Blaming the Middle Eastern conflict on the Jewish state is an error that could see many people unwittingly complicit in one of history`s worst injustices, writes Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein
Sometimes we make the most fundamental errors. When large numbers of people make mistakes — even monumental ones — it is almost impossible to challenge the resultant prevailing view. It was once the conventional wisdom that the Earth is flat. In ancient times, if anyone dared to claim that the earth was round, they would have been denigrated as being detached from reality. When, in the 16th century, Nicolaus Copernicus dared suggest that the sun was the centre of the solar system and not the Earth, he was regarded as a heretic. In today`s world, any attempt to explain the Arab- Israeli conflict in terms other than "Israel`s illegal occupation of Palestinian land" and the "denial of Palestinian nationalist aspiration" is often regarded like a declaration that the earth is flat and the centre of the universe. But what if this view is wrong?
What if, in terms of understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict, we are living in pre-Copemican times? What if the Jewish state that is considered to be the root of all evil in the Middle East were instead the victim? What if the apartheid of the Middle East is really one directed against the Jews? And what if Israel is the ANC of the Middle East?
Unlike the ANC, Israel has not found genuine negotiating partners, and so its struggle continues, and peace remains a distant dream. What if Zionism is not colonialism but rather an ancient people`s deep connection to their native, historical and covenantal land? What if the real colonialism is Arab expansionism, which contests a Jewish state on even l/520th of the area of Arab lands?
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