Does adding nationalism to a religion make it more compelling or immune to criticism?
It is an old trick, of course. The Byzantines attacked the the Zoroastrian Persians in 629, all in the name of defending Christianity.
Soon after, Mohammad, the great warrior who founded Islam, experienced a vision that he was the last prophet. His armies swept all before them, including Persians, Jews, Christians, and Turks.
The Crusades were organized on the same concept, sending Christian soldiers to fight the heathens. For hundreds of years starting in 1096, armies from Europe were sent to recapture the Holy Land from the followers of Islam.
The fourteen-hundreds saw the mass expulsion of Jews from Spain as well as the conquest of the New World, where fifty-five million indigenous people would eventually be sacrificed to the Lamb of God.
Zionists added nationalism to Judaism in the early years of the twentieth century. Ever since that marriage of convenience, we have been told that criticizing Israel's military expansion and occupation is antisemitic, no matter how many millions of Palestinians have been dislocated or murdered.
In truth, all religions have been used at some point in history to justify slaughter and territorial expansion. That doesn't make it right. And beginning with the Enlightenment, we have come to question some of the more malevolent of religious dogmas.
"The arc of the moral universe is long," said Martin Luther King, "but it bends toward justice." Justice for all peoples facing oppression. Even the Palestinians.
Fred Nagel