We are in Mali now

Had the state of Israel not come into being in 1948, could fundamentalist Islam ever have gained all the traction it has to undertake the things done in its name these last few decades? Today's news sees British forces committed to Mali. Israel is also reported to have bombed Syria. Here then is my position over Israel. It is a hard one but I emphasize I am not anti Semetic. I do not deny the Holocaust. What happened then was utterly appalling and so were other pogroms in history. To treat the Jews as "God's Killers" is a terrible sin.

My view however is pretty simplistic. Two wrongs do not make a right. I believe there is only one true basis for Jews to have land in Israel/Palestine. That is on the basis of universally accepted legal title. Anything else will not do. I believe  that the way the state of modern Israel came into being has fed the distrust of the Arab world towards the West and all else that has followed from that. I contend that the modern state of Israel was founded on terrorism and that thereby it cannot claim to be blessed by a God. Here is the evidence. British troops killed there and elsewhere. The leaders of that terrorist organisation became the leaders of the new state. It was the British government which labelled the Irgun a terrorist organisation.

Under Hitler the Jews were persecuted for about 14 years. Under the 1948 state, Israel has oppressed Palestinians for 65 years. The problem shows no sign of easing. The West's preferred solution is to persuade the two groups to split the land and live in harmony. Great if it can be achieved, no sign of that happening. I have another solution. Three of the world's major religions claim the soul of Jerusalem. If they lived up to their claims of peace you might have thought they could have shared the land harmoniously. Funnily enough that does not seem to have happened. Instead most of the Arabic world sees Israel as an American colony repeating what happened in Crusader times.

So here is the solution: Israel/Palestine is returned to what would now be a UN mandate. It becomes an international state, not a sovereign state. All those living there have to pool their sovereignty. The issue of land ownership is sorted out by an International Tribunal on the basis of proper judgements of land title. If this were achieved, would the terror of Fundamentalist Islam lose a lot of its appeal?