“Beware of Your
Beliefs”*
David Blumenthal
When
I first sat down to write this essay, Yasser Arafat lay sick, probably dead, in
a Paris hospital. After his death,
Arafat was replaced by Mahmoud Abbas, one of the few democratically elected
leaders in the Arab world. That
event and others, such as the Israeli pull out from Gaza, led to soaring hopes that
peace between Israelis and Palestinians might be around the corner. Unfortunately,
subsequent events, including but not limited to the war between Israel and
Hezbollah in 2006, showed that those hopes were premature. No one actually knows what will happen
next; the best guess for the future, however, depends on how one reads the
past. Thus, in the interest of self-disclosure, I begin by noting that I am a
Jew who has been a conscious Zionist for as long as I can remember. I recall
the vote in the United Nations to establish the Jewish state and the switch in
religious school to the Israeli pronunciation of Hebrew when the state was
proclaimed. I was an active member of a Zionist youth movement and my first
trip to Israel was very much a Zionist pilgrimage.
I am also a religious Jew who takes
seriously the presence of God and the truth of God’s promises to the Jewish
people of seed, land, and blessing. I, therefore, justify the Jewish claim to a
homeland in Israel on both secular-historical and religious-spiritual grounds.
I
am also an experienced rabbi and professor of Jewish studies, one who has
taught Jewish civilization for some time and has been active in Jewish and
Israeli causes, locally and nationally. I was also one of the organizers of the
first trialogue group of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim scholars and was a
consultant to the Presbyterian church on some of its important documents
concerning the Jews and Israel. I initiated courses and research on the Shoah
at my university, have been a member of various committees of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum and of the biennial international symposium of Holocaust
scholars at Wroxton College in the United Kingdom, have written two books on
the Shoah, and have edited the memoirs of a survivor and two volumes of essays
on the Shoah.[1]
On the subject of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, I was among the early speakers for Palestinian rights and have
consistently supported the efforts of Israeli and Palestinian peace
organizations. I vividly remember
visiting a fellow student in an Israeli Arab village in 1959. It was then under
curfew and, being dark-skinned, I saw their humiliation. I remember, too,
sitting with them as they listed excitedly to Nasser preach about pushing the
Jews into the sea. I recall being asked to address a large synagogue gathering
together with a Palestinian in the early 1980s. I took a firm stand in favor of
a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel, much to the admitted
astonishment of the Palestinian speaker. At about the same time, I was quietly
dropped from the list of speakers to the young leadership group of the Atlanta
Jewish Federation because of my espousal of Palestinian sovereignty and not
just autonomy. I joined Oz ve-Shalom, the religious peace group, a long time ago and, over the
years, hosted at my university speakers from that group and related organizations. I have also encouraged speakers from
the Israeli right as part of the educational thrust of my work. During the
course of my consultations with the Presbyterian church, I visited Palestinians
in Israel and in the West Bank as well as Christians in Egypt.
Over the years, however, my position has
changed because I found that my Palestinian and Muslim interlocutors embodied
three characteristics that I found counterproductive. First, they totally
politicized all discussions. All my attempts to discuss theology, peace, and a
justice that would include Jews and the State of Israel as well as Palestinians
and a Palestinian state were completely rejected. My “partners” wanted only to
present the Palestinian side, not to dialogue. Second, my Palestinian and
Muslim interlocutors refused to acknowledge any co-responsibility for the conflicted
situation. They candidly approved terrorism, even when directed at innocent
Israeli civilians. Occasionally, I would find individual Palestinians and
Muslims who would realize the futility of terrorism, though not necessarily its
inherent evil. But, even for such rare individuals, the open expression of such
opinions was regarded as national treason, and they simply would not make such
statements in public.[2]
Third, even though there were uneven attempts at political and religious
dialogue with an elite, Palestinians and Muslims in general—ordinary
people engaged in conversation as well as the Palestinian and Arab media—have
openly manifested a relentless wish to destroy the Jewish state and to drive
out the Jews who have chosen to settle there. [3]
It has made no difference whether I have
engaged in dialogue in the United States, Europe, or Israel. Nor have the
auspices been a factor: Presbyterian, leftist, rightist, religious, secular,
political, interfaith. Nothing has helped. While it is true that Jewish and
Israeli interlocutors are also varied in their opinions and even in their
prejudices, I have increasingly found Palestinians and Muslims to be very
difficult dialogue partners. Frankly, they do not share a concern for Jewish
existence. Nor do they share a sense of the inherent right of the Jewish people
to exist in its homeland, granted that there must be some dignified, mutual
accommodation that would make this possible. Perhaps in some ideal religious or
ideological sense, they should not need to think such thoughts. But, in the
concrete situation in which we all find ourselves, I have found their refusal
to want to deal with us Jews to be irresponsible, and I have found their
hostility to us to be relentless. Further, in the context of post-Shoah Jewish
life, I have increasingly realized that I cannot dismiss that hostility as
simply a negotiating position or as merely a cultural custom or a verbal
convention. Instead, I must deal with the hostility as forthrightly as I can. [4]
In spite of my commitments and
experiences, I recognize that I am not an expert on the Middle East or on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I do consider myself, however, an educated
layperson with commitments who is not afraid to confront realities wherever
they lie. It is with that background and in that spirit that I address the
problem of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the context of post-Shoah
experience.
