by Stephanie Davis

Created on: December 17, 2010

  The government of Israel is either friend or foe, depending on what part of the world one hails from. Certainly many of us in the West both Jew and Christian would say that one cannot be a good Jew or Christian unless they support Israel without apology or exception. The Western media portrays Israel as a beacon of hope and progress in the Middle East. The nation that God himself promised to Abraham and his descendants through his son Issac. It is for this reason that Israel's human right violations often are immune from being called exactly that Since it was created in 1948 Israel has been involved in never ending conflict with her Arab neighbors and with the Palestinians that have occupied the same land for centuries.

The current conflict between the descendants of Abraham's sons Issac and Ishmael originated during Biblical times. Jews believe that the inheritance God promised Abraham would be fulfilled though his son Issac. while Muslims believe that this same promise would be fulfilled through his eldest son Ishmael. Even the story of Abraham being ordered by God to sacrifice his son as a test of faith is different in the Biblical and Quranic accounts. The Judeo-Christian tradition holds that Issac was to be sacrifice, while the Islamic position is that it was Ishmael.  In both versions God provides Abraham with a ram in the thicket instead of demanding a human sacrifice.  The biblical account of Ishmael in Genesis 16-25 tell that despite being cast out with his mother Hagar by Sarah that Ishmael and his descendants would be blessed. However, they would live in hostility among their brothers, be a great nation and live east of the land of the descendants of Issac.

 After the temple was destroyed in 70 A.D by the Romans the nation of Israel ceased to exist and the Jewish people existed in parts of the known world as a community, often persecuted by the local population. For two millennium the Jews often dreamed of being able to resurrect the nation of Israel and rebuild their temple. During this time Jews, Christians and later Muslims coexisted in the Holy Land. even at the same time while the Crusades were fought in the Middle Ages over control of Jerusalem. In the late 19th century the political ideology known as Zionism began to take shape. In World War II the Holocaust under Hitler caused the death of 6 million Jews, by 1948, three years after the end of the war, the nation of Israel was proclaimed. The Zionist goal of a homeland

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