Why Lasting Peace in the "Holy Land" is Not Religiously Possible

The daily brutality the world is witnessing in the "holy land" between the Jewish state of Israel and the Palestinians trapped in Gaza is overwhelming. From the Hamas attack on Israeli soldiers and Israeli civilians, including children and women, on October 7th, which killed an estimated 1,400 people, to Israel's massive ongoing bombings of Gaza, which has to date killed over 10,000 people, including 4,324 children and 2,823 women, it is clear that violence is not the answer.

To end the violence, we first need to identify its source. Regarding the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas-led Palestinians from Gaza, this article does a great job of explaining the brutal conditions the Jewish state of Israel forces Palestinians to endure. However, there is absolutely no excuse for the Palestinians to have attacked and killed children and women and other civilians. Likewise, there is absolutely no rational reason for Israel to occupy the Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem and to keep the 2.5 million Palestinians in Gaza living in an open-air prison camp.

When we look for the reason for Israel's expanding occupation of Palestinian land and the brutality the Jewish state inflicts on the Palestinians, we find the source is the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament. In Genesis 15:18 the ancient Jewish clergymen who wrote the Bible claim God told Abram/Abraham:

"In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:"

The river of Egypt is the Nile, which is part of Egypt. The Euphrates river flows through Iraq, Syria and Turkey. This strongly indicates that once Israel ethnically cleanses Gaza, the Palestinian West Bank and Palestinian East Jerusalem of Palestinians, their next target via a biblical mandate will be Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Some people may think this is far-fetched, but looking at the great importance Israeli government officials place on the Hebrew Bible, it is not at all far-fetched. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon openly said in a speech at the UN that the Hebrew Bible is Israel's deed to the land. As Genesis 15:18 makes clear, that biblical land deed includes much, much more than the land owned by the Palestinians. Danon said,

"We do have biblical rights to the land. Whether you are Christian, Muslim, or Jew - you read the Bible, you read the stories of the Bible - it's all there. This is our deed to the land. That's biblical."

Israeli PM Netanyahu, who holds Hebrew Bible studies in his government residence, recently sent a letter to Israeli army members. In his letter Netanyahu referenced the nation of Amalek. According to the Hebrew Bible Amalek fought the Jews when God allegedly delivered them from slavery in Egypt (there is not archeological record of the Jewish exodus from Egypt). God then, according to the Jewish clergymen who wrote the Bible, gave this command, found at 1 Samuel 15:3, to the Israelites:

"Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass."

This does not at all bode well for the civilian Palestinian children, women and men of Gaza.

All of the different "holy" scriptures of the Abrahamic man-made "revealed" religions promote religious violence and the idea of The Supreme Intelligence/God being cruel. Here is a list of some of the cruelty promoted in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles. Here is a list of some of the cruelty promoted in the Quran. Here is a list of some of the cruelty promoted in the Book of Mormon.

Albert Einstein warned us that if we want to survive in the nuclear age, we must change our thinking. Einstein 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."

In the realm of religion, Deism can be that new way of thinking that helps humanity evolve out of the ancient "revealed" religions and their religious violence and cruelty. Deism is free of any and all man-made "holy" scriptures. In Deism, the only Word of God is the Universe and Creation itself. In The Age of Reason Thomas Paine did a beautiful job of making this clear when he wrote:

"I believe it is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a Word of God can unite. The Creation speaks a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they may be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read.

"It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this Word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God."

This, in and of itself, makes religious violence through Deism impossible. Add to this Thomas Paine's statement "I detest everything that is cruel" and it's obvious there is no room in Deism for cruelty or religious violence. This is a huge necessary evolutionary jump in thinking in regard to humanity's ideas about The Supreme Intelligence/God! This new way of thinking is essential to put an end to religious violence. We need, as Thomas Paine called for, a Deism revolution in religion that will replace the ungodly and damaging "revealed" religions with reason and nature-based Deism! Lives are depending on it.