🤥 This is a war between Islam and Judaism and is as old as time.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians isn’t religious. Palestinians constitute an ethnic, semitic Arab group, that identify in a nationalist context, much like the French identify as French. The core of the conflict lies in Israel’s aim to establish itself as a Jewish state without the demographic presence of Palestinians, who encompass diverse religious and other identities including Christian, Muslim, Jewish, atheist, and others.

The majority, if not all, of the original Palestinian armed resistance movements were secular, with some having strong socialist affiliations. However, Israel actively targeted and undermined these secular groups, covertly supporting the rise of Islamist movements like Hamas within the Palestinian resistance. Israel’s strategy behind bolstering Islamist movements aimed to fracture national unity among Palestinian resistance factions, diminish global sympathy for their cause, and falsely frame the conflict in a religious context.

Even Hamas, which is an Islamist group, is struggling for the national liberation of the Palestinians, inclusive of their religious identities and diversity. Its manifesto explicitly states that it stands against the “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project, Israel, but not against Judaism or Jews.

Framing it as a religious conflict is a tactic to make the conflict appear long-standing, historic and intractable rather than a relatively “modern” one that is reminiscent of any other Western-style colonialist settler project.

The founding figures of Zionism, such as David Ben-Gurion, did not perceive their vision for Palestine through a religious lens. In fact, the majority of Zionist founders and their militias were secular. From the beginning, Zionist aspirations garnered minimal support from prominent Jewish religious leaders. Many critics of Zionism, spanning various religious affiliations, consistently highlight the problematic conflation of Zionism with Judaism. They argue that this conflation hampers constructive criticism of Israel and contributes to the resurgence of genuine anti-Semitism.

Zionism has leveraged and exploited Christian Evangelical movements to perpetuate, promote, and manipulate the religious narrative, garnering blind support of biblical proportions for the Zionist project. This manipulation frames even the most egregious crimes, including genocide, committed by Zionists as serving a higher, messianic, and biblical purpose.

Perpetuating the myth that the conflict is religious, or a clash between Islam and Judaism, fuels Islamophobic narratives depicting Arabs and Muslims as violent and uncivilized savages in need of taming. Similarly, this narrative portrays Zionist Jews, primarily of European descent, as requiring protection from such perceived barbarity. Not only does this narrative entail an overtly racist framing of the conflict, but it also obscures the settler-colonial nature of the conflict and denies the indigeneity of Palestinians to the land.

Not all Palestinians are Muslim, many are Christians, and some are even Jews. Yet all work to resist Israel’s colonialism, and all suffer from it equally. It is absurd to suggest that they would want to take part in a so-called “Muslim holy war against the Jews.”

Framing the conflict as Muslim vs. Jewish negates the complex historical dynamics at play, including the fact that anti-Semitism is a deadly byproduct of European Christian racism towards Jews. It neglects historical cases of Muslims offering sanctuary to persecuted Jews during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Muslim Ottoman Empire notably provided refuge amid European pogroms, as Western nations restricted the entry of Jews seeking refuge and fleeing persecution. Additionally, it conveniently neglects to mention that the Jewish Golden Age in Spain flourished under Muslim rule.

Claiming that the conflict has been going on for thousands of years implies that it had no beginning, it has no end, it has no discernable cause and it’s just two ethnic and religious groups that will never get along. This is simply not true. The conflict is the direct product of the continued Zionist oppression, dispossession and settler-colonization of Palestine and its people.

Framing the conflict solely in religious terms, such as Islam versus Judaism, overlooks Palestine’s rich Christian heritage and community. Prior to the violent displacements of 1948 and 1967, a vibrant Christian population coexisted alongside Muslims and Jews in historic Palestine. Despite once constituting about 10% of the pre-1948 population, Christians now represent only 1.6% of the population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Israel. They face similar existential challenges as Palestinian Muslims, both in historic Palestine and in the diaspora.