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Where do we stand on the separation of Church & State? Personally I firmly believe that religion has no place in politics. Public policy should not be written with anyone's god as some kind of co-author
So what about countries where the 2 seem inseparable, like Iran - where the nation's top cleric wields even more power & influence than its President, the USA - where, increasingly, policy is being drafted straight out of the Old Testament. Or... deep breath... Israel - where being Jewish is so tied up in the nation's recent & ancient history, that it seems impossible to disagree with anything they do without automatically being labelled anti-semitic
Personally, I subscribe to no religion & have major doubts about the existence of any kind of supreme deity. But the rest of you are free & welcome to practise whatever doctrine takes your fancy, as long as it doesn't encroach on my way of life. Which is obviously why I firmly believe in absolute separation of Church & State. If your religion says you shouldn't do something, then don't do it. But you have no right to stop me... whether I'm eating bacon, taking some lord's name in vain, supporting a woman's right to abortion or LGBTQI+ people's human rights, or being repulsed by the practice of female genital mutilation on religious grounds &/or marrying off pre-pubescent girls to (much) older men. And I'm 110% opposed to killing people just because their imaginary deity is different to yours
I don't really want to wade into the murky history of Israel, its dissolution in the early CE centuries & scattering of its people, its subsequent occupation by various Islamic & Christian states for over 1500 years... you can Google all that & read at your leisure. Suffice to say that the creation of modern Israel in 1948 was not very well planned, or implemented & it displaced countless people whose roots in that land went back many generations & hundreds of years. But because they were Muslims, none of the Western governments gave a sh!t. Right from its start, modern Israel has had to fight to exist, against various Islamic countries who at the very least wanted the land back & at worst, wanted to eradicate its people because... well, because they're Jews & Allah apparently doesn't like them & that's good enough reason. At least, that's what the cleric/mullah/ayatollah etc... said
It hasn't even been 80 years since then, but it's been an unholy mess for most of that time. We've had ceasefires, various peace treaties & accords... but sooner or later religion rears its head & it all kicks off again, with Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map & the world superpowers posturing & positioning according to their interest
And here's the contentious bit - there have been some Israeli leaders who seem to take delight in poking the bear. Heavy -handed annexations of territories they want to 'reclaim' like the West Bank, Southern Lebanon, Golan Heights... & Gaza, have inevitably led to clashes with Islamic forces & if it was a European nation doing that... well, we had 2 world wars over that kind of behaviour, plus a couple of serious ones in Asia... yet somehow, Israel is held to a different standard, even when it has cast the first stone. Somehow, it makes me think we're in the middle of the latest Crusade, where the Christian forces are still trying to take back the Holy Land from the Infidel, so they arm the Israeli army to its teeth while simultaneously decrying its unsurprising use of those weapons
Don't get me wrong - what Hamas did recently was horrific & unforgiveable, but at the same time, Israel had been poking that bear for a while - it was going to lash out eventually. And now, Hezbollah is getting fractious about Israeli rocket attacks on the Israel/Lebanon border. It appears Israeli PM Netanyahu is hell-bent on starting a new war, whatever the cost is to his own citizens, let alone anyone else. As if the cost isn't way too high already, with Jewish people in countries far from Israel being threatened & targeted by Muslims whose parents fled the Middle East to get the hell away from all that fighting a generation ago
In summary. I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm not pro-Muslim... I'm just not a fan of using religion as a coverall for aggressive nationalism
So what about countries where the 2 seem inseparable, like Iran - where the nation's top cleric wields even more power & influence than its President, the USA - where, increasingly, policy is being drafted straight out of the Old Testament. Or... deep breath... Israel - where being Jewish is so tied up in the nation's recent & ancient history, that it seems impossible to disagree with anything they do without automatically being labelled anti-semitic
Personally, I subscribe to no religion & have major doubts about the existence of any kind of supreme deity. But the rest of you are free & welcome to practise whatever doctrine takes your fancy, as long as it doesn't encroach on my way of life. Which is obviously why I firmly believe in absolute separation of Church & State. If your religion says you shouldn't do something, then don't do it. But you have no right to stop me... whether I'm eating bacon, taking some lord's name in vain, supporting a woman's right to abortion or LGBTQI+ people's human rights, or being repulsed by the practice of female genital mutilation on religious grounds &/or marrying off pre-pubescent girls to (much) older men. And I'm 110% opposed to killing people just because their imaginary deity is different to yours
I don't really want to wade into the murky history of Israel, its dissolution in the early CE centuries & scattering of its people, its subsequent occupation by various Islamic & Christian states for over 1500 years... you can Google all that & read at your leisure. Suffice to say that the creation of modern Israel in 1948 was not very well planned, or implemented & it displaced countless people whose roots in that land went back many generations & hundreds of years. But because they were Muslims, none of the Western governments gave a sh!t. Right from its start, modern Israel has had to fight to exist, against various Islamic countries who at the very least wanted the land back & at worst, wanted to eradicate its people because... well, because they're Jews & Allah apparently doesn't like them & that's good enough reason. At least, that's what the cleric/mullah/ayatollah etc... said
It hasn't even been 80 years since then, but it's been an unholy mess for most of that time. We've had ceasefires, various peace treaties & accords... but sooner or later religion rears its head & it all kicks off again, with Iran threatening to wipe Israel off the map & the world superpowers posturing & positioning according to their interest
And here's the contentious bit - there have been some Israeli leaders who seem to take delight in poking the bear. Heavy -handed annexations of territories they want to 'reclaim' like the West Bank, Southern Lebanon, Golan Heights... & Gaza, have inevitably led to clashes with Islamic forces & if it was a European nation doing that... well, we had 2 world wars over that kind of behaviour, plus a couple of serious ones in Asia... yet somehow, Israel is held to a different standard, even when it has cast the first stone. Somehow, it makes me think we're in the middle of the latest Crusade, where the Christian forces are still trying to take back the Holy Land from the Infidel, so they arm the Israeli army to its teeth while simultaneously decrying its unsurprising use of those weapons
Don't get me wrong - what Hamas did recently was horrific & unforgiveable, but at the same time, Israel had been poking that bear for a while - it was going to lash out eventually. And now, Hezbollah is getting fractious about Israeli rocket attacks on the Israel/Lebanon border. It appears Israeli PM Netanyahu is hell-bent on starting a new war, whatever the cost is to his own citizens, let alone anyone else. As if the cost isn't way too high already, with Jewish people in countries far from Israel being threatened & targeted by Muslims whose parents fled the Middle East to get the hell away from all that fighting a generation ago
In summary. I'm not anti-Semitic, I'm not pro-Muslim... I'm just not a fan of using religion as a coverall for aggressive nationalism
