What is the difference between Bison and Buffalo? Similar animals are just located on different continents.
What is the difference between Historic Communists and Nazis? Both love autocracy, dictatorships, the Cult of Personality, and the prosecution of the weak.
What is the difference between Israelis and Palestinians? Both come from similar locals, similar historic tribes, have similar physical and ethnic commonalities. These two people come from the center of monotheism…the Region of Palestine.
At the time that Jesus was said to walk the land of Palestine, Jew and Palestinian walked, talked, shopped, laboured together. There was peace in the land. Then came Roman Invaders, who like all super powers used the tried and true method of population control…divide and conquer.
To the Romans Palestine was a place of trade routes, along with an unruly population of both Jew and Palestinian. Small uprisings continually happened over the hundreds of years, while the Roman Empire continually grew in wealth, landmass and population.
Jew and Palestinian were neighbours up until the World Wars, where tensions projected upon by the ruling British forced an ethnic divide among these two nations within a nation.
By the end of WW2 migrant Jewish Fighters began a Zionist Rebellion against British Rule in Palestine. Where there is aggression, there is the stress of division, hatred and envy.
Someone had to win the rebellion, and so Israel was born. A smallish land, limited in its size, created further tension as the Jewish Population multiplied greatly. Where will these people live?
Palestinians with foresight made pacts with Israel, while many others were simply driven away, never to return, nor compensated for the loss of their lands, livelihood and livestock. Zionism drove and inflamed Palestinian Nationalism.
What is the difference between a Palestinian and Jewish Woman? Language, faith, and world perspective. Otherwise one woman is equal to the other, mother, sister, aunt and daughter.
What is the difference between an Israeli and Palestinian Male? They also have much the same differences as their female counterparts, with additional different weapon suppliers, different international supporters, but the same love, misunderstanding and hate of the other.
Our society has become masters of seeing and talking about the different, the emotional, the hated, the suspected. Not many think about the similarities among and within people.
Were Palestinians one of the lost tribes of Israel? Think about it. If you walked the main streets of Jerusalem so very long ago, Arab, Jew, Palestinian and other sects would be labouring away, making a living, caring for their children and working towards a peace of convenience that lasted centuries.
Only when the outsider approached did a tool of division mess up the clog of universally agreed upon peace. Sure there were differences, but the humanity of each other shone through the destructive nature of nationalism, tribalism and hatred.
Roman, French, British, American and Russian alike have acted as busy bodies within a region that could have managed itself well.
What is the difference between the above mentioned super powers? Nothing at all, at least as the Jew and Palestinian are concerned. They invade for prestige, loot & gold, natural resources and Petroleum. They are takers, manipulators and schemers giving both Israeli and Palestinian nothing good. They give them weapons and a reason to continue their hate for one another.
Cursed be those that tramp their feet upon the peace of others, crushing hope, love and friendship on their way to power.
Steven Kaszab
Bradford, Ontario