This week almost 100 Qassam and Grad rockets were fired at Israeli towns killing a student and leaving four young children fatherless. Scores of citizens in shock and wounded. This is not in the interest of peace, but an attempt at a self-fulfilling “Wizard of Oz” drama. It appears real, but it is only in black and white with little remaining once the curtain is unveiled.
This seems to be the intent by Hamas in its’ violent and indiscriminate firing of rockets with the sole purpose of maiming and killing civilians. Abbas in his attempt not to be out done, speaking to a reporter for a Jordan newspaper, waxes large about his involvement in 1965 with Terrorism toward Israel and his Fatah’s training of Hezbollah in the early days. This is the person we are hoping to have a sustainable peace agreement with.
While the rockets are flying we are attempting to respond with half the fury needed to put an end to this insanity. Once we respond Hamas cries fowl and the hard-left globally responds with its inevitable anti-Semitic and anti- Israeli support. What an enlightened group of human beings.
In spite of this recent occurrence Mel Alexenberg a contributor to Israel Seen recently wrote a letter to the editor to the Jerusalem Post entitled “Steps to peace on an Islamic rug”. I think it is well worth re-printing it here.
“If I could meet with Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, this is what I would tell him: In an interview with the JP this week, you spoke about peace with Israel, saying, “ This is a small and rough neighborhood, and we have to do it right, and doing it right requires a new paradigm, a new thinking”
The new paradigm you propose can be derived from Islamic art. It can provide that “new thinking” required to bring peace between Jews and Arabs in their shared neighborhood. This paradigm shift could end the Arab attitude of seeing Israel as an alien presence in the Middle East, and the 60-year war to wipe it off the map.
In Islamic art, as you probably know, a uniform geometric pattern is purposely disrupted by the introduction of a counter-pattern to demonstrate that human creation is less than perfect. Based upon the belief that Allah creates perfection, rug makers from Islamic lands intentionally weave a small patch of dissimilar pattern to break the symmetry of their rugs. The Islamic artisan does not want to be perceived as competing with Allah.
Perhaps you see a continuous pattern, like a beautiful Islamic rug, running from Morocco on the Atlantic Ocean to the eastern borders of Iran. Shift your perception to see Israel, not as a blemish on that great Islamic rug, but as the small counter-pattern needed to realize Islamic values.
The ingathering of the Jewish people into its historic homeland in the midst of the Islamic world is the fulfillment of Muhammad’s prophecy in the Koran (Sura 17:104): And we said to the children of Israel, “Scatter and live all over the world…and when the end of the world is near, we will gather you again into the Promised Land,” Switch your viewpoint to recognize the sovereign right of the Jews in the Land of Israel as the will of Allah, as expressed in Sura 5:20-21: “Remember when Moses said to his people: ‘O my people, call in remembrance the favor of God unto you, when he produced prophets among you, made you kings, and gave to you what He had not given to any other among the people. O my people, enter the Holy Land which God has assigned unto you.”
Recognize the State of Israel as a blessing expressing Allah’s will. Shalom, Salaam.
Mel Alexenberg
