Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger's plan to help the people of Gaza

I am so sick of politics. I don't intend to do a political blog, there are people better at writing political analysis than I. But I would love to be able to point out some of the craziness that is part of life here, the pain, suffering, absurdity of life for Palestinians. I want to cry out, how can the world turn a blind eye to this? How can so many people who otherwise say they stand for justice, the rule of law and human rights just ignore what Israel does? But sometimes I can't take all the talk of politics. It stresses me out too much.

There was an article in Ha'aretz today about Israel's Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger's plan to help the people of Gaza. He wants to transfer them to the Sinai desert, and make Sinai into a Palestinian state!

According to Metzger, the plan would be to "take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace."

I am sure that the Egyptians won't mind someone taking their land any more than the Palestinians did! This isn't some kook on the fringe of Israeli society, he's the chief Rabbi. I know that there are plenty of Israelis who will think his statements are as ludicrous as I do, But I still find it shocking that they would be seriously considered. Plenty of people showed their support for the Rabbi's ideas in the talkback section. I must remember that I promised my self not to read the comments on Ha'aretz articles.

He also tells Muslims, "we want to give you respect but let us live and believe our land is the Holy Land and Jerusalem belongs to us. You have another place, Mecca and Medina, you don't need a third place."

In the interview Metzger also described Jerusalem as "the capital city forever to the Jewish nation." He argued that Muslims have no connection to Jerusalem commenting that "behind the Kotel we have a mosque. But when they pray even though they are in our holiest place, they face Mecca. Their back is to Jerusalem. So you can see from only one sign that it does not belong to them. They have nothing - no connection."

By his logic, then no mosque anywhere in the world outside of Makkah and Madinah should belong to Muslims. Anyway, how can your back be to Jerusalem, when you are in Jerusalem?