).
Let’s assume Israel was not Jewish. What if in the 20th century thousands of Malaysians had migrated into Palestine on the grounds of their forefathers having lived there at some point in history? Now the Malaysians have a thriving state in a region that the Palestinias continue to conisder rightfully theirs. Do you think the fact that Malaysians are Muslims would have hepled matters much?
The fact that Israelis and Palestinians have different religions had to be come a factor in a war that otherwise would also have happened.
Yes, but here we get into the discussion of Jewishness as a religion vs. Jewishness as an ethnicity. I understand the Malaysian analogy, but posit this question: Did the Jews move to Palestine because they were ethnically Jewish, or did they move there because of their religion?
Good point. I agree, a person of Jewish heritage but not of Jewish religion would have been less inclined to move to Israel and claim the land as their own. I that sense it would be accurate to cite a religious motive as the basis for the conflict.
Then again to me the term “religious war” speaks more of a conflict over which religion is the right one and not over who has the better claim to a piece of land (even if the motives for wanting that particular piece of land are rooted in religion for at least one of the parties).
In this case ethnicity, though perhaps “culturally Jewish” is a more accurate answer. The early founders of the Jewish state were substantially secular in outlook.
And less you think this is purely Jewish-Muslim issue, I also might add that Lebanon was one of the anti-Israel hostiles in the 1948 under the leadership of Maronite Christian president Bechara El Khoury. For that matter almost all of the earlier Palestinian militant groups were explicitly secular and usually Marxist/socialist in ideology, that being the dominant flavor of time ( and mixed in with pan-Arabism, which also tended to be vaguely lefty intellectual and secular ). Several of the early Palestinian terrorist leaders came from Christian families ( like George Habash of the PFLP ), but were largely irreligious themselves.
A religious tinge has become more pronounced with the rise of Islamist ideology as a partial successor to the earlier failed pan-Arabism of the Nasserites, Ba’athists and their ilk. And there are some parallels among a minority of extreme militant, mostly Orthodox Jews in Israel. But remove religion from the situation and it would be just as bloody and contentious.
An ironic supposition, given that the majority of the principle adherents of Zionism and a significant number of the Founding Fathers of Israel were atheists.
Hitler never asked whether a person worshiped at the synagogue on Saturday; his goons looked for people whose great-grandparents were regarded as Jewish. The Shoa, rather than the phrase “next year in Jerusalem,” was the motivation for the large number of people to choose to move to Israel.
Religion is the cultural marker that (generally) identifies who belongs to which group, but there are no battles over whether the day of serious worship is Friday or Saturday or whether the name of God should or should not be spoken aloud.
In fact, the Orthodox establishment, in general, *opposed *the pre-state Zionists on religious grounds - according to mainstream Jewish thought, they were supposed to wait for the Messiah to come, and not attempt to reclaim the country themselves.
Well, anecdotally (which I know doesn’t mean much) I know a lot of Jews who have moved to Israel over the years, and most of them are very secular, verging on atheist.
Nevertheless, it’s quite clear that the reason they moved there was because they are Jewish, and that’s the place for Jews to go (in their mind).
OP: do you consider the Troubles of Northern Ireland a religious war? Because it’s not, either.
I think anywhere from 2-10% of Palestinians were Christian, depending on decade (nowadays it’s the lower figure in Palestine but more in diaspora). Are their polls that compare their opinion of Israel vs. Palestinian Muslims?
Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, etc. all have large populations of Christians with no inclination to support Israel. Many of the Christian militias during the Lebanon war did ally with Israel though.
I don’t think many people consider the Druze Muslim, although they definitely came from it (I think they don’t so I trust that). You won’t find many more pro-Israel populations there.
How so? Many people on here, and elsewhere on the internet, insist that it’s a religious war because there is a religious group associated to each side. But to insist that it is a “religious war” ignores all the more-relevant causes. Israel/Palestine is more religiously tinged but still not the causus belli.
Is there even such a thing as a “religious war”? It seems to me that in all of these conflicts religion is little more than a marketing tool. “I am fighting for the holy truth!” just sounds so much better than “I really want to rule over that hill!” Besides being able to tell your troops that some god will reward them for their bleeding may relieve you from having to do it yourself.
The way I understand it, it’s not a religious war as such, but that both sides’ identities derive in large part from their respective religions, which makes it look similar to a religious war.
It’s similar in that regard to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It wasn’t really Protestant v. Catholic because of religion, but rather Unionists/Loyalists v. Nationalists/Republicans, who happened to also align along religious boundaries as well.
Also, there are quite a few Israeli muslims- some 17.4% of the population. If this was a religious war, don’t you think there would be some backlash, persecution or other action against them as well as the Palestinians?
It’s a clear example of how what appears to be a religious conflict on the surface is simply using it as a substitute for tribal affiliation. It’s true in Northern Ireland, and it’s true in Israel. You asked for understanding, and examples are an excellent way of providing that. Looking at similar conflicts provides illustration.
Sorry if you don’t want to discuss it, but it’s clearly on point to the conversation.
