Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Anti-Semitism Part II Ghettos and Causes Separating Jewish Homes From Christians

Nadene Goldfoot                                                
The 1st Crusade was called for by Pope Urban in 1095.  It actually took place from 1096-1099.
Though Jews were the ones Christians were concerned with, Muslims, called Saracens, were caught under the same laws because Jews and Muslims looked the same to the Crusaders.
 

The 2nd  Crusade took place from 1147 to 1149.  "In 1130, when Muslim forces began gaining ground in their own holy war (or jihad) against the Christians, whom they called “Franks, they saw the need for this Crusade.  ” In 1144, the Seljuk General Zangi, governor of Mosul, captured Edessa, leading to the loss of the northernmost Crusader state.  On their way to Judah, called Palestine at this point, they killed Jews throughout Europe.  When there they also killed Jews along with Muslims since they couldn't tell the difference.  They then called Muslims as Saracens.  The novel, THE SOURCE by James Mitchener gives a good outline of this happening.   
The Early Christian Church legislation goes back to the 3rd and 4th Lateran Councils of 1179 and 1215  held in Rome which forbade Jews and Christians to live together in close contact.  "It was their 3rd Lateran or 11th Ecumenical Council in 1179 that was held by Pope Alexander III .  "It was concerned with relations between Jews and Christians. It prohibits Jews and Saracens from having Christian servants, while any Christian who serves them is to be excommunicated. In all lawsuits the testimony of Christians is to be accepted against Jews, just as Jews make use of Jewish witnesses against Christians; anyone who prefers Jewish to Christian witnesses is to be anathematized, "since Jews ought to be subject to Christians, and treated kindly by them only out of humane considerations." A Jew who converts to Christianity is not to be deprived of any of his possessions, "for converts ought to be financially better off than they were before they accepted the Faith." The secular powers are commanded, under pain of excommunication, to ensure that this provision is put into effect. The ban on usury issued by the same Council does not specifically mention Jewish moneylenders. Alexander III, moreover, issued the Bull Sicut Judaeis, protecting Jews from forcible baptism and other molestation."    
                                     
 The  4th Lateran or 12th Ecumenical Council that was held in 1215 by Pope Innocent III, 36 years later.  " with Canon 67 that states that Jews must be prevented from exacting immoderate usury from Christians, and also that Jews must pay tithes on property formerly owned by Christians. Canon 68 complains that in many places Christians, Jews, and Saracens are outwardly indistinguishable, so that occasionally, "by mistake, Christians mix with Jewish or Saracen women" and vice versa. Non-Christians must therefore be compelled to dress differently from Christians (see also Jewish *badge ). It is alleged there that this is also laid down in the Mosaic law.   Jews are not to appear in public at Easter, or on days of Christian lamentation, because they are in the habit of dressing up and railing at Christians on such occasions, nor may they blaspheme against the name of Jesus in any other way. The next canon prohibits Jews from holding public office, and the last insists that converts to Christianity must desist from Jewish observances. An appendix is concerned with the proposed crusade. It lays down in passing that Jews must be compelled to remit interest on debts owed to them by those who take the cross. That all the topics mentioned here reappear in subsequent legislation is a measure of the comparative inefficacy of the Council's decisions."  
                                                                    

The 3rd Crusade included the sacking of Constantinople in 1204.
In a popular movement known as the Children's Crusade in 1212, a motley crew including children, adolescents, women, the elderly and the poor marched all the way from the Rhineland to Italy behind a young man named Nicholas, who said he had received divine instruction to march toward the Holy Land.
                                                                                       
Shepherd's Crusade was part of the 7th one in 1251.  

 By 1291, the Egyptian Mamluks drove the Crusaders out of Palestine and Syria. Crusades continued from 1208 to 1229; from 1211 to 1225; and the 6th Crusade was in 1229, the 7th was in 1239, and the 8th was in 1249.  There were crusades in 1268.   

Spain picked this up with having the Jews live at least from the 13th century in juderias  (under laws including time when gates locked, punishment) provided with walls and gates, they said, for their protection.
All this laid the foundation for the 1492 Spanish Inquisition that carried over to all the European countries.

