When I was 14 c. 1990, my teachers’ quorum instructor was giving a lesson (hard to remember what the particular topic was) when he went into a diatribe about what a horrible injustice the creation of the state of Israel was. I\u2019d never heard anybody say that before, but I\u2019ve come to agree whole heartedly with that adviser.<\/p>\n
In 1947, the UN under pressure from the US and Soviet Union, passed Resolution 181<\/a>, giving Israelis 56% of the land of Palestine even though Israelis only owned 7% of Palestine [this number is apparently overly simplistic; see DSC’s maps below] prior to that. There\u2019s no other word for such an act than theft. Religiously motivated theft is even worse, I\u2019d argue.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n No doubt imperialism and colonization have been major parts of human history, but getting into the 20th<\/sup> century, attempts were made for an international rules-based order that was more than simply \u201cmight is right.\u201d World powers created institutions like the League of Nations and United Nations to curb such acts. In other words, just because such conquests have been so common, for such theft to be mandated by the UN, which claims it\u2019s been on a \u201cpath of decolonization since 1945,\u201d<\/a> was a terrible injustice. Israel is clearly of colonizing effort set up BY the UN, the very body claiming to stop such actions.<\/p>\n The fact that Resolution 181 was passed over the strenuous denunciations of the Palestinians, and all Arab and Muslim countries highlights even further what an unjust act it was. The theft was shoved down the throats of the victims.<\/p>\n Not surprisingly Arab nations declared war, which the Israelis used to enact the Nakba<\/a>, driving any where from 750,000 to over a million Palestinians from their homes and turning many into permanent refugees. If the theft wasn\u2019t clear by Resolution 181, the Nakba made the theft extremely clear.<\/p>\n To add insult to injury with Israelis took over Gaza and the West Bank in the Six-Day War, and Palestinians in those areas have lived under apartheid<\/a> or blockade in their areas ever since. Israel stole their land, herded them into refugee camps, conquered those camps, and refuses to give them basic rights, while they take more and more land in the hope of pushing Palestinians out of \u201cgreater Israel.\u201d That\u2019s colonial oppression plain and simple.<\/p>\n And yes this does bring up US colonization and the very bad treatment of Native Americans, but Natives get to vote and live wherever they want in the US. Occupied Palestinians do not. Israel was created by the very system that was supposed to end such colonization.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s review the Nazi\u2019s agenda. \u201cThe Final Solution\u201d<\/a>\u2014the extermination of the Jews\u2014was the \u201cfinal,\u201d not the original plan. Originally, the Nazi\u2019s wanted to \u201cethnically cleanse\u201d the Jews or compel them to leave Germany. They heaped such persecution on the Jews to compel the Jews to leave.<\/p>\n When Hitler conquered Poland, he sent Stalin a letter asking if he could send him 2 million Jews. Stalin said no. The Nazi\u2019s even considered shipping the Jews to Madagascar.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t until the Nazi\u2019s decided they could not ethnically cleanse the Jews that they decided on the Final Solution starting with Operation Barbarossa beginning in June 1841.<\/p>\n The Israelis have made no secret<\/a> that they would like the Palestinians to leave and they are making things horrific in Gaza and the West Bank to compel them to do so. There really are parallels to other acts of ethnic cleansing that turned into genocide.<\/p>\n So I\u2019ll reiterate what my teachers’ quorum adviser said: the creation of the state of Israel was an evil act leading to many more evil acts. Israeli oppression of the Palestinians is completely contrary to the teachings of Jesus and turning back to problematic notions of God<\/a> (lacking historical basis<\/a>) to justify such immoral acts is a problematic religious world view.<\/p>\n This is not to say there aren\u2019t problems with radical Islam, but the Israelis\u2019 terrible oppression of the Palestinians only exacerbates those problems.<\/p>\n Solutions aren\u2019t easy, but the support of the continued oppression needs to stop.<\/p>\n And problematic actions of the oppressed are not justifications for making the oppression worse. Oppressed peoples\u2014the Irish, Native American, slaves, South Africans\u2014often targeted \u201ccivilians\u201d in their resistance. Such violence did not and does not justify the oppression of such people.<\/p>\n