DEADLY CONCEPT -- HOLY LAND

People assume, because it has been drummed into their minds from infnacy on, that anything stated in the Bible has to be the infallible final authority. They don't read very much of the book and seldom do so critically. Those who do read it cover to cover in other than a state of starry-eyed daydreaming, often end up in the agnostic and atheist camps.

To cover all the inconsistencies and non sequiters in that revered tome would require several volumes and is best left to full time scholars with a lot more time and professional background than I can aspire to at this advanced age. Besides, such a work would get tedious and boring to the average reader and accomplish little if anything even in the academic circles it would be intended to interest.

I'm going to focus my attention on a common mindset that plagued me until relatively recently just because of the relentless background brainwashing just about every Christian American has been subjected to from infancy.

That mindset: Palestine is the holy land and the promised homeland of the Jewish people and they must have it before the "age" can be concluded.

Even after I saw that "the age" was a lot of nonsense, that engrained concept still permeated my mind. I was sympathetic to Jewish aspirations and totally discounted the feelings and call for justice by the Palestinian people displaced by the Jewish incursion.

To illustrate, I grew up on a North Dakota ranch that had been appropriated from the Native American Sioux tribe and homesteaded by my grandfather. Over time, my family absorbed the original homesteads of several other families and individuals. I and my sister walked away from it in the mid-fifties of the last century and it is now owned, along with thousands of other acreages by Devore Inc., a family corporation, I suppose still headed by an aging patriarch just a few years my senior.

Now, let's suppose my children or their descendants decide they were willed this property by a "god" they claim is supreme over all land and all people. They could say, as a Jewish acquaintance and past associate in the "cult" stated, that they have the "pink slip." They could then move in as individuals and small groups and "squat" on the land and get strong enough over time to take over. That's what happened in the early and mid parts of the last century in Palestine. (Notice, I'm not even mentioning the possible claims of the Sioux tribes stuck on little reservations.)

Centuries had gone by in which varying people and powers had controlled that land, just like several people and families had held the land now in the control of Devore Incorporated. But, based on a book whose origins are questionable, to say the least, a scattered group of people who hadn't resided there in any significant numbers for nearly two thousand years, move in and insist on laying claim to territory they originally forcibly took from Canaanite tribes, under direction from the supposed representatives of their tribal god. (Maybe we should look at the claims of any possible descendants of those original tribes that could still be identifiable and the promises their gods made to them.)

I'm not saying we should demand that the Jews move out of the present land of Israel. That wouldn't make any more sense than my descendants or the descendants of any other original North Dakota land owners demanding that Devore Incorporated give up their present holdings. What exists just exists.

What I am saying is that the myths and legends of a very questionable book should not be the basis of modern political decisions. Those myths and legends have led to a very thorny issue that doesn't look like it's going to go away any time soon.

Holy books and chauvinistic claims can be very dangerous things. They are especially dangerous when they lead to nationalistic aspirations which put down one group of people in preference to others. This particular claim holds the possibility of provoking another world war -- a nuclear world war!

Frankly, I wonder if it can be resolved peaceably.