Week Two Readings

This week's articles seemed to represent to me the interplay between peace and religion. The Dumper article, though it was very short, did a very good job of explaining the city of Jerusalem has become such a contested area. It was especially interesting to me to learn that, geographically, Jerusalem is in a very undesirable location. It just seems ironic that it has become one of the most important cities on the planet and drought is a very real possibility. I think this is the place were religion starts to overwhelm politics. The Israeli government moved their capital to Jerusalem regardless of the fact that it's a war zone which is largely disconnected from the rest of Israel. That seems like a very bad political move. It also seems like a very expensive move. Instead of spending millions of dollars to resettle people or create barriers, that money could have been better spent on developing industry, education, or (God forbid) peace.
The Dumper article also seemed to highlight times when there was peace as times when religion played a much smaller role in politics. There's a reason why the United States has a seperation of religion and state. Government functions much better that way. Without having to think about religion, a government is better able to make rational decisions for the nation. It's just a shame that a secular government lead by those who are the best at their job doesn't seem possible in the near future.
The other two articles, written by Israel and Palestinian historians, did not seem as strong in comparision to the non-biased article. Both seemed to give an idealized account of modern history while glossing over their counterparts contributions to the complexity and rich history of the city. I also am having a hard time excepting the strategy of their approach. It does not make sense to me to have two different people telling two different sides of the same history. This doesn't create dialogue. If that is the main goal of this project, then I don't know if it will work. Having parallel papers allows readers of both to dismiss the one they don't believe in. While it may work on an academic level, I'm not sure if the average Jerusalemite would really be persuaded to read both sides of the story and take them seriously.
Class on Tuesday also got me thinking. We spent a long time talking about what to call people who are important to each religion. This was an actual dialogue, which was refreshing, but it was very tedious. It may just be a result of my liberal semi-Christian upbringing, but it seemed like a debate over semantics rather than an actual conversation about issues affecting the entire city of Jerusalem. This would also indicate a situation in which religion has overtaken politics. Instead of being able to talk about the issues we were bogged down in the religion.

That was just a thought, please don't take offense, because that is definitely not how it was intended. Please let me know what you think. I'm not easily offended.