Taking a Side

 

Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash

Several friends and acquaintances have applied varying degrees of pressure on me to state an opinion about the Israeli-Gaza conflict raging in the Middle East. I have steadfastly refused to do so. You see, my Visa bill is due, and the religious, Israeli, Zionist, Hamas, Palestinian, Muslim, and  Judaic conflict over there pales in comparison to the immediate consequences of my missing a credit card payment.

Then, too, there is the pesky issue of the sacred texts ordering both sides to kill me. Me. The Bible followed by Judaism (as well as Christianity) demands in the book of Chronicles ¹ that I be put to death, along with my male and female, young and old fellow unbelievers.

While both religions (and their Christian counterpart) are religions built on hate, the Quran makes Islam a hazardous belief system to me and mine. Believers there are instructed if they encounter me in a fight they are to kill me or take me captive and ransom me. ² Of course, the fight the surah speaks of is to be taken to me from the believer. I do not start those kinds of finds. What if I were killed? What would my Visa card provider say about my credit rating then? Sorry, you faithful, That will be your fight, not mine.

I have long argued that when the WWII allies took a large swath of land away from the Palestinians to give it to the Jews as a form of reparations for the Holocaust and to fulfill the promise of the colonial British Balfour Declaration, they could have given Wyoming to them. Or, what the hell, New Jersey? I am not without empathy for the plight of people who have lost their homelands. Regardless of my sympathy for the Palestinians, I cannot back a side in a conflict when all sides seek my extermination.

Unless one side wishes to help with my Visa bill….

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¹ 2 Chronicles 15:12-13

² Surah 47:4