freediver wrote on Nov 22
nd, 2012 at 7:53pm:
So it is all about secularists fighting secularists over secularism, and it is an accident that the Jews are on one side and Muslims on the other?
smart alec quips don't change the facts that I pointed out FD. I can only repeat again that the first belligerents were secularists, and remained secularists throughout the conflict until the very recent history.
Militants who happen to be jewish fighting militants who happen to be muslim doesn't in itself make it a religious conflict. The zionists who pushed for a jewish state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were not fighting for religious motives - indeed most of them were not religious at all. They wanted a jewish homeland for the same reason that any oppressed, stateless and vulnerable people would want a homeland. The holocaust gave this project rapid impetus for obvious reasons. On the arab side, why do you have to be religious to be upset about foreign invaders coming in and stealing your property and claiming it for their own state? Do you think the Aborigines who opposed the British invaders were just religious nutcases?
Here's a quote from then British foreign secretary describing the growing tensions in the 1920s - which gives us a good indication of the conflicts roots:
Quote: One of the difficulties of the situation arises from the fact that the Zionists have taken full advantage - and are disposed to take even fuller advantage - of the opportunity which was then offered to them. You have only to read, as probably most of us do, their periodical 'Palestine', and, indeed, their pronouncements in the papers, to see that their programme is expanding from day to day. They now talk about a Jewish State. The Arab portion of the population is well-nigh forgotten and is to be ignored. They not only claim the boundaries of the old Palestine, but they claim to spread across the Jordan into the rich countries lying to the east, and, indeed, there seems to be very small limit to the aspirations which they now form. The Zionist programme, and the energy with which it is being carried out, have not unnaturally had the consequence of arousing the keen suspicions of the Arabs. By 'the Arabs' I do not merely mean Feisal and his followers at Damascus, but the so-called Arabs who inhabit the country. There seems, from the telegrams we receive, to be growing up an increasing friction between the two communities, a feeling by the Arabs that we are really behind the Zionists and not behind the Arabs, and altogether a situation which is becoming rather critical . . .'
http://religion.wikia.com/wiki/1920_Palestine_riots
Interesting that he uses the words "zionists" and "arabs", not jews and muslims. But thats just incidental - the non-religious nature of the conflict is plain to see here. The zionists wanted the arab land for themselves, and the arabs increasingly opposed this.