The Friars in Italy from the 15th century began to press for the effective segregation of the Jews, and so in 1555, Pope Paul IV ordered that Jews in the Papal States should be forced to live in separate quarters.  This was immediately carried out in Rome and became the rule throughout Italy during  the next generation.
                                                                       
The term, "Ghetto" had already been established in Venice in 1517 , and now WAS UNIVERSALLY APPLIED.  . Ghettos for Jews was called Judengasse and was also in Germany, Prague where Judenstadt was well known, and in some Polish cities.  This meant that Jews had their own walled in gated and locked neighborhood where only Jews lived.  It was like living in a small town inside a big city.  They did have their own autonomy and could have their own religious freedoms within this wall as well as a good intellectual life., but it had its problems, too, like being overcrowded since they were not allowed any expansion with growth, and were subject to many fires without an outside fire department. It meant they were not free to travel, something Jews had been doing as traders even in Marco Polo's days.  Alaskans would speak of such treatment as "forced cabin fever!"

Another even more horrible drawback for Jews was that often it was accompanied with forced baptism, the wearing of the Jewish badge and  conversionist sermons, occupational restrictions, etc.  It was as if the Christians wanting the conversions had a captured audience that couldn't escape the ordeal.  They had no freedom of choice in listening.

The Ghetto system was finally abolished in Italy during the French Revolutionary Period from 1789 to 1799, then reintroduced in the 19th century again and finally came to an end when Rome united with the kingdom of Italy in 1870.  The same steps are also similar in other countries

New Jewish settlements that took place in Western Europe differed from Eastern Europe in that from the 16th century onward, the Ghetto system was not introduced.

With Muslims, the original Muslim law had no provisions restricting non-Muslim areas of residence.  It came later in the 18th century when Jews were required to move from the vicinity of mosque neighborhoods and were also restricted in the size of their homes.  Then there was an economic decline, and these small Jewish quarters became slums.

In Persia (today's Iran) , the more eastern Muslim land, Shi'ite fanaticism started from the very beginning  of time Jews came to live there and they enforced distinct Jewish quarters that had to be closed at night and on Sabbaths.  These laws for dhimmi Jews were extended also to Yemen and Morocco where the ghettos were called, Qa'at al-Yahud, or Masbattah or Mellah.

Nazis in Eastern Europe from 1939 to 1942 set up ghettos that were not intended to be permanent Jewish quarters but were part of their plan of liquidation aiming to concentrate, isolate and break the spirit of these Jews before they were murdered.   Jews from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia and other places were transferred to the Warsaw Ghetto and the Lublin Ghetto.  Ghettos were also built in Lodz, Minsk, Vilna, Cracow, Bialystok, Lvov, Riga and Sosnowiec.

Warsaw's Ghetto held 445,000 and there were 200,000 in Lodz.  They were overcrowded immediately and were steadily restricted in space.  All were fenced in and one could not escape, and if caught, were killed.  The Gestapo and SS were the police who took care of this.  The Nazis steadily starved everyone.  There was no relief organizations sending packages.

While Jews were being held in there, they organized and continued with their own culture's activities, kept school work going for the children and helped each other. The Nazis started annihilation of the Jews from the Ghettos in 1941.   In 1943 the Jews  had a Ghetto revolt when it was liquidated in 1943.  Other Ghettos were ended by 1944.

168,000 Jews were killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in the uprising.  "Two months later, some 265,000 Jews had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp, while more than 20,000 others were sent to a forced-labor camp or killed during the deportation process.  They had started with 400,000 Jews being confined and trapped  in 1 square mile of Warsaw.  It had been "sealed off by brick walls, barbed wire and armed guards, and anyone caught leaving was shot on sight."
Acts like these presented has helped to develop anti-Semitic behavior in people through the years.  After 2,000 years, Jews have realized the very important need of having their own state in which to enjoy freedom of enjoying their religion and of life.  

