israel: the battleground we all know

Jewish tradition holds that the land of israel has been a Jewish holy land and promised land for three thousand years. The land of Israel holds a special place in Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism's most important sites (such as the remains of the 1st and 2nd temples of the Jewish king, Solomon).
Predictably so, Jews from all over the world have always sought to migrate to their "holy land", Israel. Waves of immigration have taken place right from the thirteenth century till 2006.
As we all know, israel is situated in the middle-eastern world. the world of the arabs.
thus it is rather obvious that arabs would have already settled in the israeli land, whether or not it is holy for them. During the first large immigration in 1881, Jews bought land from the ottomans and the arabs. This increased tensions between the resident Arabs and the Jewish communities.
During the holocaust, immigration of jews into israel increased exponentially. Subsequently, there was a revolt in 1936-39 by the resident Arabs who were against their becoming a minority in israel and demanded elections. This compelled the British to issue the White Paper of 1939 which restricted the number of jew immigrants to 75000. The jews were also restricted from buying land. The White Paper was seen as a betrayal by the Jewish community and Zionists, who perceived it as being in conflict with the Balfour Declaration. The Arabs were not satisfied either, as they wanted Jewish immigration to be halted completely.
Many scuffles followed and even though Israel was recognised as a state in 1948, the enmity between the Jews and Arabs was never reduced to zero.
There were numerous wars not just inside the territory of Israel but between Israel and other Arab nations like egypt, jordan, syria etc. like the six-day war, the war of attrition and the yom kippur war.
Even though these wars were of the "conventional" nature involving the four dimensions, the dominance of the fifth dimension cannot be ignored. These wars had occured due to the fundamentalist nature of two different cultures and their quest for dominance in a small territory.
Could this wars have been prevented by facilitating cultural changes? Or can we still do it?
(to be continued)

pope's remarks against islam:

On september 14 2006, pope benedict XVI while delivering a lecture at the university of regensburg quoted a passage from a 14th century book written by the then emperor of byzantine. The passage said, " Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."Naturally, there was immense opposition from Islamic leaders and islamic lobbies from around the world.This is another example of a war in the fifth dimension. A war not fought with guns and explosives, but with words.Why the pope chose to quote such a controversial passage in an unanswered question, although one may safely comment upon it. The rivalry between the religions of islam and christianity is well known. this rivalry has been fuelled by islamic fundamentalism and terrorism that has done much harm to states with a christian majority.Today, in the United states, a lot of people despise muslims. After the september 11 attack, there were many cases of muslims being killed or tortured all across the "christian" world. Why did this happen?Many people in the US don't know enough about islam. for them, a muslim is the man who prays five times a day and wears a skull cap most of the times.In short, there has not been enough cultural assimilation among the muslims and the christians.A cultural change may help us out in this situation. By a cultural change, I mean cultural assimilation between the muslims and the christians. How many christians know about famous muslims?People should be allowed by the society and the religion to mix freely with other religions and be culturally one with them. There should be a number of agencies and events through which muslims and christians can come together and work on similar grounds. One may go even further to say that the scriptures of religions should be modified, so as to increase the tolerance against people of other religions.Just think of the americans who killed muslims post-9/11. would they have resorted to such violence had they been intimately related to a muslim, or visited mosques or tombs? would they have been so lethal if they were taught the positive aspects of the islam religion and its contributin to today's world? would they have killed muslims if in their neigbourhood, there wasn't a single world spoken against muslims?and, would the pope, in full media presence, have chosen to quote just that particular passage, had he been culturally educated and culturally friendly with islam?