Interchangeable Use Of Words

To use words like Judaism, Zionism, Jews, interchangeably is to use Islam, terrorism, Moslems, interchangeably, is to use Christianity, Neo-Nazism, Christians interchangeably. Parallels never ever meet. The three Great Monotheist Religions share the same God and the same belief in the ultimate human code of ethics of what is sin and what is virtue. We can be good followers or bad followers of a certain religion but we are never The Religion. A follower of any of the three monotheist religions is the sum total of his teacher’s interpretation of the religion, plus his interpretation of his teacher’s interpretation plus several ancestors plus history plus geography plus the current, last hundred years, political situation. The student is never the lesson. They run parallel. Parallels only meet on a plane of reality that only exists in contemporary mythology.

There are many Jewish scholars, historians, academics, writers, journalists, rabbis, and ordinary Jews who because of their love for the truth and at the great risk and agonizing feeling of being called “Jewish haters”, and “revisionists”, (labels I am yet to understand), have done more for the Palestinian cause and for Palestinians than many Palestinians who unwittingly harm their cause.

Many Jews, Christians and Moslems take it upon themselves to say the truth. Because when they were only three years of age and possibly did not even know which religion they belonged to, and possibly never heard of Zionists or Palestinians, they were blessed to have learned a notion of justice that is always expressed in a child’s pet sentence, “that’s not fair”. You don’t have to be anything except human to learn that. They were blessed to have learned from an adult or as preschoolers a teacher’s pet sentence, “sharing and caring”. They are blessed to have learned in early elementary school that parallels don’t meet and therefore we cannot use words like student and lesson interchangeably. These are lessons that if digested or not, bring human beings together or apart. To understand basic concepts, all we have to be is human. That we belong to one religion or another is an added bonus that is supposed to make life easier and not more complicated. Religions are affirmations of the best in human beings. All further learning is a bonus. To acknowledge and say the truth with compassion and humility is to be all three Jewish, Christian, and Moslem irrespective. I just happen to be not Jewish.