Resource:  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0012_0_11919.html
http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum11.htm
http://www.history.com/topics/crusades
http://www.history.com/topics/crusades
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=0801484855  Benzion Netanyahu - 1998 - ‎Biography & Autobiography 
It is clear, above all, that under Pedro's rule there was no relief from the severe restrictions concerning the right of Jews to be outside the Judarias
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/warsaw-ghetto-uprising
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

Monday, December 28, 2015

The Origins of Anti-Semitism

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                        
Germany's Legislation Against Jews Before WWII Started September 1, 1939
Beginning of the Holocaust when 6,000,000 Were Murdered

It is said by Christian historians and theologians that Jesus was teaching between 27-30 CE when he died at age 37.  This was before the  fall of the 2nd Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE by about 40 years.  He was then placed on the cross, something that had also happened to thousands of Jews prior to his hanging for any misdeed the Romans didn't like.
                                                                 
Emperor Constantine was in charge of the first gathering of Christians in 324 to make decisions about the new religion.  Constantine had involved himself in a fateful battle for control of the Western Roman Empire and had faced Emperor Maxentiius at the Tiber River's Mulvian Bridge in 312.  It was said that Constantine saw a sign that he would conquer, and he did.  He routed and killed his enemy, who was his own brother-in-law. It was 2 Romans fighting over power.   The next year he was truly the Western Roman Emperor, and the Eastern Roman Emperor Licinius signed an Edict of Milan which  ensured religious tolerance for Christians. This ended the "Age of Martyrs, which had begun after Jesus' death.  They were also given specific legal rights like the return of confiscated property and the right to organize dedicated churches.  

"The Jewish Temple had been destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans under Titus. Then Israel was totally destroyed as a nation with the defeat of Bar Kochba  in 135 CE. (It was the hardest war that the Romans had fought and lasted for 3 years from 132-135 CE)  Hundreds of thousands of Jews were massacred. Most of the survivors were dispersed into the Gamut (Diaspora or Exile), many of who were sold into slavery. Yet, thousands remained in Judah and Israel undetected by the Romans who were mainly concerned with Jerusalem.  
                                                                         
Seen in Rome, this depicts the Jewish slaves being forced to carry the loot from the Temple
ARCH OF TITUS
-
Titus astride his chariot, chained Jewish slaves forced to carry the Temple spoils, dragging the
golden menorah and table through the streets of Rome surrounded by Roman soldiers 
who plan to use the slaves to build the coliseum. 

The final utter defeat of Israel was seen by many Christians as a sign that Israel was rejected by her God. The "Church" was seen as the new Israel. Anti-Semitism began to take a firm hold on Christianity. By the time that Constantine called the first general church council at Nicea in 325, anti-Semitism was endemic in the "Church." The Council of Nicea was attended by 318 bishops, none of whom were of Jewish ancestry."
                                                                         
Emperor Constantine unified the Roman Empire under his rule in 324 and rebuilt his seat of power in largely Christian Byzantium, renamed Constantinople and today is called Istanbul in Turkey.  His ruling class grew, establishing a growing Christianity in the Roman and then the Byzantine Empires.

The Council of Nicea was then held in 325 in Iznik, Turkey.  They then decided on the divinity of God the Son  (Jesus) and God the Father.  After this council, orthodox Christians agreed on the critical point that Jesus and God were equally divine and created of the same substance.  At this time, people still believed in the Roman gods such as Jupiter, Juno, Mars, etc.

The belief had included gods leaving Mt. Olympus and consorting with humans and producing half-godlike people.  Julius Caesar (13 July 100 BCE-15 March 44 BCE)  was declared a demigod by the Roman Senate. 

The council also condemned the practice of money lending by clerics and standardized their holiday of Easter.   As it was to happen, the only trade allowed to Jews was the money lending, for they were then not ever allowed to own land or join the different trade unions.  It had been deemed at this meeting that money-lending was beneath the Christian to be involved in.

