The ongoing religious violence between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Gentiles has no end in sight. Ever since Israel started what was to become known as the Six Day War in June of 1967, during which Israel started its illegal and brutal occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem, among other areas, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament-based religious violence has never ended.
Why has it not ended? The answer lies in the belief in the ungodly and religious violence promoting Hebrew Bible, what Christians refer to as the Old Testament. The Israeli government carries out its operations based on the cruel and nonsensical teachings and claims found in the Hebrew Bible/OT. Objectively reading the Hebrew Bible/OT it is obvious the ancient Jewish clergymen who authored it, had the primary goal of promoting Jewish superiority and Israel over all. This can be seen in Deuteronomy 7:6, which claims God has chosen the Jews "above all people that are upon the face of the Earth", and Leviticus 25:44-46, which has God telling the Jews not to own their fellow Jews as slaves, but to instead take all of their slaves from the Gentile people, and that the Gentiles and their children will be their slaves "for ever".
The Hebrew Bible also claims God gave a gift of real estate to the Jews, which they were to use for their Jewish state of Israel. Even though present-day Israel's borders were set by Resolution 181 of the General Assembly of the United Nations, and which Israeli officials agreed to as evidenced by a letter from Elihu Elath, born Epstein, who was a representative of Israel to the US and who later became Israel's first ambassador to the US, to US President Truman and the US State Department clearly stating:
"My dear Mr. President, I have the honor to notify you that the State of Israel has been proclaimed as an independent republic within the frontiers approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its Resolution of November 29, 1947."
Just as the Islamic terrorist Osama bin Laden believed laws created by people, such as the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, should take a back seat to what he incorrectly believed were God's laws in the Quran, so Israeli officials believe laws and rules created by people, such as UN Resolution 181, should take a back seat to what they incorrectly believe are laws and rules from God that are in their Hebrew Bible.
The Hebrew Bible gives the borders for the Jewish state of Israel. In Genesis 15:18, among other places, it is claimed that God said Israel will have all of the land between the Euphrates River and the river of Egypt. Traditional Jewish understanding is that the river of Egypt is the Nile. That means that the Palestinians and their land are not the final target of Israel, as all the land from the Euphrates River to the Nile they believe they have a God-given right to. This delusion, that God gave them all of that land, is why peace between the Jewish state of Israel and the Palestinians is not possible. It is why during decades of "peace talks" between Israel and Palestine, all the while the peace talks were going on, Israel continued to expand its land theft and illegal and cruel occupation of Palestinian land. Belief in this dangerous and religious violence-spawning nonsense is believed by the rank and file religious Jews. One such religious Jew made this clear when he told NPR, "As a religious Jew, I believe God gave us the land of Israel, and some day, all the way to the Euphrates [River], as it says in the Book of Ezekiel." Since US politicians from both parties use the US military to fight Israel's wars, as was done in the Iraq War, and US politicians from both parties use US taxpayer dollars to pay for the war fought for Israel's benefit, based on the size of Israel in the Hebrew Bible, people in the US military have a lot of fighting ahead of them, and American taxpayers have a huge financial burden ahead of them (the financial cost of the Iraq War, $2.4 TRILLION, is still being paid off)!
Evidence of the infection of ancient religious myths from Judaism and the Hebrew Bible in the thinking, beliefs and ensuing actions of present-day Israeli political leaders is seen in statements made by Israeli PM Netanyahu. For example, he believes Jerusalem has been Israel's capital for 3,000 years, as does Israeli President Rivlin. Netanyahu often describes Jerusalem as Israel's "eternal and undivided capital" (the Bible is big on "eternal", "for ever", etc.). Contrary to Netanyahu and other Israeli Jewish leaders, historically Israel ceased to exist around 150 BCE, when the Assyrians conquered and destroyed it. Jews living in the Roman Province of Judea, in the Jewish Wars against Rome (66-135 CE), attempted to recreate Israel, but failed. It was during the Jewish Roman Wars that the Second Temple was destroyed.
US politicians from both parties also promote the falsehoods promoted by Israel. For example, the legislature of South Carolina, along with many other state legislatures in the US, has issued an official proclamation propagating this Bible-based lie, among other Bible-based lies. The proclamation states in part: "Whereas, Israel has been granted her lands under and through the oldest recorded deed as reported in the Old Testament, a tome of scripture held sacred and reverenced by Jew and Christian, alike, as the acts and words of God;..."
The Jewish state of Israel exercises immense pressure and influence on US politicians from both parties. They do this primarily through the Israel lobby. Barack Obama exposed this fact in his memoir A Promised Land. He wrote that US politicians who "criticized Israel policy too loudly risked being tagged as 'anti-Israel' (and possibly anti-Semitic) and [were] confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election." Also, senior U.S. Defense official Douglas Macgregor, who is a Republican and Trump loyalist, has made statements that are in agreement with Obama's observation of Israel and its lobby. Macgregor recently said US politicians get "very, very rich" by doing as the Israel lobby wants. He also stated, regarding the most powerful and wealthy element of the Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that AIPAC has "enormous quantities of money that over many years have cultivated an enormous influence in power in Congress." The last US President who seriously stood up to Israel and its powerful lobby was President John F. Kennedy, who was in the process of requiring the Israel lobby to register as a foreign agent and who was demanding inspections of Israel's Dimona nuclear program, to ensure Israel was not building nuclear weapons of mass destruction, at the time of his assassination on November 22, 1963.
To put an end to the ability of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, as well as of all the various "holy" books, of creating and prolonging religious violence, we must educate people to the fact that the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is NOT the Word of God. Deism's wonderful qualities of recognizing and teaching that God gave us reason and not religion, and that the only possible Word of God is the Universe we are all living parts of, will eventually, once we reach a large enough number of people with Deism, end the "revealed" religions and their inherent religious violence. Deism is a new and necessary way of thinking if we want to put an end to religious violence, especially now that we are in a nuclear age. The world needs to take this sage advice from Albert Einstein, who wrote:
"The world that we have made as a result of the level of thinking that we have done so far, has created problems we cannot solve at the level of thinking at which we created them .... We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humankind is to survive."
Deism truly is the "substantially new manner of thinking" that will help us overcome the potentially devastating and irreversible man-made problems facing us today.
