Human goodness is not hard-wired
All human beings are not inherently good people.There are those who believe passionately that all human beings are inherently good and rational creatures, essentially the same once you get beyond surface disagreements. Such people cannot accept the reality of a culture that extols death over life, that inculcates a vitriolic hatred of Jews, that induces children to idolize terrorists. Since they would never murder a family in its sleep without being driven to it by some overpowering horror, they imagine that nobody would. This is the mindset that sees a massacre of Jews and concludes that Jews must in some way have provoked it. It’s the mindset behind the narrative that continually blames Israel for the enmity of its neighbors and makes it Israel’s responsibility to end their violence.Indeed. In light of Friday night's massacre, a belief in the basic goodness of all people seems naive at best and dangerous at worst.
The truth is simpler, and bleaker. Human goodness is not hard-wired. It takes sustained effort and healthy values to produce good people; in the absence of those values, cruelty and intolerance are far more likely to flourish.
For years the Palestinian Authority has demonized Israelis and Jews as enemies to be destroyed, vermin to be loathed, and infidels to be terrorized. Children who grow up under Palestinian rule are inundated on all sides — in school, in the mosques, on radio and TV, even in summer camps and popular music — with messages that glorify bloodshed, promote hatred, and lionize “martyrdom.’’None of this is news. The toxic incitement that pervades Palestinian culture has been massively documented. What children are taught in Palestinian classrooms, Hillary Clinton said in 2007, is “to see martyrdom and armed struggle and the murder of innocent people as ideals to strive for. . . . This propaganda is dangerous.’’
Much of the West doesn't get ethnic conflict. Raised in assimilated, heterogeneous societies, they cannot fathom a win-at-all-costs mentality in which tribes and families fight each other to the death. Indeed, one of our problems here in Israel is that so many of us come from Western societies that we too have trouble grasping that there are people out there - among us - who want us dead for no reason other than the fact that we are Jews.
When the Koran says to murder Jews, it's not kidding and its adherents take it seriously. Most Israelis now get that, but most Westerners do not.
A lot of you in the West may read that and think "why would I want to live like that?" For me, at least, the reason I want to live like that is out of a sense of commitment to God and his Torah (written law). I firmly believe that God wants Jews to live in Israel. And so, I live here.
Labels: ethnic conflict, Muslim Jew hatred
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:26 PM
1 Comments:
People are NOT born good. Even Jews have been brought up on this false and dangerous notion.
We all have our dark side and takes religion to teach us how to master it and that can take a lifetime.
People have to be taught to kill. Especially to kill children and babies.
There are very few of us born evil - the sociopaths - the ones who absolutely lack a conscience. Most of us are neither good nor evil and how we're raised and our own moral choices will determine where we end up in life.
Its possible to raise others to think doing evil is good. But it never leads to a good end and the evil that consumed the Jews led to the destruction of Jerusalem and to the First Exile. And then to a second one.
The Jews have learned the painful costs of dealing with the dark side. Yet the Arabs have still not come to terms with that lesson and that's another reason there won't be peace between Jews and Arabs in our lifetime.
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