Here’s an analogy that we can relate to in understanding the situation in Israel/Palestine. In the 1600s all the land in North America belonged to the natives. We moved in, colonized, built settlements and eventually created reservations for the Native Americans to live in.
What if we decided that that wasn’t enough?
What if we decided God gave all the land of North America to us, and that the natives had to go. Go where? Anywhere as long as it isn’t in our country.
So we would build fancy condos a few yards away from the reservations, and then we would taunt them. We would set up checkpoints inside the reservations to limit and control their movements, and we would humiliate the natives when they were going through the check points by making them strip. We would say they couldn’t attend family events in other reservations. We would cut their health, education, and sanitation budgets. We would burn their houses down or we would bull doze them down. We would carry guns and shoot them while they were harvesting. We wouldn’t be satisfied until they had fled the country and then we would have their land.
That is what is going on in Israel and the West Bank.
Barbara Taylor, Salt Lake City
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