Christianity, Islam, and War Crimes

My friend Yair mentioned East Timor, as an example of a major massacre of Christians committed by Muslims. In our jargon, this mentioning is called "Setting for a Spike", as in volleyball. So I have no choice but to spike.

Well, Yair, good that you mentioned East Timor. The Indonesians (mostly Muslims) invaded this poor country (Catholic) in 1975, and killed more than 100,000. They probably could not have done that unless their dictator, Suharto, met in 1975 with president Gerald Ford (a Protestant) and Henri Kissinger (Jewish), who gave him the OK, because East Timor was considered Communist. The American media virtually ignored the slaughter.
This and Cambodia puts Dr. Kissinger, a Peace Nobel prize laureate, on the top of the list of war criminals. Did I mention that he is Jewish?
Muslims will have to work very hard to catch up with the death toll committed by Christians.
Like I said, it's all politics, not religion.


To which Yair responded:
You astonish me again! Muslims kill Timorians, and you blame the Jews again. What is wrong with you. Do you really think it's Kissinger's fault? (and I am not trying to defend
American policy here).
So, let's leave Timor for the moment, and let's talk about Algeria. Is that America/Jews problem too, or is it an Islamic (yes Islamic, not political) problem.
Why do you get out of your skin to defend Islam? What is your point there?

You did not answer my points when I talked about Judaism compared to Islam. You keep talking about Christianity and its horrible actions from 300 years ago, but I am talking today. Can't you see that there is something wrong here?
Every other Islamic nation is involved with bloodshed, one pseudo democratic Islamic country, suicide bombers, medieval religious laws practiced only in these countries, and what you have to say in return is: Kissinger is evil!
Christianity was evil too.
Sekila (Hebrew for: Stoning) was practiced by Jews 2500 years ago (so we are actually Afghanistan).

Avner, you are smarted than that.

I can get your claim that it is not the religion, but who practices it (I don't know Islam very well but I suspect that is not really the case). But even if that is the case, then Communism was a great idea, the practice was wrong, so - who do we blame? We blame the Communists because there was probably something wrong with the way
people interpreted it. The same with today’s Islam. The Koran might be the best, most gentle book ever, even better than "Le Petit Prince", but for me Islam is what I see. Humeini, Saudi Arabia, suicide bombers in the name of Allah, Hamas, Algeria, Sudan, No democracy, terrible attitude to women. Until they change it, for me Islam is an evil religion.

My response:
To say that I blamed the Jews for East Timor is "just a little" demagogy. I blamed the Indonesians first, and President Ford and his secretary of state second. Not all the Jews. My only point was that you don't have to be a Muslim to be responsible for terrorism.

If you only look on today, then you miss some of the picture. Even if I accepted your definition of terrorism, then the fact that most "terrorists" today are Muslims (I will doubt that in a minute), doesn't prove that Islam is terroristic in essence. I'm keeping mentioning the medieval times, because I think that this is evidence that there is no direct link between any religions, to evil doing. If Christians, and even Jews, could do evil on a large scale, even if it was 500 years ago (the Inquisition) or 3,000 years ago (the horrible things which OUR bible describes about Jews wrong-doing) - then my point is that no religion has a monopoly on either the Truth, Goodness, or Evil.

I am not defending Islam, I'm just defending my views of this world. I may be wrong.

Using Terror is not characteristic of Islam, more than it's of Christianity. Claiming that Islam is violent and murderous because of 9/11, is like saying that Christianity is a terrorist religion because Bush sent troops to kill ~130,000 Iraqi civilians (and that's just one case). Bush also does this in the name of "God", why doesn't anybody call him a "Militant Christian"? He does it for a good cause, such as spreading democracy? - Even if this was true (I think it's for the oil prices, but never mind) - so do the other terrorists. It's for what they see as "good cause" - to spread the Islam. He would do it without killing civilians if he could? - so would the other terrorists.
It's just so happened that today, democracy is predominantly Christian. It was not so forever and probably won't be forever.

