Although the majority of religious extremists happen to be Muslim, most every other religion has its own coterie of religious fanatics. Be they Jewish, Hindu, Christian or Muslim, extremist acts in
any form should be condemned.
Most acts of vandalism are perpetrated by Muslims against the religious institutions of other faiths-Google
'Muslims burn down Christian churches' and you get 1,170,000 pages. On the other hand, Google the inverse and you get about half as many pages. Christians in most Muslim-majority countries are often persecuted, discriminated against and in some cases subject to having their
churches burned down. It's not often you hear about Mosques being burned down or vandalized in the West. For the most part, they live long lives in non-Muslim nations. But they haven't fared so well, however, in the Palestinian West Bank. Over there, Israelis are dealing with their own kind of extremism in the guise of radical Jewish settlers. They allegedly have been burning down mosques in what is coined
'price tag' retaliatory violence against the Israeli government's policy of razing illegal settlements.
The recent spate of
mosque burnings has Israeli officials exasperated, and with good reason. Many in the world (especially in that region) already despise Israel, and those kinds of actions are further fanning the flames of anger and hatred towards Israel, as President Shimon Peres put it.
“What these guys are doing is very serious,” he said. “Israel has always been proud of protecting all of the holy sites. Today, when the Muslim world is where it is, to give them justification to attack Israel is a disaster, it’s crazy and it must stopped.”
The latest mosque burning on Thursday in Burqa, a village near Ramallah, occurred in spite of a crackdown by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over escalating violence the past few days. And they're not just attacking mosques, Jewish militants also targeted an Israeli army base located in the West Bank. The 3 days of violence has been condemned by most, and Netanyahu
has vowed to
"eradicate this evil plague".
The steps announced Wednesday include detention without trial and prosecution in military courts, measures normally applied to Palestinians in the West Bank but not to Jewish settlers there.
Other measures include banning suspected militants from the West Bank and authorizing soldiers in the West Bank to arrest Israelis.
The Israeli government has
been criticized for not doing enough to stem the violence, and the Palestinian Authority had the gall to ask the
'international community to hold the Israeli government responsible for the attacks". Right, then Israel should ask the same of the Palestinian government. And every other country that has been subjected to acts of violence by extremists from a different land should hold their governments responsible. Israel has as little control over their extremists as Palestine has over theirs. One major difference, however, is that the Israeli government doesn't encourage the extremism, whereas the Palestinian government does.
