Comments on the Palestine Conflict
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It is difficult to have a reasonable discussion on the Palestine-Israel issue. Passions run very high. I guess as a Muslim I am supposed to offer support for Palestinian suffering and condemnation of Israeli brutality. Whenever events flare up in Palestine (like they have right now), there is a knee jerk response here in USA by Jews and by Muslims in passionate support of their respective co-religionists (and opposing the other). This is not very healthy. Suffering of all civilians is important and this spiraling violence has been going on far too long with no end in sight. We need to step back and take a hard look. Here are a few thoughts.
After over 40 years of violence and turmoil very little seems to have changed. It seems each side only goads the other to ever more depraved acts of violence. Over the years, both sides have committed so many acts of violence against civilians that neither has any real claim left to moral righteousness for their position. Also consider that in these intervening years others were able to find peace in places with arguably just as difficult conflicts ( like Northern Ireland and South Africa and the former Yugoslavia) while there is no peace in sight in Palestine. Each side in Palestine is very adept at blaming the other but neither has any real vision of peace. There has been a complete lack of leadership in both the Palestinians and the Israelis on how to achieve peace. A dispassionate observer would conclude that perhaps neither side really wants peace.
As an American I am concerned that we have over that past 40 years spent more aid money in this area (mainly to Israel and Egypt) than the rest of the world combined and yet there has been no progress on achieving lasting peace. Are we enabling and rewarding bad behavior and so making the situation worse? The same question goes to the American Jews and American Muslims. By our knee jerk responses are we also enabling and rewarding bad behavior and so making the situation worse?
Looking around the world, there are humanitarian issues far greater than the Palestine-Israel issue in the world today that receive a fraction of our attention. The rapid rise in grain prices and the impact on billions of poor the world over is surely a much greater crisis. Also the continuing problems in Western Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo impact far more people. Perhaps in view of the continued lack of progress in Palestine we need to focus some attention on these issues where we may have more positive impact.
Finally I would like to offer this thought from Prophet Muhammad : ”help your brother whether he is a wronged or is a wrong doer.” And he went on to explain that: “the way you support your wrong doer brother is by stopping him from that bad action”. I hope that all of us exert more influence on our co-religionists in finding peace for all in Palestine.
Khalid Shah, 50, is an American Muslim who came to the U.S. 32 years ago. He and his wife have lived in the St. Louis area since 1990, and have been active in a variety of interfaith activities as well as in the local Muslim communities. They have both spoken about Islam at a variety of houses of worship. After working as an engineer for most of his career, he is currently a small business owner. 
shah,
YOUR blog?!!! Well, you certainly have tried to dominate it; but this blog is supposed to be about religion and is supposed to be a blog of many people. your attitude is so typically moslem.
There is no hate in my previous posting. I dare you to show me any. I have stated facts. Israel will not leave. Try as you might, that is the central fact that the moslem world for the most part does not accept, has never accepted and is intent on not accepting. I couldn’t care less about moslem spain [a conquest by moslems, by the way, of other people's lands]. The issue is Israel. It has nothing to do with ancient spain, despite the moslem world’s incessant pipedream of a return to those “glory” days [when, of course, they dominated others, much like you on this blog].
No moslems until the peace agreements between Israel, on the one hand, and egypt and jordan [the fiefdom previously known as Transjordan], on the other, have ever chosen to live peacefully with the Jewish nation. And egypt and jordan wouldn’t have entered into those agreements if they hadn’t gotten tired of getting the crap kicked out of them every time they tried to eliminate the Jewish nation. We don’t need your imagined tolerance, nor do we give a damn about it. We live and will continue to live in our own nation, where we treat moslems with far more goodness and tolerance than any moslem country ever treated us before we had the renewal of our country. The majority of Jews in Israel are Jews or the descendants of Jews who were kicked out of moslem countries, almost to a man without any of their possessions. There’s your hate.
you speak with a forked tongue, in another attempt to mesmerize the world of “good” moslem intentions. The rockets from gaza speak more forcefully of their real intentions.