Another Torah Israeli-Arab Conflict Analogy..............

You'll need a little background information on this one, so if you have a Tanakh, it's in II Samuel, 11:6-27. Here's a quick summary though. King David, the second king of Israel, developed an interest in a woman named "Bathsheva," who was married to a man named "Uriah," a Hittite. He sent for Uriah to fight in the front lines of a battle so that he would die and then he could take his wife for himself. I won't go through the details of the account, but the last line 27 reads, "The deed that David had done was deemed evil in the eyes of Hashem."

Now, every king had a prophet and King David's was Nathan. Verse 12:1-14 reads, "Hashem sent Nathan to David. He came to him and told him: 'There were two men in one city; one rich and one poor. The rich man had very many sheep and cattle, but the poor man had nothing except one small ewe that he had acquired. He raised it and it grew up together with him and his children. It ate from his bread and drank from his cup and lay in his bosom; it became like a daughter to him. A wayfarer came to the rich man. He was reluctant to take from his own sheep or cattle to prepare for the visitor who had come to him, so he took the poor man's ewe and prepared it for the man who had come to him.

David was very indignant about this man, and he said to Nathan, 'As Hashem lives, any man who does this deserves to die! And he must pay fourfold for the ewe, because he did this deed and because he had no pity!

Nathan then said to David, 'You are that man!' Thus said Hashem, G-d of Israel: 'I anointed you the house of your lord, and the women of your lord into your bosom, and I gave over to you the house of Israel and Judah; and if this were not enough I would have increased for you this much and this much again. Why have you scorned the word of Hashem, doing that which is evil in My eyes? You have struck Uriah the Hittite with the sword; and his wife you have taken to yourself for a wife, while him you have killed by the sword of the Children of Ammon! And now, the sword shall not cease from your house forever, because you have scorned Me and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be a wife unto you.'

So says Hashem: 'Behold! - I shall raise evil againt you from your own household, I shall take your wives away in front of your eyes and give them to your fellowman, who will lie with them in the sight of this sun. Though you have acted in secrecy, I shall perform this deed in the presence of all Israel and before the sun!'

David said to Nathan, 'I have sinned against Hashem!'

Nathan responded to David, 'So, too, Hashem has commuted your sin; you will not die. However, because you have thorougly blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die.'"

The very general theme of this story is replicated in today's politics between the Israeli's and the Arabs. The man with the plentitude of sheep are the Arab countries, the Israeli's are the man with the one ewe, and Israel is that ewe. The rich man didn't want to make a feast for his guest from his own ewe, so he stole the ewe of the poor man. The guest in this analogy are the Palestinians, and rather than making a home for them in one of thier multiplitous countries, the Arabs demand making a home for them in Israel, or in other words, by taking Israel from the Israeli's.

The only thing that the Israeli's have, nay, want, is the Land of Israel, while the Arab states have, well, 99.9% of the land in the region and the only thing that they want too is Israel. Now, verse 14 says, "However, because you have blasphemed the enemies of Hashem in this matter, the son that has been born to you shall surely die." The commentary says that this is a euphemism for having blasphemed Hashem himself. Perhaps it is the false wishes of Palestinian nationalism, the rich man's son, that will die in the manner that King David's son dies in the following verses.

Who is the "Nathan" of the Arab world and will the rich man repent for the sin he is attempting to commit?