Now to the definition of terror. This is going to upset you, but it's necessary to make my point. I think that the definition of terror is also political, and it's dominated by those who are in power. Therefore, in the West, a terrorist is one who kills people from the West; but somebody who just kills Iraqis, Palestinians, etc., is a fighter in "the War on Terror". On the other hand, in the Muslim world, a terrorist is one who kills people from the Muslim world, and whoever kills Jews or Christians is a "freedom fighter". My opinion is that both definitions are wrong to the same extent. I think that a terrorist is one who kills civilians, either on purpose, or in an action during which they know in advance that civilians would be killed. This definition includes Bin-Laden, Bush, and some Israeli generals.

I know that you distinguish between those who killed (or sent others to kill, in this sense Bin-Laden is no different than Bush) with a deliberate purpose, and those who wished that civilians would not be killed (like Bush, or Dan Halutz on a much smaller scale). I know that this is hard for you to accept (not to agree, God forbid, but even to accept that others think this way); but to me this is not a big difference. I think that most terrorists on the "bad" side (which is of course always "the Other" side), also wished that they were in a situation that they didn't need to kill. This is how they see it - I don't think they "need" to kill, but they honestly think that this is the only way to achieve their goals, some of which I justify - the goals, not the means - and frankly, I think that we (Israel) give them many reasons to think so: the recent shift in Israeli public opinion, whether you think it's good or not (I know that Yair thinks it's good, maybe Idit thinks it's not good, I respect both views, but the shift is a historic fact) - would not have occurred if it was not for the terrorist Intifada.
The concept that we, the "good guys", wish that we were in a situation in which we didn't "need" to kill, and this is something that most of us feel and think, is just similar!
Yair, you say that you don't know Islam and you can only judge upon what you see. "אין לו לדיין אלא מה שעיניו רואות" – “The Judge can only decree based on what he sees.” This is very true. I'm afraid that most of what we know about the Islamic world (myself included, I'm no expert by any means) comes from the Western media, which is not very sympathetic. There are 1 billion Muslim people, most of who are just normal human beings, like you and me. This may sound naive but this is truly what I think.
Yes, I agree that there is a significant difference in the way that Jews and Muslims behaved under oppression. My view is that the difference comes from the way people were led to act, the tradition that they kept, the particular interpretation of their religion and tradition, which in both cases could have easily been interpreted in a complete different manner! "טוב שבגויים הרוג" – “Thou shalt kill even the best of the Gentiles” (most Orthodox people don't even know that such a horrible phrase exists in the Talmud, and that's very good that they don't know), could have been interpreted in the same way that Muslims interpreted the more evil verses of the Koran. We both have all the material in the world to take to whichever direction we want - good or evil. The Jews chose the good paths during most of history. Today, and only in the last few generations, manyMuslims choose the evil way. But that's not a necessity that stems from neither Islam nor Judaism! This is a result of a political situation. When people live in their own countries, ruling their own lives, they tend to develop a kind of "self confidence" that sometimes pushes them to be more demanding, more assertive and sometimes even violent. This even works for people of the same ethnicity when they live outside of their own countries - like the Muslims in France. On the other hand, Jews who lived in other people's countries throughout most of history, and didn't have their own country, developed a sort of humbleness, that made them both very ambitions, creative but at the same time very passive when it came to their self defense. This is exactly why the state of Israel was established - to give Jews, both in Israel and outside, the self confidence and feeling of pride and activeness that they lacked. As we well know, for some Israelis, this proposition was so successful, that it even went a little too far...
I'm not justifying any of the atrocities that took place in France, the Netherlands etc., just tried to explain why I see parallels. I know that it's hard for me to explain, I do my best and this is what comes out.
And on top of all that, I see people like GW Bush as bigger terrorists than Bin-Laden (just counting by the number of dead they are responsible for). They are one and the same in my eyes, although one has a beard and the other is a "nice white person in a nice suit".

I think that you've had enough of me for today.

"Happy Purim, Hevraia!" (a quote from Chanan Porat, in Purim of 1994, in the morning after the massacre by the Jewish terrorist, Dr. Baruch Goldstein)