There no is doubt that Israel is being assailed by neighboring Arabs in the Third Intifada,
Brave Palestinian Freedom fighter stabs 80 years old woman in the back. The "First Intifida" was a series of rock-throwing attacks in Israelis durign 1987-88. The "Second Intifada" was a round of suicide bombing on cafes, buses and parties after Arafat pulled the plug on the Barak-Arafat-Clinton peace talks during 2000, as Clinton's term wound down. The alleged causes of the Second and Third Intifadas were varying Jewish activities or accusations of plans for activities on the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is where the Muslims placed Al Aksa Mosque.
There are two schools of thought on the Intifadas and other Arab conventional, guerrilla and terrorist warfare against Jews in the Holy Land since the 1920's and against Israel since 1948:
- That the these warlike efforts are a response to usurpation of ancient Muslim and Arab rights; or
- The view that I adhere to, that the Arabs and predecessor cultures, since prior to Abraham's time have been engaged in vicious warfare whose primary agents are children, with the knowledge that the children will be sacrificed for the benefit of Allah or, during the idolatrous era, the local gods.
Last week's Torah portion, or "Parsha" focused on the story of the Akeda, or the binding of Isaac. In this well-known story, around Genesis 22:1 et. seq. Abraham takes Isaac up the mountain to be sacrificed. Isaac is carrying the wood with which he is to be burned, and there is no sheep or goat along for the journey to serve as a sacrifice. Abraham binds Isaac to the wood pile. At that point, G-d, acting through angels directs him to stop, and supplies a ram for sacrifice.
The "traditional" take on the story was that the G-d was testing Abraham's obedience and faith. Mine is a bit different and this is the "debate topic";
that G-d was telling Abraham that the Hebrews/Jews that G-d does not want sacrifice of children. In that day child sacrifice was common in the region. Rome was horrified to discover tombs full of Carthaginian babies sacrificed their own children to G-d. This article is authority:
Carthaginians sacrificed own children, archaeologists say. Excerpts:
- "Just as ancient Greek and Roman propagandists insisted, the Carthaginians did kill their own infant children, burying them with sacrificed animals and ritual inscriptions in special cemeteries to give thanks for favours from the gods, according to a new study."
- "The Roman historian Diodorus and other ancient historians gave graphic accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice: "There was in their city a bronze image of Cronus, extending its hands, palms up and sloping towards the ground, so that each of the children when placed thereon rolled down and fell into a sort of gaping pit filled with fire."
Thus, the "moral" of the story in my opinion is that the Hebrews were differentiating themselves from their neighbors by abjuring child sacrifice.
Their current neighbors have another name for it; jihad.
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