The
history of Jew and Muslim suggests
they can live peacefully together
By
Jonathan
Power
November 14, 2003
LONDON - The Jews and the Palestinians are closer
than they like to think. The fundamental values of Israel
are also sacred to Muslims. The word "Israel" is the name
of the prophet Jacob who is praised in the Koran and
remembered with great respect by Muslims. The Star of
David is the holy symbol of the prophet David for Muslims
as well as Jews. The prophets Abraham, Isaac, Joseph and
Moses are as important to Islam as they are to Judaism.
And so the litany of joint points of faith can continue
for pages.
Is it possible at this late hour for the protagonists
of the Israeli/Palestinian dispute to take a step
backwards and realize how much of history is common to
both their faiths? Can they dwell less on the horrors of
the present conflict and realize anew that for most of
the 1400 hundred years they have rubbed shoulders the
occasions when there were serious animosity between them
were few and far between? It was the Christians who gave
both Muslims and Jews their tribulations, not each
other.
It was a strange combination of rather naïve
Christian sentimentality among British policy makers in
the 1910s combined with the murderous racism of Nazism
that found its fertile bed in the most cultured corner of
European Christendom in the 1930s that were the
instruments for the creation of a well populated Jewish
homeland in the middle of an Arab land that had been
continuously under Muslim Ottoman rule for seven
centuries. It is the Christians who have created
the stage that sets Jew against Muslim in the lethal
confrontation of today that has no antecedent in the
history of Muslim-Jewish relations.
Now of course the Muslim-Jewish relationship has its
own bitterly charged dynamic. For the first time in
Judaeo-Islamic history there have been full scale wars.
For the first time in their history they are struggling
over the same piece of land. (The ancient Jewish struggle
for an independent Jewish territory was waged against the
Egyptians and then the Romans, long before Mohammed was
born.) For the first time in their long joint history
there seems to be a visceral hatred that the passing of
the years, despite all the negotiations and peace plans,
seems to make worse. The Christians- or their secular
descendents- sit on the sidelines, wringing their hands,
offering every two or three years new peace plans, but it
all seems to no avail in a situation where Jew and
Palestinian see only a bitter antagonist on the other
side.
David Shipler, the former New York Times Pulitzer
prize winning Middle East correspondent has written: "It
is hard to get a clear view from the wrong end of a gun.
So most Palestinians have been unable to see the
conscience that runs strongly beneath the surface of
Israeli brutality. Palestinian leaders have never
understood the power of shame, which Martin Luther King
used as leverage against white America. They have never
comprehended how malleable Israel could become to fulfill
its yearning for virtue and acceptance. Instead, they
have made sure that Israelis don't feel safe, and when
you don't feel safe, you don't feel flexible."
And one could add to that that modern day Jewish
leaders have belittled Arab culture and Muslim
religiousity in a way their forbears would never have
thought to do. Although Islam, like Judaism, owes much to
its early war making, Islam has always been the most
tolerant of all the monotheistic religions and one with
which it has always been possible to strike an honorable
bargain. Modern day Zionism has rarely sought to plumb
the depths of Islam's long and deeply held notions of
respect for Judaism.
The answer must surely be to persuade Palestinian and
Jew to turn back to reflect on their old time
religious identity. It is not a clever plan that can now
on its own provide the fix that will bring a peace
agreement. It is not a deal negotiated at Camp David or
come to that at Taba or most recently at Geneva- although
all these remarkable efforts show how close the parties
are to peace if they want it badly enough. It is the
question of building trust and re-examining the roots of
faith on both sides.
Outsiders may despair at the slow pace of positive
change and of the setbacks that seem to constantly occur.
But deep down we should know that the layers of poison
and animosity do not lie as ingrained through generation
upon generation as they do in some other societies and
other parts of the world. The lamb and the lion can lie
down together and could do even sooner if leaders on both
sides adopted Martin Luther King's tactics of taking
their opponent off balance by a clever and subtle use of
non-violent action. The long, rather benign, history of
Jew and Muslim suggests that then there could be a
breakthrough.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2003 By
JONATHAN POWER
Follow this
link to read about - and order - Jonathan Power's book
written for the
40th Anniversary of
Amnesty International
"Like
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