Nicea in 325, with its theological anti-Judaism, laid the groundwork for anti-Semitic legislation of later church councils. The Council of Antioch (341 CE) prohibited Christians from celebrating Passover with the Jews. The Council of Laodicea in the same century forbade Christians from observing the Jewish (and biblical) Sabbath. (Some Christians had been observing both Sunday and the Sabbath.) Christians were also forbidden from receiving gifts from Jews or matzoh (4) from Jewish festivals and "impieties."   What they were doing was ending all Jewish connections with their friends and relatives.  

"Early Christianity grew gradually in Rome and the Roman Empire from the 1st to 4th centuries, when it was legalized and, in its Nicene form became the state church of the Roman Empire with the Edict of Thessalonica of 380.  Hellenistic polytheistic traditions survived pockets of Greece throughout Late Antiquity. The Neoplatonic Academy was shut down by Justinian I in 529, a date sometimes taken to mark the end of Classical Antiquity."  So it took about 200 more years before people dropped their belief in polytheism of the Greek and Roman gods.  

The 4 gospels were not placed in a canon yet at this time.  This took centuries to do. Therefore, it's really hard to judge just when they were written.   "Though the Early Church used the Old Testament according to the canon of the Septuagint (LXX),perhaps as found in the Bryennios List or Melito's list, the Apostles did not otherwise leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead, the New Testament developed over time. Jesus was figured to have been born in November of 5 BCE and died on a Friday, April 3, 33 CE, age 37.  He is said to have been born to Joseph, a Jewish Carpenter and his young wife, Mary.  She was pregnant before they had married.  
Writings attributed to the apostles circulated amongst the earliest Christian communities. The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles," which Christians (Greek: Χριστιανός) called "gospels," and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament."
Mark had been written sometime after 70 CE.  It's thought he was writing to the Greek gentiles and was doing this from Rome.  That was a good 40  or more years after the death of Jesus.  "According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus' crucifixion was authorized by Roman authorities at the insistence of leading Jews (Judeans) from the Sanhedrin.  No Jew, no matter what year, would insist that mad Romans, who had already hung thousands of undeserving Jews of such a fate, would demand that another be hung.  The Romans didn't need prodding to do this.  They had heard that Jesus said he was king of the Jews and that was enough.  There could be no king of oppressed people who were being occupied by the Emperor of Rome.  That was a political eye-wink to get along with the Romans and win them over to convert to Christianity, which Emperor Constantine  finally did by 324.    " The story explains for this small sect of Jesus followers that survived the Roman-Jewish War and why God permitted the destruction of the Temple.  This had to have been written after 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed."  

Matthew was written about 10 years later in 80 CE to Jews and he was doing this from Syria. Anti-Jewish rhetoric increases.   First, a series of "woes" are pronounced against the Pharisees: "You testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets...You snakes, you brood of vipers!  How can you escape being sentenced to hell?  (Matthew 23: 31-33). He includes the demise of the Temple, so had to have known this had really happened in order to include it.  He wrote: ""His [Jesus's] blood be on us and on our children!" (Matthew 27:25). This so-called "blood guilt" text has been interpreted to mean that all Jews, of Jesus' time and forever afterward, accept responsibility for the death of Jesus."  This is why thousands of years later, people have still be accusing Jews of killing their god.  

Luke was the next to be written 10 years later than Matthew in 90 at least. ."Luke was a Greek native of the Hellenistic city of Antioch in Syria."  He was possibly a doctor and disciple of Paul, formerly called Saul.   He is not writing to anyone in particular but just giving history as he thought it had happened.  He wrote about Herod (73 BCE-4 BCE).  He wrote that Mary's expected son (she didn't even know she was pregnant) would reign over the house of Jacob-which would infer that he would be the king of the Jews and would be called the son of the highest forever and there would be no end to his kingdom.  " The earliest manuscript of the Gospel, dated circa AD 200, ascribes the work to Luke; as did Irenaeus, writing circa AD 180, and the Muratorian fragment from AD 170." It's thought that Luke wrote "Acts".  The book of Acts is a narrative about this “parting of the ways from Judaism.

