Religion central to conflict

THE book by Suraya Dadoo and Firoz Osman on the Israel-Palestinian conflict is surely a work of fiction. In an interview, Dadoo pans her own book by saying something so fundamentally wrong it is mind-boggling ("Kasrils holds vigil in Bay for Israeli Apartheid Week", March 17).

The conflict, she says, is not about religion.

To ignore religion in explaining the Middle East conflict is like trying to explain South African politics without reference to race, something only a racist would attempt.

Dadoo appears to identify the elephant in the room but refuses to look at it.

Here are some facts, you decide:

The Palestinian Hamas charter calls "to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine ...[and]...the time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!" (quoted verbatim).

Only last week Fatah central committee member Abbas Zaki said on official Palestinian television: "Israelis have no religion and no principles...Allah will gather them so that we can kill them."

Speaking of apartheid, the most glaring apartheid in the Middle East is religious apartheid in Arab countries. In the 1950s, 850000 Jews were expelled from Arab countries and now Christianity is being extinguished in its religious heartland.

A million Christians have left Iraq, 250000 Coptic Christians have fled Egypt and jihadists are ethnically cleansing Christians in Syria.

The same is happening in the Palestinian territories with the departure of 70% of Christians from the West Bank and 50% from Gaza. In Bethlehem the Christian population has dropped from 90% to 20% and in Gaza, where Christmas decorations and crucifixes are forbidden, the only Christian bookstore was incinerated and its owner murdered.

Only in Israel is the Christian population thriving, having grown five times in the last 40 years.

Dadoo's book may be fiction, fancy, falsehood, or fabrication, or a combination of these, but it cannot be factual.

Chuck Volpe, Australia