Tracing the Cause of Current Palestinian Violence

For the last two or three weeks Palestinians have been attacking Israelis. The attacks are usually carried out with knives and are primarily in Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Palestinian West Bank, both of which are under the illegal and brutal Israeli occupation which has been in place since 1967. Just this weekend a Bedouin man attacked and killed a member of the Israeli Occupation Forces before he was shot and killed by the dead IOF member’s cohorts. This attack took place in the Israeli town Beer Sheva in southern Israel. While this violence was going on an Enitrean migrant man, Haptom Zerhom, was shot by an Israeli security guard who claims he thought Haptom Zerhom (pictured at right), who at the time was crawling on the floor to avoid being shot by a stray bullet from the ongoing gun battle between Jews and the Bedouin man, was a second attacker. After being shot Zerhom was brutally kicked and beat by Jews who assumed he was an attacker. Many people are saying they thought he was an attacker because he was black. (Here’s a video of the attack on the Enitrean man.)

Violence is a problem. To solve any problem you need to know its cause. In the case of Palestinians and Bedouins using violence against Israelis, the cause is not at all difficult to ascertain. The cause of Palestinian and Bedouin violence against Israelis is the Jewish state of Israel’s violence against Palestinians and Bedouins through Israel’s decades old illegal occupation and all of its accompanying state terrorism.

Take, for just one example, Israel’s arrogant and destructive treatment of the Bedouin people. This past August the Jewish state decided it would destroy a 60-year-old Bedouin village in the illegally occupied Palestinian West Bank and replace the Bedouin village with a Jewish town. Israel’s excuse for destroying the Bedouin village which was on Palestinian land was that Israel did not recognize it! Who cares if Israel recognizes a village that is not part of Israel? For any Bedouin person with any amount of self-respect and love of their people, this is a blatant act of war. The Bedouin man, Mohannad Al-Oqbi, who attacked the IOF state terrorists was defending his people and home and bringing the war Israel started to Israel.

Looking for a cause of Israel’s violence against Palestinians and Bedouins, we find it in their “holy” book, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. This ungodly and hate filled collection of ancient Hebrew/Jewish brain farts has the primary purpose of elevating Israel over all other nations, Jews over all other people and the Jewish clergy over all other Jews.

Dripping with Jewish superiority, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is a Jewish blueprint for world domination. For example, at Deuteronomy 7:1-6 the ancient Hebrew/Jewish clergy put these words in God’s mouth:

When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than thou; And when the LORD thy God shall deliver them before thee; thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them: Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.
But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.

The above verses demonstrate that the Jewish clergy who wrote this ungodly screed had the goal not only of genocide against their neighbors, but also of keeping their Jewish followers following them. That is why they forbade them from interacting with their neighbors out of fear the Jews would find the religions of their neighbors more appealing that Judaism. Certainly God is NOT the author of these commands for why would God fear anyone or anything? God doesn’t need the Jews, or anyone else, for followers. The writers of this merciless dribble were the Jewish clergy who really did fear their Jewish followers leaving them new religions and ways of thinking and taking their support with them. That would leave the Jewish clergy without any power and wealth.

The Jewish clergy who write these verses appealed to the ego of their Jewish followers by claiming God chose them “above all people that are upon the face of the earth.” Believing this about yourself is delusional and can only bring about arrogance and violence.

Israel’s destruction of the Bedouin village to make room for a Jewish town is right in line with the thinking of the ancient Jewish clergy who wrote the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said the violence rising in Palestine and Israel is “senseless” and needs to be stopped. If he was sincere, he would suggest to Barack Obama that the US end its supplying to Israel of $10.2 million tax dollars PER DAY in military hand-outs until Israel stops its illegal and violence-based occupation of Palestine. This would move peace light-years forward in the region. It looks like people in America are starting to want an end to the US supporting Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people through their violent occupation. This past weekend 15,000 people protested in Chicago, demanding an end to US support for the occupation of Palestine.

The most lasting and thorough way to stop the religious violence going on in the Middle East is to take the advice of the American founder and Deist Thomas Paine. In his outstanding book on God, Deism and religion, The Age of Reason, Paine wrote that we need a revolution in religion based on our innate God-given reason and Deism. This would dispel the crazy and numbing ideas that the Jews are God’s chosen people, that our salvation depends on the Jew, Jesus, that any nation that will not serve Israel will be “utterly wasted” (Isaiah 60:12), etc., etc., etc. Paine also made the profound observation in The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition, “The progress that reason and Deism make in the world lessen the force of superstition, and abate the spirit of persecution.” This is exactly what is needed RIGHT NOW, particularly in the Middle East.

Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson is a freelance writer in the Tampa area of Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after a stint in Marine Corps infantry and reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason he became a Deist.

In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists, and in 1996 he launched the first website devoted to Deism. He is the author of God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion, Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You and An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He has also written the introduction to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition and Principles of Nature by Elihu Palmer.