Re:'Like we were lesser humans': Gaza boys, men recall Israe...
by skissane on Wednesday December 13, 2023 @02:54PM
(#38633323)
> Now when Israel is their colonizer, things are a bit different. Not only has Israel imposed a new language, culture and religion onto their lands, but they have also severely displaced them. No colonizer has done that to the Palestinians in the past,
Modern Judaism permits conversion but refuses to promote or encourage it, and sometimes even goes out of its way to make it hard (especially some of the more conservative Orthodox). Hence, there has never been any encouragement for Palestinians to convert. It wasn’t always thus - John Hyrcanus forced the Idumeans to convert to Judaism; but that was over 2000 years ago now.
By contrast, Islamic conquerors always encouraged conquered peoples to convert to Islam, through a mixture of carrots and sticks. The same is true of Christianity.
Possibly, this is part of what sustains the Israel-Palestine conflict; if contemporary Judaism were pro-conversion, many of the Palestinians might have already become Jews by now.
Modern Judaism permits conversion but refuses to promote or encourage it, and sometimes even goes out of its way to make it hard (especially some of the more conservative Orthodox). Hence, there has never been any encouragement for Palestinians to convert. It wasn’t always thus - John Hyrcanus forced the Idumeans to convert to Judaism; but that was over 2000 years ago now.
By contrast, Islamic conquerors always encouraged conquered peoples to convert to Islam, through a mixture of carrots and sticks. The same is true of Christianity.
Possibly, this is part of what sustains the Israel-Palestine conflict; if contemporary Judaism were pro-conversion, many of the Palestinians might have already become Jews by now.