A Very Particular God

The quest for knowledge and understanding is a lifelong journey.

The Abrahamic religions. Art courtesy: rohama.org

(LONDON) - Today is my birthday. I am seventy one years old and in all the years that I have been on this earth I often wondered what or who is God.

I read about the Prophet Muhammad, his journey and his struggles to establish the Muslim faith. I heard sermons from Christian priests singing the praises of Jesus and the just and peaceful message he brought to humanity.

I listened to and read many a Torah scholar, talking about the oneness of God and the relationship of that God to his subjects. There are many similarities between these three so-called ‘Abrahamic faiths’, Judaism, Christianity and Islam and yet they are also oceans apart.

Why am I invoking God in this instance? Maybe because it’s my birthday; maybe because this year is the centenary of the First World War, responsible for some 37 million unnecessary deaths. Maybe it is because of the recent anniversary of the Nakba on May 15th or maybe it comes from a desperate need to find the merest glimmer of hope that my country of birth, Palestine, is not lost forever. And maybe I am hoping beyond hope that my people will be delivered from this evil that has befallen them, Israel.

It is also because according to the Zionist occupiers of our land ‘their’ God has made a covenant with them and chosen them, above all others to inherit my land, Palestine as their own.

Here we are, in the twenty first century, living in a global village and yet the God of the Jews, according to the Zionists, has decided to branch into real estate.

I, as a Palestinian, like most of my compatriots, have never had any problem with Jews and Christians living with us as brothers and neighbours. The problem started at the end of the nineteenth century when an atheist, Zionist Jew, Theodor Herzl and a few like-minded individuals decided that they must have a safe place, somewhere in the world, to call their own.

These Zionists thought of Argentina, they thought of Uganda and, as it has been revealed recently, they even thought of an area of what is now Saudi Arabia called Al Hasa. Unfortunately for us they settled on Palestine.

Every tool and weapon, particularly ‘God’s Will’ has been used by these occupiers of our land to justify the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and wipe us off the map. This is what some of the early leaders of the Zionist movement had to say:

Founder, Theodor Herzl, June 1895. “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border…and both the process of expropriation and removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly…” Vladimir Jabotinsky founder of the Zionist-Revisionist movement, the central ideological component of the Likud stated in 1923: “…colonisation can continue and develop only under the protection of a force independent of the local population – an iron wall which the native population cannot break through… We are in need of a territory where our people will constitute the overwhelming majority…and one must not be afraid of the word ‘segregation.’ ”

To secure support for this project, Israel Zangwill, an Anglo-Jewish writer coined the phrase: “a land without a people for a people without land” . The fact that there were almost 410,000 Palestinians Arabs (Muslims and Christians) living in Palestine around the early 1890’s did not bother him.

Stern Gang leader, Itzhak Shamir born in Poland in 1915 and twice Israel’s Prime Minister described the Arabs as “beasts of the desert, not a legitimate people” . In a memorandum in 1947, his Stern Gang called for the compulsory evacuation of the entire Palestinian population, preferably in the direction of Iraq.

Another Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir told the British national newspaper, The Sunday Times, in 1969, "It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them,” she said. "They did not exist."

This method of denial continues today with the current crop of Zionist leaders of Israel. And since the Oslo Accord a new face of colonization and ethnic cleansing of Palestine has manifested itself in the form of the settlers’ movement, championed and protected by many members of the Israeli cabinet.

As a matter of fact, the thug from the Ukraine, Avigdor Lieberman, Foreign Minister of Israel lives in one of these illegal, colonialist settlements, Nokdim in the West Bank.

All of the above is ordained, according to the Zionists, by their particular God. As Vladimir Jabotinsky said: “We Jews, thank God, have nothing to do with the East. The Islamic soul must be broomed out of Eretz Yisrael”.

I thought the whole premise of Israel was that they did belong to the East, hence the proclamation on many occasions, by Mr. Netanyahu, the current Israeli Prime Minister that they are not occupiers, they are returnees. Which is it?

On every occasion and on every corner the Israelis invoke the holocaust and their cry is ‘never again’. I agree, it should never happen to anybody anywhere in the world. What the Israelis have maliciously forgotten is that we Palestinians played no part whatsoever in the holocaust.

In fact, Zionism was conceived by an atheist, cynically using ‘God’, fifty years prior to the holocaust to justify the theft of Palestine from its indigenous owners, the Palestinian nation.

Yet we are now suffering a holocaust of our own at the hands of the Israelis. And if we dare to raise our heads to complain or resist, which is a universally acknowledged human right we are crushed by a brutal force and branded as terrorists by another Israeli colony, The Congress in the United States of America. A tragic irony.

The situation in Palestine has gradually become much worse since the creation of Israel in 1948. More killings and bloodshed, demolition of homes and infra structures, land confiscations, burning of meadows, uprooting of ancient olive trees, polluting of farm lands, deportations, imprisonment without trial, torture of prisoners; men, women and children, theft of natural resources, building of Jewish-only settlements and roads, check points and, to top it all, the apartheid wall that Mr. Jabotinsky spoke of all those years ago as the necessary iron wall.

The desecration of the Holy Places of both Christians and Muslim continues apace. In a few days Pope Francis will pay a visit to the Holy Land and the zealots of the settlements have sprayed churches and mosques with racist slogans and blasphemy, in what they term ‘price tag’ attacks to prove the superiority of their God above others.

As I am writing this there is a bill going through the Knesset to allow the settlers and others to perform Jewish rites and prayers in the grounds of Al Haram Al-sharif (the Holy sanctuary) which houses both the 8th century Al Aqsa Mosque, the third most holy shrine in Islam and The Dome of The Rock.

More dangerously, there is a plan to actually demolish this ancient and most sacred place and replace it with what the settlers call the third temple. Yet another manifestation of this particular God of the Israelis, placing them head and shoulders above us all.

I was five-years old when the Nakba took place. Seven hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians were forcibly kicked out of their homes by the Zionist gangs and over five hundred towns and villages were wiped off the map. This tragedy is still unfolding with no end in sight.

No matter how much the Palestinians sacrifice at the alter of this particular God it’s not enough. The Israelis keep changing the rules of the game and the chorus from Washington echoes its approval. All, as ordained by this particular God.

As Mr. Jabotinsky wrote back in 1923: ‘The only path to an agreement in the future is an absolute refusal of any attempts at an agreement now.’

My compatriots, it is as clear as day that attempts at forging peace with people of this mindset is a virtual impossibility. Not when you know that the architect of these talks is the champion of your opponent’s cause. Please stop wasting time and resources chasing a mirage. Please make the unity agreement that you signed four weeks ago a true and firm forward policy. For without unity of rank and purpose all will be lost.

This is the ultimate weapon that the Zionists and their supporters have deployed against us from the very beginning and it hasn’t finished yet.

Bible, King James Version, Deuteronomy 1. Verse 7: Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the plain, in the hills, and in the vale, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.

A very particular God indeed.

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Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer, commentator and analyst on Middle Eastern affairs living in London.

He was born in Jenin, northern Palestine, was educated in England and spent the early years of his working life in the Arabian Gulf and Saudi Arabia. He has traveled far and wide, searching for the answer to a question that still eludes him.

Why does the United States of America support the Zionist line in such a blind folded way while ignoring the legitimate rights of the indigenous Palestinian people? Particularly as the Palestinian people harbour no ill feelings towards America and its people nor has ever caused them any harm. It is, Jafar says, a conundrum.