John,  the hardest gospel on Jews, was written sometime between 90 and 100 and it seemed to be finished by 100.  He was in West Anatolia when he wrote this.  This then was written 70 years after the fact.  "The Gospel of John collectively describes the enemies of Jesus as "the Jews". In none of the other gospels do "the Jews" demand, en masse, the death of Jesus; instead, the plot to put him to death is always presented as coming from a small group of priests and rulers, the Sadducees.  John's gospel is thus the primary source of the image of "the Jews" acting collectively as the enemy of Jesus, which later became fixed in the Christian mind.".  He has dialogue in his story.  "I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you seek to kill me, because my word finds no place in you. I speak of what I have seen with my Father, and you do what you have heard from your father. They answered him, "Abraham is our father." Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would do what Abraham did. ... You are of your father the devil."  

" It wasn't many decades until attacks on Jews and their synagogues became commonplace. The Jew was a second-class citizen, somewhat protected by law, but merely tolerated, something akin to the dhimmi status that is given to non-Moslems in Islamic countries."  "(Paul) commanded the Christians to "provoke the Jews to jealousy" with righteous living. Unfortunately, Christians kept only half the commandment; they provoked the Jews."

Many Protestants now believe, from reading the Gospels, that "The Children of Israel were God's original chosen people by virtue of an ancient covenant, but by rejecting Jesus they forfeited their chosenness - and now, by virtue of a New Covenant (or "testament"), Christians have replaced the Jews as God's chosen people, the Church having become the "People of God."

The  transformation of Christianity from a Jewish sect consisting of followers of a Jewish Jesus, to a separate religion is found to be often dependent on the tolerance of Rome while proselytizing among Gentiles loyal to the Roman empire, to understand how the story of Jesus came to be recast in an anti-Jewish form as the Gospels took their final form, for to make their point that Christianity was the only religion viable, they had to put down Judaism and drive it out.  It was more like today's political 2 party-system with Trump and Hillary running for the presidency with each telling vile things about the other, only Judaism didn't say a thing about Christianity except to teach their people that they were to beware of false messiahs as Moses had warned them.  

I have traced the origin of anti-Semitism to the Gospels.  I write this because anti-Semitism is found in these early writings of which most Christians have read.  Anti-Semitism still exists today, showing up physically against Jews and politically even in the UN which is supposed to be such a fair body of decision-makers.  People have this attitude towards Jews and they have no idea where it comes from, or don't they?  Could they just be in denial, not wanting to face the fact that their very own beloved Bible is teaching them to dislike Jews?                        
Pope Benedict XVI 

The Catholics were the first Christian group to practice anti-Semitism and the first to try to change.  "The Catholic Church issued its most authoritative teaching on the issue in its 1965 Second Vatican Council document "Nostra Aetate," which revolutionized the church's relations with Jews by saying  Christ's death could not be attributed to Jews as a whole at the time or today."   Pope Paul VI on October 28, 1965 wrote this.  It was "Pope Benedict XVI" who has pardoned Jews already in 2011, but it's hard to see what imprint he has made on people's attitudes.  He had made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity in a new book, "Jesus of Nazareth-Part II."  

""Holocaust survivors know only too well how the centuries-long charge of 'Christ killer' against the Jews created a poisonous climate of hate that was the foundation of anti-Semitic persecution whose ultimate expression was realized in the Holocaust," said Elan Steinberg of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants."  This climate of hate and distrust had survived the centuries right to the time of the establishing of Massachusetts in the facts of the governor, Peter Styvasant, turning away 23 Jewish boat refugees from his shore as undesirables in 1640.  Anti-Semitism has lasted in one form or another, even in the USA.  

