“And you should love God with all your heart…”
This is a verse written to the Israeli people by Moses, but the message I think transcends personal destinies.
I wonder if the Palestinian people would listen to it. They would have to be taught its secret, which is the great human problem: how could my suffering have been for the best?
How can a people love their creator when they are always seeing wrongs and hurts? (This is a question for all times and all people).
I don’t know.
Who can define another soul? Except insofar as knowing that we all yearn for something that will turn sorrow into glory and joy.
Each one lives inside their own world.
But, looking as an outsider across the family tree, I wonder if the Palestinians are the group most able to lead the Arab world from its current turmoil and inner, self-destructive terror.
The Muslims, most especially the Arab Muslims who are the relatives of the Israeli people, were colonized and recreated in an image that is not their own. The deep cultural emotions that are the frightening blaze in the Arab spirit, are often attributed to the fall of a golden civilization as if it were a matter of insecurity only. Might it also be a matter of freedom to self-create and not be created?
The Jewish people have yearned to be free in our own land.
Don’t we all have a right to be ourselves?
The Palestinians were mistreated by their brothers. And brothers hurting brothers is the first sin after Eden. It is an early sin and a hard one because it is easier to blame the world than ourselves.
The Palestinians are the leftover of an empire that devolved from a caliphate that was segregated amongst foreign empires who cut the lands up further to ensure lasting control and dependency. More than anyone in the middle east whose nationality is a modern myth, they know that to be Muslim is to know that belief is more important than flags, and the rulers are for allowing order, not to be owners of the people. (I believe this because of the Muslim rule of India, but I do not know much history, so different from every other empire that sought plunder and wealth as highest goals).
The Palestinians have been lied to for too long by leaders who resemble the surrounding nations, and have always been paid by them too. They spoke peace with the Israeli’s and promised their people conquest. They lied to both and tried to dance between the shadows.
This is an age of information, and there is no more excuse for believers not helping those whom they declare their inspiration. Why do they fight, without caring for the orphans? What is the pillar of Zakat if not that the Muslim care for his fellow believers? How can that be cut down by those who love anger more than their God?
Leaders are dangerous in every country, to every people. We should fear them more than each other, though we need them for order.
Doesn’t the Arab street look to Rammala and the Palestinians to spark its hope for change, belief in forcing change? This is well known, all across, from Egypt to Iraq; even to Pakistan.
This is a letter that is not concerned with anything but this: peace be upon us.
May we love our creator.
