An annexation by Israel of territory in the West Bank might be coordinated with Trump's reelection priorities.

Collusion between Netanyahu and the Trump Administration is possible. This is in the sense that if the annexation is launched before the US November Presidential Election this may well amount to a crisis that will benefit Trump.

If there is a violent Palestinian reaction to the annexation then footage of violent demonstrations, Israeli tanks and airstrikes will tend to make Americans anxious. Broader Arab national opposition may well boost the price of oil hurting the American voter’s hip pocket.

President Trump can wade into the crisis by “brokering” peace – really in favour of Israel. Meanwhile many undecided US voters may rally round the President, as they often do in times of tension.

It might help to realise that twenty-first century democracy requires a secular state. A Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim state cannot also be a democracy. If two people want to get married they should be able to do so without the intervention of clergy. There should be a public school system where children of different religious and ethnic backgrounds can grow up together, learn together and live together as adults. There should be separation of religion and state. Neither the state nor religion should use the other to enforce its control. The constitution of Australia in S. 116 states there should be no religious test for public office. Section 116 states: “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.” If the Israeli Constitution adopted a similar provision it would cease to a Jewish state and be on the road to becoming a democracy. One state with equal rights for all is better than two states hating each other.

Israel, The globe`s worst terrorist state.
Aided and abetted by the US of paranoia.

Israel has its democratic faults and must defend itself.

But the large dictatorships around it: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and Turkey are FAR WORSE.

The simple fact is that the whole Mesopotamian area was Christian,
Jewish and Zoroastrian until the Arab invasion, inspired by Mohammad's
zeal for his invented religion, in the 8th century.
Before that the Arabs lived mainly in Arabia.
To pretend that the contested areas are Moslem lands is to accept the
verses of the Koran that says that any land once occupied by Moslems
remains Moslem land forever.

That is the crux of Arab claim on Israeli land.
It is not unique to Israel, it applies to Portugal and Spain also.
Indeed if you look into it more closely you will find that those
countries are included in lists of Islamic countries.
You can add, Sicily, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and parts of Austria.
Islamists claim all those countries are rightfully moslem lands.
Even the Turkish President recently made noise about Andalusia. (Spain)
The Turks of course occupied Greece.
So, when Israel claims those areas where Jews previously lived long
before Mohammad arrived on the scene they are applying the Islamic priciple.

Bazz wrote 'inspired by Mohammad's zeal for his invented religion'

All religions are invented. All religions are human fantasies.

Bazz wrote: “So, when Israel claims those areas where Jews previously lived long before Mohammad arrived on the scene they are applying the Islamic priciple.”

Judaism was invented centuries before Islam.

Psalm 137:1 in the Jewish Bible

“By the rivers of Babylon, There we sat down, yea, we wept When we remembered Zion.”

The wish of a Jewish return to Zion dates back to the Babylonian exile.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Babylonian-Captivity

“Babylonian Captivity, also called Babylonian Exile, the forced detention of Jews in Babylonia following the latter’s conquest of the kingdom of Judah in 598/7 and 587/6 BCE.”

https://www.patheos.com/library/islam

"Islam is a monotheistic religious tradition that developed in the Middle East in the 7th century C.E. Islam, which literally means "surrender" or "submission," was founded on the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as an expression of surrender to the will of Allah, the creator and sustainer of the world."

Islam was invented over a thousand years later than the Jewish idea of a return to Zion so Islam was applying the Jewish principle.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/history/spain_1.shtml
Islamic Spain (711-1492)

"Islamic Spain was a multi-cultural mix of the people of three great monotheistic religions: Muslims, Christians, and Jews."

When Christians reconquered Spain they gave Jews and Muslims the choice of conversion or exile. Even if Jews and Muslims converted the Christian Inquisition burned many descendants of Muslims and Jews at the state. The Muslim occupation of Spain was a Golden Age. The Christian reconquest of Spain was accompanied by persecution and murder.

Both Islam and Christianity have a history of intolerance, but my reading of history has given me the idea that Christianity was far worse. Christian intolerance resulted in the murder of 6,000,000 Jews during WW2. The ground was prepared for the Nazi slaughter by centuries of Christian intolerance.

Well said david f!

Pete

And well said Bazz, of course.

Is important to remember that many Jews in Israel do not have Jewish ancestors there going back to biblical times. The Palestinian Jews basically peacefully coexisted with Muslims and other ethnic groups for hundreds of years. The problems started with the Balfour agreement in 1917. The British as a bribe to have the US enter World War 1 on their side promised influential Zionists in the US that if they did, a Jewish homeland would be created in Palestine - where the Allies were taking control from the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Seems obvious that an undeclared objective of many governments especially which supported this was to get rid of some Jews from their own countries where they have long antagonised locals in some respects. Note there are over 100 instances in the last 1,000 years of Jews boing kicked out of jurisdictions.

Seems the large majority of Jews who are recent immigrants to Israel have Ashkenazi heritage. ie Their ancestors came from the Kingdom of Khazaria in the area north and east of the Black sea. In about 750 AD, neighbouring Russia and Persia invaded for the purpose of improving the ethical standards of their neighbour. To help towards this, demanded that Khazaria adopt one of the three Abrahamic religions. Judaism was selected as the official one. However, in about 1250 AD, behaviour of people in this rogue kingdom was as bad as ever The Russians and Persians invaded again and many Khazarians who followed Judaism fled to other countries -especially in Europe where they established themselves. Descendants of these Khazarians, who have no ancestral ties to Palestine are now the Zionists there stealing land from local Palestinians.

https://forward.com/opinion/382967/ashkenazi-jews-are-not-khazars-heres-the-proof/

“The paper allowed me to formulate some methodological principles about working in what are sometimes called “soft sciences.” Historiography and linguistics are not formal disciplines like mathematics or logic; nothing can be proved definitively. This allows for the introduction of what we might call “junk science” — a category to which the Khazarian hypothesis belongs.