We're down to only 14 million Jews today.  That's 0.02% of the world population.  We're almost an extinct people that have existed since the 2nd millennium BCE from Abraham.  That's over 4,000 years of knowing our history in detail.  Christian Crusaders swarmed down on Jews and killed them outright for being Jews.  The Spanish Inquisition burned Jews at the stake, tortured Jews on their torture machines, and the Holocaust burned 6 million of Jews.  In 1942, a Catholic priest told a rabbi with his congregation in Germany, "`It is not just a matter of deportation. You will not die there of hunger and disease. They will slaughter all of you there, old and young alike, women and children, at once--it is the punishment that you deserve for the death of our Lord and Redeemer, Jesus Christ."  
                                                          
At the Western Wall at night

And here we are with Israel as predicted.  Surely it's about time to join the Catholic Pope in pardoning today's Jews for something the Roman army did over 2,000 years ago when Jews were under THEIR occupation.  It's time to cut out the anti-Semitism by judging all Jews the same.  How about sampling our Golden Rule-a little different from how you have heard it from Jesus.  Hillel, a rabbi and president of the Sanhedrin of the 1st century BCE:  said it first as "Don't do to others what you don't want done to yourself."  Actually, my source found that it was Confucius who said it first in the 5th century BCE as "What thou dost not like when done to thyself, do not unto others ." 

An interesting note is that Constantine did not change in temperament or really "get" religion.  "Constantine, only one year after convening the Council of Nicea, had his own son (Crispus) put to death. Later he suffocated Fausta (his wife) in an overheated bath. Then he had his sister's son flogged to death and her husband strangled. (1) It was also during the reign of Constantine that the cross became a sacred symbol in Christianity, just as it had been in pagan religions.(2) Throughout his reign, Constantine treated the bishops as political aides. He agreed to enforce whatever opinion the majority of the bishops formulated."  Truly,  life is so political.  
                                                                       
Me in my very new Safed apartment on David Elezar, 1980 waiting for my lift,
 when Israel was 32 years old
Now it's had its 67th birhday.  .
After years of slavery at the hands of Titus; after years being locked into the ghetto without sunlight or air; after being hunted by Himmler, rounded up by the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz; after graffiti on some of Rome’s walls that is still virulently anti-Semitic; it is enough to sit here as a Jew, and to feel proud and grateful of my heritage..  To be a witness to history and to know that Israel is 67 years old, is to know that our promises are being kept.  

Add on: 12/30/15  New Testament is written in koine Greek by 100 CE.  Some parts may have been in Aramaic first.   By 400 CE was the stabilization of Canon of 27 books;  Jerome translated it into Latin Vulgate and by 1382 was the first complete Bible into English by John Wycliffe.  The King James version was completed by scholars appointed by King James in 1611- 44 years before Jews were allowed to enter England in 1655.  

Resource:  http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/timeline 10.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Milvian_Bridge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon
http://www.unrv.com/culture/major-roman-god-list.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testament
http://www.biblicalfoundations.org/when-was-jesus-born-and-when-did-he-die/comment-page-1/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/02/pope-jews-jesus-death_n_830140.html
http://www.churchhistory101.com/council-nicea-325.php
http://messianicfellowship.50webs.com/nicea.html
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=Luke
http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/luke357926.shtml
http://www.jewishmag.com/174mag/jewish_rome/jewish_rome.htm
http://www.tribunesandtriumphs.org/roman-gods/roman-gods-family-tree.htm
New Testament-King James Version
http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html
added: 1/1/16  http://cjcuc.com/site/2015/12/03/orthodox-rabbinic-statement-on-christianity/
added 1/3/16  https://www.rt.com/news/327794-vatican-recognition-treaty-palestine/

Sunday, December 27, 2015

With Palestinians Today, Violence Is The Norm

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  
Qaradawi, Religious Muslim Leader Egging On the Killing of Jews and Israelis
From Egypt but kicked out-Taken in by King of Qatar, Friend of the USA
He also has his sermons on TV every week.  Though in a wheel chair, he said he'd strangle a Jew if he got his hands on one.  Some religion of peace for him!  

