Similarly the old testament contains quite a bit of extreme violence to include genocide that is willed by God for his people to carry out.
The "Old Testament" is a Christian text, understood in a Christian context. The Tanach is a Jewish text and, understood in a Jewish context, the Torah is not a validation for or inculcation of violence. For Judaism Amalek no longer exists (unless taken on a more metaphorical level in which case it might refer to, say, an aspect of the individual person) or is impossible to identify because Judaism goes out of its way to invalidate the continuing applicability of limited aspects of its sacred texts. For the same reason "eye for an eye" as per the Talmud, means that a person must provide the financial equivalent for the eye, not his own eye, and it reaches this conclusion by applying logic which is the backbone of Jewish thought on practical matters of activity in the world.
What I am saying is that Judaism and Islam (and again especially Islam) have far more bits about violence and less bits about peace than other religions.
That's a particularly biased perspective that was fed by a Christianity that demonized Judaism and maintained a negative interpretation of its Old Testament in order to make room for a new testament.
That being said Israel is in a tighter spot than India so perhaps their response strategy is the only one available.
I think they could be doing more to help ease the conflict. I think they're too strong-armed in their tactics. But I also your statement provides a helpful contrast with the suggestion that we should all just turn the other cheek. It's a nice ideal but the real world is far from ideal, nor are we humans. I think an approach that includes some degree of self-preservation is more realistic. But I also think the Israeli gov't has gone beyond bare bones self-preservation and indeed, could be doing a lot of harm to itself.
Perhaps it was a mistake for me to include Judaism's and Islam's inculcation of violence in the same sentence since Islam's inculcation of violence is magnitudes larger than Judaism's but I think the point is still a valid one.
I don't think it is. Christianity includes the OT and, at least in the case of some Protestant groups, does little to ground them in a tradition of understanding that castrates the potential to see them as a doctrine of violence. Judaism was already doing that as something that could recognizably be identified as Judaism was forming.
