Recently, I had the intense experience of reading an anthology of articles by the Professor Emeritus Raphael Israeli.

In due course, the review shall appear on this blog, but for now a number of points spring to mind upon reading the following news from Infopal, the Italian-Palestinian news network.

At dawn this morning, a group of Israeli settlers hastened from their beds and attacked five Palestinian citizens in the West Bank, before vandalising a mosque, and assaulting further citizens.

Elsewhere, in Yatma, Qabalan, and As-Sawiya, settlers removed twenty tyres from nearby cars and burned them.

Clearly not content with the havoc wreaked, in As-Sawiya insults against Islam and the Prophet Muhammad were scrawled on walls, along with the Star of David, and slogans including “Death to the Arabs”.

With each turning of the page in Israeli’s tome, Palestinians Between Nationalism and Islam (2008), I grew ever more incensed, for actions such as those that occurred this morning – and have been occurring for years – are studiously ignored.

Contrastingly, Israeli dedicates a full article to the rise in criminal acts committed by Palestinians in the region, surmising that it is the Palestinians alone who are motivated by religion and politics.

The Israelis meanwhile, sit – according to Israeli, at least – peaceably by, victimised at every turn and unflinchingly calm in their demeanour.

Certainly, violence and intolerance is wrong; what irks immensely is that the acts committed by the settlers are ignored, while those committed by Palestinians are magnified by not only the media, but also the academic community.

It takes more than one side to commence, and sustain, a war – a good starting point in debating, and seeking a solution to, the Palestine-Israel conflict would be to recall this, as opposed to perpetuating a socio-political myth.