I had to let this off my chest...

You might have already heard the name Pat Condell, an English icon of atheist youtube. Pat Condell won fame by his videos critical of Islam and was and is still posted on many anti-Islamic websites, many of which are of Christian provenance. To counter this and to retain his standing in the atheist community he made some videos directed against Christians, his rare instalment on the Jews makes some of the usual accusations. He says that Christians are happy with the Jews occupying a Muslim land because of their failed Medieval Crusades, not quite realising that Christian Zionism is a largely Protestant movement while the Catholics led the Crusades, and that many Palestinian Christians are in fact Catholics. Also not mentioned in his drivel is the opinion of Eastern and Orthodox Churches which had no part in the Crusades and who all have their adherents in Palestine. But deconstructing every piece of nonsense Pat makes would be a digression. I would like to here talk about one central line of thought he makes in the video.

He says that Jews happen to control Jerusalem at present and they hold on to it because of 'insane' religious scripture and divine proclamations. He also says that Jerusalem is an Arab town. And that if there was any justice in the world the Jewish state would be carved out of Germany.

Firstly Jerusalem belongs to whoever takes hold of it, it had many owners in its history (1). Zionism is a relative secular movement and in fact goes contrary to the views of many religious Jews. The attitudes of religious Jews to Israel range from passive support to outright hostility to the Jewish state. Their views are not informed by the Tanakh but by the Talmud. The Palestinian opposition to Israel was also fairly secular until the rise of Hamas. It is nationalism that started all this, not religion. To believe that removal of religion from the picture would change anything is foolish. Secular, Nationalist Zionism started in Austria-Hungary where there existed many Nationalist movements with often Anti-Semitic overtones and it started long before the Holocaust took place. The fact that the Israelis instrumentalised the Holocaust in their nation-building ideology is a completely separate matter because the Jewish immigration was happening even before the Nazis came to power in Germany and was from diverse places, such as the Hapsburg Empire and Russia.

The Zionists chose Palestine because it is the ancestral homeland of the Jews. The Old Testament is not only full of miracles and divine proclamations but also performs another function. That of political propaganda and history. To say that the Jews never lived in Judea because the Bible is full of miracles and divine proclamations which Pat does not believe in is stupid, because along side the Bible we have the Roman writers, Josephus Flavius and Israeli archeology. No text talks about Jews claiming part of Germany as their own. Therefore it was natural for Zionist to strive for the creation of Jewish state there, in Palestine. It has nothing to do with religion, other than the fact that religious texts are one of the primary sources where we learn of Jewish origins from.

If we were to remove religion from the picture we would still be left with Jews and Arabs. Ethnicity and language is much harder to abandon. Some might claim that in the wacky world of Hamas, Christian Zionism and West Bank settlers religion plays a great role. If we removed religion from the picture we would still be left with Arab nationalists, Western supporters of Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East and West Bank settlers of secular nature. The struggle is not religious, the struggle is over land. The conflict would not be going anywhere. In history we find a lot of wars in the name of religion, we can say that these wars were justified by religion. On contrary many of these wars had an economic and political agenda and religion served as a mobilising factor. The Ottoman Empire depended on territorial expansion and it began to crumble as soon as this expansion was halted. Of course this expansion was defended as 'jihad on the infidels' because it is much more convenient than 'we need to keep you lads busy or you will rebel against us.' In modern times, wars are justified by Human Rights or by some other secular ideology. It is much more convenient than telling the truth.

In their frantic effort to do away with religion for the sake of humanity's improvement the atheists do not seem to realise the tremendous role religion played in the history of many nations. For starters the Jews would probably not be around for 3000 years if they didn't hold on to their faith so firmly. The Armenians would not develop their own distinct system of writing without their conversion to Christianity. Without similar Christian codification of language in the Church Slavonic, Russian writers would have nothing to draw their style from. Historians would also have to abandon using the Medieval chronicles as their source of material because they are so tainted with religion, they even dare to begin with the creation of the World by the Almighty. Perhaps we should rewrite the US constitution because it claims that people are endowed with inalienable rights by their Creator. Cultural preservation, literature, constitutional rights all this is insanity and should be abandoned because there is a link with religion and scripture and prophecy and God knows what else.

Last time I checked the atheists had a trouble explaining why they celebrate Christmas and I found it rather amusing. They should accept that the cultures they live in were in greater part formed by religion. Their disbelief in God will not do away with this obvious fact. If they think that all wars would stop if only people let go of their beliefs they are gravely mistaken. Likewise ethnic and cultural attachements cannot be broken by abandoment of religion. Whether atheist or religious, Jews will still be Jews, the same goes for Armenians, Serbs and others. And their knowledge of history would revolve around texts written by men of the cloth because men of the cloth were practicaly the only ones to be writing anything back in the days.

1) This text is not about morality of Zionism or anything like that. The sole thing it is concerned with is reality of the present situation...