Since October 2015, young Palestinians have been stabbing everyone near them, mostly with kitchen knives from their homes.  They're almost committing suicide by their actions for they have to be stopped, and in such a frenzy that they have worked themselves into, there's one main solution before they kill, to stop them by any means.
                                                                       
   
There have been about 120 such attacks and assaults against the Israeli population  which is about one a day on the average.  This had ended in the deaths of 20 Israelis who weren't rescued by a maniac wielding a knife at them out of the blue.  It's ended in 80 of these deadly Palestinians being stopped  permanently, usually shot by the security forces or even civilians that are armed today for their own protection.
                                                                           
Instead of making Islam a religion of Peace, they want all of  Jerusalem and try to keep Jews away from THEIR Mosque which is built over the Jews' 2nd Temple of 586 BCE-70 CE that was built over their 1st Temple built by King Solomon c961 BCE-586 BCE.
Jews caught moving their lips in prayer are caught by the Muslim police and punished.  Among people who respect each other, it would not be the insurmountable position Israel finds itself in today,
but Israel find the Palestinians in the role of their antagonists.   
Why is this happening?  What has been happening in their schools, for instance?  Or homes?   They have been constantly taught in school and on their TV stations and at home by their parents  to hate Israelis and that ALL of Israel belongs to them.  They are a brainwashed group since birth.  Martyrs in their culture are worshipped for killing Jews.  Parks are named for them.  Anything getting a name is named for such killers.  It isn't Superman  or Batman they idolize; it's Lex Luthor and the Joker!  Their idea of good is our idea of evil.
                                                                           
If knifing is distasteful to them and they are wealthy enough to have a car and drive, this is their choice of a weapon against Israelis.  There have been numerous attacks of driving into a crowd in the attempt to kill, and often they have. Here 11 were injured  including a baby in Jerusalem by this car ramming the crowd.  14 people had been waiting at this bus stop.  The driver was from East Jerusalem and had an axe in his car.
                                                                           
Jewish Victim of Stabbing
Anat Berko is a criminologist and an Israeli parliamentarian.  She's  written extensively about the motivation of suicide bombers in the Palestinian conflict for Israel has also had this type of a killer.  She calls today's phenomenon the "Martyr-Mania."  A survey was released by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, today's Palestinian town 10 km north of Jerusalem, and they found that 2/3 of Palestinians SUPPORT the knife attacks.  What mother would think this smart for her son to attempt when more Palestinians wind up dead, not the Israeli being attacked?  A mother not using logic.  She's also been brainwashed to feel proud of a son who has given his life to the cause.

And just what is the cause?  It is the mistaken belief that Israel belongs to the Palestinians.   It didn't belong to them in the ancient days and it doesn't belong to them in today's world. Even by the middle of the 1800's there were very few Arabs living in Palestine.   I'll tell you why.
                                                                         
1. From 1010 BCE to 70 CE, the land was called Israel with the southern part called Judah later.  It was in Jewish hands from King David to the 2nd Temple burned down by the Romans during a long Roman Occupation.  That's over 1,000 years of ancient history.

2. Palestinians?  Jews and Arabs were referred to this name if they were living in Palestine, the name given by the Romans.  The Arabs entered the land following the Russian Jews who came in the 1880's and earlier escaping the pogroms and anti-Semitism they had been suffering under during these past 1,000 years being homeless.The Arabs were seeking jobs from the Jews who were creating a country again.
                                                                         
Grand Mufti-Sherif of Jerusalem
     3. From 1929 on, Arabs were being instigated to attack Jews by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Sherif of Jerusalem against the advice of Emir Feisal, head Arab who became king of Iraq and was the highest Arab of the period and the best educated.  It was the ruling English holding the mandate for 30 years that kept out Jews and helps Arabs enter that went against the ruling of the League of Nations and did not keep to their job description.  They were to help the Jews create their Jewish Homeland. Therefore, the Arabs grew in population while the Jews, even during WWII, were kept away.  Only a trickle were able to enter.
                                                                           
1948- 5 minutes after becoming Israel
Attacked by regular armies 
4. The United Nations also voted for Israel's existence and accepted them into the world of Nations.  Everything was done legally.  Israel had 650,000  souls to start with which have grown quickly to 6 million Jews and 1.7 million Arabs.  A tiny tiny Democratic state; it can't hold anymore people.  As it is now, Jews have to be wary of being close to an Arab at this rate.

