When God ordered Abraham to slaughter a son, the angel of the Lord stepped in at the last minute to stay his hand. Was it a test of faith, or had Abraham's imagination simply run away with him?I the Reuters universe, there is only one "rational" resolution: to forcibly remove Jews from homes they lived in for decades, and that their ancestors lived in for millenia. It is so obvious to these smug, condescending journalists to look down upon people who live there today, who have a real and undying love of their land that has lasted for thousands of years, and airily declare that their desires and beliefs and lifestyle is "irrational".Scholars may differ, but to many Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank, the story is as real as the airy heights and rocky slopes where Hebrew and Philistine armies clashed in biblical times, and where they live today.
This makes it hard to discuss rationally a resolution of the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel over its occupation of West Bank land since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Never will you hear Reuters declare Islamic beliefs as being so weird as to make it impossible to speak rationally with a Muslim. For Reuters, peaceful religious Muslims are worthy of praise and will not be questioned; but peaceful religious Jews are inherently irrational and suspect.
Settlers deny their towns are an illegal obstacle to peace. On a tour they organized this week to redress a negative image in foreign media, they cited scripture going back 3,500 years to explain why a land-for-peace swap was out of the question.No, it is as if they feel a connection to their ancestors.Yehudit Tayar talked about what "we" did in ancient times, as if recalling recent family history. "When we were crossing the desert," she says. "When we first came back to Shilo" to worship the Holy Tabernacle "which our families did three times a year" back in the Iron Age.
It's as if the intervening 3,000 years never happened.
Would Reuters ever tell Palestinian Arabs, the vast majority who never lived in Palestine, that it is irrational for them to want to live there, or that it would be an obstacle to peace? Or would it trot out another story with somoene pointing to a key that supposedly opens a door to a house that a Jew lives in? Why are Palestinian Arab aspirations to return to land they believe is theirs - and whose return would lead to conflict - any more rational than Jews' desire to do the same?
Not "would be" but "will be." Reuters knows how peace will be achieved, and it is by uprooting hundreds of thousands of Jews from their homes - where they have been living peacefully, where the vast majority are in communities on land that was completely empty and never inhabited, and where many of them even have good relations with their Arab neighbors until the "peace activists" pour in to incite hate.Visitors to divided Jerusalem, only a half hour drive away, see checkpoints, watchtowers, teenagers with combat rifles and other daily manifestations of the occupation that might be removed almost overnight, if there was a peace deal.
But looking at the reality of the settlements, their tended gardens and schools, and listening to the passions that gave rise to them, makes it plain that persuading -- or even forcing -- Jews to give these up will be a far bigger challenge.
The idea of Jews living in land that they feel a deep spiritual connection to is not irrational. On the contrary, the idea that such a land should be Judenrein is what should be setting off alarms in the heads of the Reuters writers.
If they were rational.
(h/t Snapped Shot for the original quote)