Nevertheless, the absolute lack of any fundamental proof for the theory has not stopped it from catching the imaginations of geneticists, linguists and hordes of lay folk alike.”

…

“Despite this institutional backing, the theory is absolutely without evidence. As any historian will tell you, generations of Jews, like generations of any people, leave historical traces behind them. These traces come in multiple forms. For starters, people leave behind them historical documents and archaeological data. Predictably, archaeologic evidence about the widespread existence of Jews in Khazaria is almost nonexistent. While a series of independent sources does testify to the existence in the 10th century of Jews in the Kingdom of Khazaria, and while some of these sources also indicate that the ruling elite of Khazaria embraced Judaism, the Khazarian state was destroyed by Russians during the 960s. In other words, we can be confident that Judaism was not particularly widespread in that kingdom.

The next historical record of Jews — in a few cities that today belong to western Ukraine and western Belarus — shows up in the 14th century, when Jews are regularly referred to in numerous documents.
And yet, no direct historiographical data is available to connect the Jews who lived in Eastern Europe in the 14th century with their co-religionists from the 10th-century Khazaria.”
…

“But history is not the only discipline to debunk the Khazarian hypothesis. Linguistics, too, and the study of Yiddish help us rule out a Khazarian ancestry for today’s Jews. Since the 17th century, Yiddish was the vernacular language of all Jews of Eastern Europe. All its main structural elements are German, though during the past few centuries, they also underwent a strong influence of Slavic languages.”

In Islamic Spain it was not the uniform intellectual paradise of
equality. Moslems were the rulers and everyone else were dhimmini.
That is second class citizens. The academic activity was important
as many documents were being translated from Greek.
The Jews took a active part of that effort.
I have more into on Andalusia and the way the Moors ruled but I am
going to bed now and will look it up tomorrow.

Nazi slaughter by centuries of Christian intolerance.
davidf,
I can't help thinking that the Nazi business actually had nothing to do with religion. When you think about it, just about all conflict is due to religion so, were there no religion there's a possibility less conflict would result !
If the Israelis saw themselves more as Israelis rather than Jews & the Palestinians saw themselves as Palestinians rather than Arabs & leave Christianity & Islam out of it, would that result in a better situation ?
I still think stupidity is the main factor & stupidity created religion & is now a monster that feeds on itself !

Dear Bazz,

I agree with you. Islamic Spain was not a paradise, and non-Muslims were second-class citizens. What are called Golden Ages are never paradises if you look closely. During the Golden Age of Greece captives of the Athenian army were forced to work in the mines and rarely lived more than a year. Athens also had slaves, and women did not have a voice. It is called a Golden Age because it produced great art, literature and philosophy and contrasted favourably with what came after. A Greek friend of mine who was cultural attaché to the Greek embassy in London charged the downfall of Greek culture to the adoption of Christianity. Even during the Golden Age of Islamic Spain there were periods of persecution such as those under the Almohads when Maimonides fled to other more tolerant Muslim areas.

Islamic Spain contrasted favourably with what came after – the Inquisition, forced conversions, torture and murder in Christian Spain. In my reading of history Christianity is not only the most successful but also the most intolerant religion.

Truth used to be the first casualty of war! Now it's the first casualty of electioneering/re-electioneering and endemic corruption in the highest offices?
Alan B.

Dear Individual,

You wrote: “I can't help thinking that the Nazi business actually had nothing to do with religion. When you think about it, just about all conflict is due to religion so, were there no religion there's a possibility less conflict would result !”

I disagree. All conflicts are not due to religion. In the ancient polytheistic world there were no religious wars, but there were wars. Believers in polytheistic religions accepted believers in other polytheistic religions. In fact, polytheistic religions were not exclusive. One might believe in more than one religion.

Religious wars were largely a consequence of militant Christianity which regarded it as a duty to spread their religion. Originally Christianity was peaceful, but it was transformed into violence by Constantine who had his soldiers wear the chi-rho symbol standing for Christ on their shields at the battle of the Milvian bridge.

The connection of Christian Jew hatred and the Nazis is documented in “Constantine’s Sword”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine%27s_Sword

“Carroll disclaims the notion that Christian anti-Judaism leads inevitably to the Holocaust committed by Nazi Germany, but he argues that Church's long history of "Jew-hatred" laid the foundation for Hitler's crimes. Carroll also points out the many "turning points," as he labels them, where the Church's attitudes and actions toward Jews could have been shifted. Just one example cited in the book is that of Pierre Abelard (1079–1142), the French theologian and philosopher, whose teachings, had they been accepted, would have radically changed the direction and cast of Christian dogma.”

The Nazis didn’t invent Jew hatred. They merely exploited the attitudes promoted by Christianity.

If we left Christianity out of it there would be no Israel. Israel was established partly as a place where Jews could be free from Christian persecution.

Although I don’t believe in any religion I don’t think stupidity created religion. Religion is an attempt to make sense of the world. It is a flawed attempt, and in my opinion science makes better sense.

The tragedy of Israel is that Palestinians and Jews are genetically the same people divided by religion.

https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/palestinians-and-jews-share-genetic-roots-1.5411201