As a culture, the two people could not be more different.  To L'Chaim is a Jewish saying meaning "To Life!"  Arabs live in a world of loving death, a martyr's death which gives them 72  virgins in their netherworld. It is said that if a Jewish man or woman has to go to the doctor and doesn't like what he says, he'll go to another, for life is the goal.  We have to beat the odds and live.  The result is that we have excellent doctors who know their stuff.  When a Jew dies, he dies and waits for the Messiah to come and recall those deceased again.  As we die, we say the Shema if at all possible.  We go to join our fathers.  A premature death is looked upon as a great misfortune, and we hope to die in a good OLD age.  May we all live till age 120 like Moses.

 Yet, Jews and Muslims are not Christians, so are lumped together by people expecting them to live together peacefully because why?  That they each believed in ONE G'd?  That should be glue that is the common ingredient to keep the peace,  but each hears something different in their own teachings.  There are parts of the Koran that teach hatred for Jews, just as the Christian Bible has in the Gospels.  These negative parts seem to make far more impact on their people than any lesson in the Koran teaching peace or the Bible teaching love, at least as far as Jews are concerned.    Ever since Abraham gave Ishmael and Isaac life, the two branches have had their disagreements-really like any half-brothers might.  They were different and their descendants still differ.

Jews have NOT been occupiers of the Palestinians.  Look at Gaza.  They've been under the Hamas spell ever since their one bout with voting.  I still think it was a rigged vote unless the brain-washing was already in effect against Israel, and it probably was.  As for Judea and Samaria, they have been under Fatah's ruling from Abbas.  It's been a disaster as well.  They're been given tons of money by their friends and where has it gone?  Down tunnels that lead to kidnapping or killing Israelis.  It's a shame, too, because Israel had great plans for the Palestinians and were going to have a life like living in Utopia if they had been willing.

Israel is made up of people who have been successful under horrid conditions themselves, blessed with intelligence.  They've produced more than their share of outstanding people, and some of their energy was going into making a peaceful part of that world for both Palestinians and themselves.
                                                                           
 Theodor Herzsl (1860-1904) newspaper reporter had written a book about how to do this in 1895 called "THE JEWISH STATE."  He was the founder of Political Zionism.  He had understood that Jews were a people whose assimilation was impracticable and whose plight would deteriorate owing to its social and economic position.  The solution to him was the founding of a Jewish state. BY INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT, and that's what happened in the end.  He had started the ball rolling by contacting important people:  Turkish leaders and Jewish leaders.  He even had secured the sympathy of the German kaiser William II.  The only way he could ever succeed in carrying it out was to get Jewish financiers.
                                                                           
King Feisal (1883-1933), a Hashemite of Syria first in 1920,
 then finally  of Iraq from August 23, 1921 to 1933.  
 The Balfour Declaration was the outgrowth with it's remark about IF the Arabs remain peaceful, but Husseini threw the monkey-wrench into the pot and stirred it up. Then the French cheated Feisal out of being a king of Syria  and he had to find another-Iraq.  He had come from Saudi Arabia.  "Faisal fostered unity between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to encourage common loyalty and promote pan-Arabism in the goal of creating an Arab state that would include Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Fertile Crescent. " This seems  like what ISIS is trying to do, doesn't it?  Feisal was trying to create a caliphate and that's exactly what is in the ISIS' mind.  
                                   
Really, the only people hurt today after Israel's 67 years of existence and G-d willing, thousands more in the future, are the Arabs who have cheated themselves out of happy productive life.  By refusing to accept peace with the Jews and thereby accepting their own state-they have been in constant turmoil.  They've given the Jews a terribly rough go of it, who have continued to live and prosper and to be creative.  Adversity is something the Jews sadly have become used to dealing with.
                                                                     
 Someday, when peace really comes to this world, they will be ready with their fig tree and a glass of wine to drink a L'Chaim to- TO LIFE!

Resource:Washington Post, Martyr-Mania, William Booth and Ruth Eglash
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.691740
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramallah