COMMENT It simply makes no sense for former prime minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad to blame the creation of Israel for the acts of terrorism that we see in the world today.

At a time when the world is grieving over the number of casualties in the Paris attacks, Dr Mahathir talks out of his heart full of hatred for the Jewish state, which was established over 70 years ago.

What he failed to realise is that it was indeed a miracle for Israel to come back together as a nation after being dispersed and persecuted since AD70. The strong sense of community of the Jewish people and their longing to someday return to their homeland is what brought them together after living in a number of host nations.

No other civilisations have been able to come back again after nearly 2,000 years but when the people of the land returned, deserts were turned into vineyards.

Tracing the history

Going back to history, this piece of land known as the Land of the Canaanites was promised to Abraham and his descendants.

Of course, between the Jews, Christians and Muslims, there is forever the dispute of who is supposed to be the rightful son to Abraham - Ishmael (from whom the Arabs are believed to have descended from) or Isaac. Isaac’s second son, Jacob became known as Israel.

This is the difference that has set us apart, and to a large extent, the problem has escalated when the world started to take sides. Even Dr Mahathir, for example, is drawn into the animosity that Malaysians should have nothing to do with.

People should differentiate between the Zionist regime and the ordinary peace-loving Israeli citizen. Unfortunately, the innocent Israeli child has experienced the brutality of war from the moment he is born.

While the Middle East problem will not be resolved until the battle of Armageddon, the conflict between Israelis and the Palestinians is still considered a ‘local’ issue involving both the Palestinians and the Jews, if external factors are not taken into consideration.

How is it that terrorism involves even non-Palestinians? When ethnic cleansing took place following the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the early 1990s, the Bosnian Muslims did not turn into hardcore terrorists, did they?

The same can be said of Vietnamese and Cambodians during the communist takeover. They became known as the ‘boat people’ in countries which took sympathy of their plight but there had not been cases where any of these people becoming terrorists in their host countries.

Instead, these ‘boat people’ were happy to resettle in another country, although some eventually went back to their homeland. None even thought of taking revenge on the regimes that put them through hardships, when they returned to their country of origin.

Dr Mahathir should ask himself why, when Syria was attacked by the Islamic militants, no Arab nations were willing to take the very people who were Muslims fleeing their country; instead, it was the so-called Western ‘barbaric’ nations.

Who is it that had more sympathy for the refugees? Did the Jews living in some of these host countries protest against these Muslim refugees?

My only explanation

The only explanation that one can think of is that religious fanaticism mixed with some amount of brainwashing, has led to the thinking that ‘killing for God’ was a right thing to do, with the murderer being promised a place in heaven.

The Church too had its fair share of religious fanaticism, where simple peasants were being brainwashed and recruited to become ‘crusaders’ during the medieval military expedition to recover the Holy Land from the Muslim invaders. Blinded by their own ignorance, and the lack of opportunity to discover God’s message in the Bible for themselves, they went about killing the Muslims and raping the women.

However, true Bible-believing Christians and pious Muslims, of course, would not buy the idea that killing is an act of service to God. If God wanted to destroy an entire nation, he can do it within a split second. In fact, the Ten Commandments clearly forbade it: ‘Thou shalt not kill’. This is at least what truly born-again evangelical Christians believe in. ‘Evangel’ simply means ‘Good News.’

The presence of Israel in this 21st century is therefore not an excuse for any normal person to resort to terrorism, especially when ordinary Malaysians have little to do with the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East. To blame Israel for the terrorism done by an abnormal group of people, who are blindly led by people with certain hidden political agenda, is nothing but a blame game.

A crime is still a crime

Terrorism is a crime against humanity.

No normal person would even dream that killing innocent people would make oneself a martyr, when the murderer himself is killed in the process, what’s more that he will enter the kingdom of Heaven!

A crime is still a sin in the eyes of God. The bottom line is that people involved in the acts of terrorism will not realise that they have committed a sin against God by blatantly murdering a fellow human being.

This is where Dr Mahathir should speak up against and strongly condemn such acts of terrorism, instead of finding some justification for the bombing that killed a couple of hundred people in Paris recently.

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.