Christians Attacked in Israel - By Jews

On Tue, 19 May 2026 03:12:55 -0400, Smithwicks
<[email protected]> wrote:

>The issue with labeling it simple "extremism" is that it ignores a lived 
>reality. Christians, Jews, and Muslims had at least an understanding in 
>Ottoman & Mandate Palestine prior to the establishment of Israel. The 
>arrival of whole groups of new people without that cultural background 
>led to a marked increase in tension between historic Christian groups 
>which had been in the area for thousands of years and newly-arriving 
>Jewish settlers. When you couple that with the dispensationalist (re: 
>zionist) theology of American Evangelicals, who themselves are only 
>decades older than the establishment of the modern state of Israel, you 
>have two very vocal and very new groups entering into a land where the 
>dust had previously somewhat settled.
>
>I would argue that it is not that either of these groups is "extreme", 
>as their pietistic practices would certainly be identical to groups 
>there already, but that it is because they have no cultural memory or 
>experience of the place and its lived history.

Though neither of those groups is "extremist" as a group, there are
extremists among them. Those Jewish settlers on the West Bank who
attack Plaestinian Christians, drive them from their homes and
desecrate their churches seem pretty extreme to me. 

So while the groups as such are not "extremist", there are certainly
"extremists" among them. 




-- 
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web:  http://www.khanya.org.za/stevesig.htm
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
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