More Alike Than We Are Different

I learned something new and interesting about Islam today - I wanted to share.

I've been desperately thinking about how to use my voice to help heal what is broken in the world, to help heal my heart, and to help bring people closer.

We usually fear what we don't know. It's easy to hate an enemy if you "other" them. And at the same time, what unites us as humans are our shared values, shared experiences. So, I decided I was going to educate those around me about Jewish values and culture. While many in my circles are well informed and Jewish themselves, I figured if I touched just one person, my efforts would be worth it.

I was going to start with teaching about how much value Judaism places on human life. I wanted to share a passage from the Talmud (one of the holy ancient rabbinical texts of the Jewish faith):

"Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world." (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9; Yerushalmi Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a - https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/14110064.Mishnah_Sanhedrin_4_9_Yerushalmi_Talmud_Tractate_Sanhedrin_37a_)

This is a teaching that is deeply ingrained in me as a Jew. It is one of the fundamental principles that feeds into the Jewish mandate of Tikkun Olam (fixing the world). It is why the IDF - the Israeli Defense Force recognizes the sanctity of human life and works harder than any army in the world to protect civilians. The IDF calls/notifies it's targets ahead of time to evacuate civilians.

As I was googling to find the citation I discovered that nearly these EXACT words are part of the Quran, Islam's holy book, in a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel. Fundamentally, I knew that Islam is a peaceful religion. But to think that they reference the same words!

"For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind." (Surah 5, verse 32 https://quran.com/5/32?translations=31,17,19,20,85,84,95)

Famous Israeli-Palestinian blogger and founder of Nas Daily, Nuseir Yassin, said recently in a video denouncing the Hamas attacks - "we are more alike then we are different". I didn't even know how right he was.

I want everyone walking at pro-Palestine rallies, yelling "from the river to the sea" to think about what that means - they're advocating for the annihilation of the Israeli people. On American college campuses, people are yelling "death to the Jews", "gas the Jews". This is not a Muslim value, neither a Christian one for that matter.

Hamas is not the same as Muslim people, Hamas is not the same as Palestinian people. Supporting Hamas does not make you a righteous freedom fighter.

Most Jews, in fact, many Israelis, support the idea of a homeland for Palestinians and support the idea of a two-state solution. Because we both have a right to exist!

Hamas does not have the best interests of it's citizens in mind. There is a meme circulating the Internet that asks "has anyone wondered why Gaza is running out of everything except for rockets?"... It may just be a meme, but it does beg the question. You may already know that every Israeli home has a "safe room"...Gaza does not. The media decries that Gazans have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. And yet, it's no secret that Hamas has built an incredibly sophisticated system of underground tunnels throughout Gaza (and likely under Israel too). If Hamas valued it's civilians, it would hide them in these tunnels. Instead, they hide rockets in daycares, mosques, hospitals. They hide their leaders under the city while their population is starving and exposed.

Is that the leadership you want to support? Is that a mark of government that values the sanctity of human life? Yes, this runs completely counter to everything we in the Western world? believe. But these are terrorists... They don't value human life.

There isn't so much a need to liberate Palestinians from Israeli occupation, as much as there is a need to liberate them from Hamas. It is not the IDFs mission to destroy Palestinians, but it is to destroy this terrorist regime.

Some speculate that it was the normalization of Israeli - Arab relations in the middle east (including the impending deal with Saudi Arabia), that triggered Hamas to act. Hamas has no tolerance for the existence of Israel or Jewish life.

We may disagree about politics, we may disagree about many things, but I hope we can all agree about the value of human life.

What Hamas perpetrated on October 7th in Israel was a massacre with total and complete disregard for life. As you sit with yourself and think about which side of history you want to find yourself on, consider the basic values of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

While war will always be ugly and bring with it casualties, examining both motive and strategy speaks volumes about values.

#IstandwithIsrael #HamasisISIS #peace #Judaism #Islam