Readers React: Israeli-Palestinian conflict was always about religion

To the editor: Anyone who thinks the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just now starting to turn into a religious one doesn’t understand the true nature of the conflict. It is and always has been a religious conflict between the Jews and the Muslim world. (“Israeli-Palestinian conflict shifts ominously toward religious war,” Nov. 21)

Muslim countries from Egypt in the Arab world to Malaysia in Southeast Asia despise Israel, and it has nothing to do with the Palestinians and everything to do with Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

The simple fact that most people don’t want to face is that this conflict has nothing to do with refugees, the right of return of Palestinians, settlements or the equitable splitting of land. Rather, this conflict is about one thing and one thing only: the inability of the Muslim world to stomach a Jewish state of any size in its midst.

Joseph Gold, Redondo Beach

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To the editor: The U.S. government’s recent comments on Israel’s resumption of demolishing the homes of Palestinians who carried out the attack on a Jerusalem synagogue are yet another typical verbal wrist slap for Israel. Similar responses from elsewhere in the world are, unfortunately, just as meaningless.

I keep wondering if our government, or anyone else for that matter, would one day suggest that Israel should also demolish the homes of Israelis who perpetrate crimes against Palestinians.

Jack Samara, Northridge

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