The Commonality of Fanaticism

During the Palestinian intifadas, the 'resistance' against Israel's dominating military presence in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, the weapons of choice were rocks and stones, a people's popular resistance against an unjust oppressor. The unjust oppressor in turn, wanted nothing but to live with the security of knowing that the assaults against its population would cease eventually, but until that time eventuated, it was seen as a necessity to diminish opportunities by the presence of military checkpoints to weed out as much as possible, Palestinian assailants.

On the one hand, young men, masked and murderous, made use of bombs to blow up as many Israelis as they could manage to demonstrate without any question of doubt that the Palestinians don't appreciate the presence of Jews in their midst. On the other hand, to achieve even greater surprise and consequences, suicide vests became the weapons of choice which could lead an attacker to Paradise and blessed martyrdom at the very time he/she would be shepherding others into his death pact.

Arab terrorist throws firebomb – Reuters

It was, however, the popularity of stone-throwing that anyone could take part in, from pre-teens on up, to demonstrate just how seriously young Palestinians take the messages they are given through the bitterness of family memory of victimhood handed down through the generations and aided by the school curricula emphasizing the transitory nature of the existence of Israel, established on Palestinian land, which would, by an act of vengeance by God itself, be returned to Arab rule.

Now that there is a growing movement within Israel to move the government to change the rules written into self-protective legislation forbidding Jews from approaching the Temple Mount which
Arabs have overlaid with their own name of the Noble Sanctuary because Islam decrees it is holy to Islam alone and the presence of Jews desecrate the very nature of its hallowed state, another intifada looms, has indeed begun.

Jews, whose state has guaranteed them certain universal inalienable rights, chafe at the restrictions forbidding them to pray at the most sacred site in Judaism, where the biblical Temples of Solomon once stood, sequentially destroyed by the Babylonians and the Romans in ancient history. Judaism credits itself with four thousand years of history, and Islam, the latecomer to the Abrahamic triad, to 1,400 years.

Islam maintains that because it is the last of the three with Christianity sandwiched between, it represents the 'perfected' version of monotheism, rendering the previous two outdated, unnecessary and completely redundant for humankind's relationship with the Almighty. To that end, it is perfectly permissible to consider the previous two slights to God itself, and it is every Muslim's duty to make an effort to introduce non-believers to the one true faith through da'hwa.

Call to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good preaching.

—Quran , Sura 16 (An-Nahl), ayah 125^[18]

 Now, as Arab violence swells as a result of the claims of Jewish worshippers to be enabled to share the space holy to the two religion, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has enjoined the faithful in Islam to prevent by whatever means the presence of Jews at the place where both religions claim sovereignty in religion.  Arabs opposed to a Jewish presence throw firebombs, rocks and other objects at police, cars, military personnel, buses, trains and people.

No people have a monopoly on violent reactions when they feel their rights are being trampled on. The Palestinians have made an art of  'protest' and 'resistance'. Although throwing stones may seem on the surface innocent, since children often throw stones in their youthful carelessness and ignorance of consequences, there is nothing whatever innocent and without consequences in the kind of stone-throwing pursued by Palestinians.

An illegal settlement in the West Bank called Havat Maon, established in 2000 on a hill overlooking the Arab town of Tuwani has presented as an aggravating threat against the Palestinians living there who claim they have been displaced from agricultural land, sheep have been shot, hundreds of their olive trees destroyed and poison scattered in the fields. These charges have also been made by Israelis against Palestinians who have conducted themselves similarly.

But here, from among the small group of settlers on unapproved land for settlement there are those who have been throwing stones at Palestinian schoolchildren on their way to and from school. The founder of the community, Yehoshafat Tor, has denied that Havat Maon's 60 settlers attack Palestinians. But the Israeli military know better, and they have assigned Israeli soldiers the task of daily walking those children to and from their schools to ensure their safety.


Israeli soldiers escort a group of Palestinian school children as they walk through the Israeli settlement of Havat Ma'on in West Bank. The students’ journey takes them through a legal and political maze as they pass between a legal and an illegal Israeli settlement on their way to school. (Max Becherer/Polaris Images For The Washington Post)

International aid groups have dispatched some of their members to other Palestinian cities for the purpose of escorting children to their schools, in other West Bank hot spots where relations between the two communities, Arab and Jew, contest one another's legitimacy. Even when children from the village of Tuwani were escorted by Israeli military, masked men appeared from the hilltop to throw stones at the children.

Which simply points out the reality that the pathology of of fanaticism does not lodge within one group or another, but afflicts many groups with its toxic hatred.