Still the Chosen People?

News reports of the carnage in Gaza and Occupied Territories is horrifying. Everyday, children, fathers, mothers, grandparents, teenagers, anyone we can think of, dies. In these places, they live with war, it’s an everyday hazard that one doesn’t get used to.

The Israeli State wreaks fear on the Palestinian people for what it claims as its right to expansionism. It is written that the Jews are the Chosen People of God and that they waged a just war to carve out a Promised land, flowing with milk and honey, by defeating the pagan tribes and kingdoms, since Abraham, Issac and Jacob.

Yet, after all that took place in history, and the destruction and decline of the Hebrew kingdom by Roman occupiers, and the reinstatement of Israel in Palestine, with British help, after the devastation of the Second World War; Israel has found neither peace, nor security.

What happened to the Promised land? Was it God’s plan that Israel, the Chosen People, should in such apparent bitterness and vengeance, seek to annihilate another people, solely to expand their territory? Was it in God’s plan that Israel should exclusively and selfishly prosper at the expense of others, especially its neighbors? Can Israel justify such blatant ethnic cleansing, showing it has learnt no reconciliation or mercy from its own persecution experience ?

Some may pity Israel, some may sympathize with its fear of being wiped off the map, still these feelings of sympathy do not justify arrogance and aggression. It doesn’t justify the killing of  innocent children, non-combatant civilians, refugees, medics tending the sick and wounded, or anyone else who wants to live in peace.

Jews are  among  the most intelligent people in the world, yet they can find no alternative peaceful solution to their predicament, be it real or simply arising from extreme paranoia. With super power support, the God of Israel seems to have taken a back seat, and expansionist ambition made the driver. Yet, the killing, destruction and massacre, remain unjustified and senseless.

The indiscriminate killing of civilians is a heinous and barbaric act committed all through the ages since time immemorial, and this seems embedded in the psyche  of the Zionist movement permeating the Holy Land. This 21st century Israeli offensive probably harks back to the time of the Maccabees. Will Israel ever relinquish this role of Conquering Avenger? Will vengeance ever be finally sated?   Is the minority who want peace, reconciliation and forgiveness, to live in peaceful co-existence with their neighbors, so small, they have become mute?

Perhaps, it would take a Hebrew Spring to make peace in the Holy Land a reality one day. Did God want this? Are these still the Chosen People of the compassionate and loving God, so spoken of in the Holy Books sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims?

If the only justification for this carnage and slaughter of the innocent is, “An eye for an eye”, the world has undoubtedly gone blind. The  Chosen People  have forgotten, and deserted God;  the Era of Hatred is surely upon us now.