Palestinian pyromania
Palestinian pyromania

The Arab world is celebrating the rash of forest fires in Israel which has displaced tens of thousands of Israelis and has destroyed homes and forest land. In the Palestinian villages parties, songs and dances have been held to celebrate the "heroism” of the Palestinian pyromaniacs. Even when officials of the Palestinian Authority, who subsequently offered help during the crisis, condemned the arson attacks, the condemnation was done in a very revealing way.

They decried the arson and the burning of the trees in the Haifa area as " those are our trees and our land" .Only later as an afterthought expressed concern for the injured.

Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint (Arab) List declared before all the evidence came in the following;  “To my regret, someone decided to exploit this dreadful situation to incite and to lash out at an entire community. Whoever loves our homeland has to focus right now on putting out the fires and helping the injured and not on fanning hate.”

Aymen Odeh is right, but the hatred and fanatic zeal of those that hate was expressed by his celebrating fellow Arabs and has clearly indicated who loves this land and who does not.

We read in the book of Genesis the following regarding the Philistines during the time of Isaac;

 

...for he ( Isaac)  had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father's servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth. Then Abimelech said to Isaac, "Go away from us, for you are too powerful for us.…(Genesis 26 14-16)

During a time of drought and famine their hatred for Isaac and his people compelled Philistines to fill the life giving wells with earth, just so they could not be shared by Isaac's family.

Not much has changed, although the Philistines, who lived in Canaan a millenium before the rise of Islam, have long faded into the edges of history.

Islamic theology cannot countenance another spiritual entity taking control over land that had already been liberated as "waqf" land. That is the reason that you will never hear a Muslim leader discussing a 'two state for two peoples solution". They will only demand a "two state solution," but only under their control. To accept that there could be another "people" in control of any of this land is anathema.

Therefore burning down this land is preferable than Jews controlling it. Just as stopping up the wells is preferable to Isaac drinking from it.

Nothing is new in this ancient of lands. The same passions replay themselves as \is a cyclical spiral ascending top its ultimate purpose. May we be spared the pain and difficulties of that ascent.