In
the 1980s, I published “The Seven Commandments for Jewish Survival in a Post-Holocaust
World.”[5]
It is worthwhile to list them yet
again: “Be a little paranoid; Get organized and stay organized; Educate;
Support the institutions of freedom; Reproduce; Confront your opposition; and
Be prepared.” I also offered pieces of advice: keep a good amount of cash and a valid passport at home,
belong to a political lobby as part of your responsibility as a citizen, always
vote, support peace movements, and be prepared to use political violence if
necessary. Looking back, I still
think the article contains many valid points. However, I would now add another
injunction: “Beware of your
beliefs.” We live life based on certain convictions about human nature and
society, and the most difficult part of cross-cultural communication centers
around the beliefs each party brings to the table.
The Shoah took place, in part, because of
the beliefs of those involved: that the world would not care about the Jews
since it had not cared about the Armenians; that the Germans were too civilized
to carry out a plan of actual extermination; that the Allies would act out of
humanitarian motives and bomb non-essential targets such as the Nazi camps;
that ordinary people would not murder innocent others; that governments would
admit people who were obviously refugees; and so on. One of the important
“lessons” of the Shoah is that we must beware of our beliefs; that we must
aggressively question what we believe and what others believe; and, further
that, as Jews, we must do this with an eye to the problem of Jewish survival.
Had the Jews of the Shoah period been more realistic concerning their beliefs about
human nature and society, perhaps many more would have been saved.
In
this vein, I want to present six beliefs about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
that are not only widespread but also highly dangerous to Jewish survival. We
need to examine these beliefs carefully because we Jews cannot afford to be
wrong yet again about the world in which we live. It is our watch, our time for
responsibility.
1.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of the problems in
the Middle East. This
belief is very widely held in the Arab world; to wit, that the State of Israel
was imposed on the Arab world by the Christian nations of Europe and America as
a response to their guilt for the Shoah.
As more than one Arab has said, “If the Christians persecuted and killed
the Jews, why should we have to pay by having them in our land?” In this
analysis, it seems to follow that, if only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
could be resolved, then there would be peace in the Middle East.
This
belief seems to me to be very naive. As Haim Harari and many others have
pointed out, the following serious events in the Middle East were not the
result of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:[6]
the Iran-Iraq war in which casualties reached millions; the Taliban takeover of
Afghanistan; the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait; the destruction of the city of Hamma
by the Syrians; the occupation of Lebanon by Syria; the al-Qaeda attacks
against Saudi Arabia and Egypt; the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers; the attack
on the Spanish railroads and on the London underground; both American invasions
of Iraq; the Algerian revolution; etc. None of these events was the product of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They were the result of struggles for power,
oil, and influence, as well as many other factors. Yet, the belief persists that
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the heart of the world’s problems in the
Middle East—and not only in the Arabic media and public statements but
also in the European press and statements by European leaders. The popularity of this belief has led
to many violent incidents that are anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and anti-Jewish. The Israeli-Palestinian
conflict is one part of the Middle East dilemma. Israel/Palestine, however, is
not geopolitically significant. There
is no oil to dispute, the land is not particularly arable, and there are few resources
or industries to covet. In short, no
one’s national interest, except that of the Palestinians and the Israelis, is
at stake. The belief in the centrality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must
be resisted.
2.
Poverty is at the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and indeed
at the core of the Middle East crisis; further, poverty justifies the use of
terrorism. This belief is widely heard in leftist
circles around the world. It is an
outgrowth of Marxist analysis that understands all conflict to be class
conflict and further teaches that class conflict can only be resolved by
violent means. Some western intellectuals are particularly taken with this
argument, partly because it expresses their sense of guilt for the blessings
they have. There are even some who “justify” terrorism as an expression of
resentment at poverty.
This
belief also strikes me as very naive. As Haim Harari has pointed out, there is
much, much greater poverty in Africa where people are really starving (as in
the Sudan), but terrorism of the kind found in the Middle East is not
widespread. There is greater
poverty in India, but, again, terrorism of the kind found in the Middle East is
not widespread there either. Poverty
is, indeed, an issue in the Middle East and also on both sides of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but poverty is not the central issue, and solving
the problem of poverty would not resolve the tensions in either the local
conflict or in the region. Poverty relief is important, but the belief that it
holds the key to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must also be
resisted.
3.
Reason and law are basic to all human societies. Hence, diplomatic activity to bring
about the rule of reason and law is appropriate. This belief is perhaps the most widely
held philosophical and political principle in the western world, especially in
the United States. We Americans tend to think that people are reasonable and
that law and respect for it provide the proper and ultimate place for the
resolution of disputes. We further believe that humans of diverse origins and
aspirations can, with reason and good will, settle their conflicts justly and
live together peacefully.
Unfortunately,
this belief, too, seems to me to be very naive. The world is not a place where
there is liberty and justice for all. It is not a place of cooperation and good
will, where the rule of law is the ultimate judge. To a considerable degree, the
world includes terrorism. In that
world, where murderers are called martyrs and museums are built to their
memory, the ends justify the means.
Whether the terrorists are Palestinian or Cambodian, the world of terror
is not a world where reason and law prevail. Regimes that support terror are
not entities to which one can appeal on the basis of law and reason. The
Palestinian leadership has endorsed a life of terror. It would be very
irresponsible to history, especially to Jewish history, not to recognize that
western belief in reason and law is only that—a belief and one that many
Palestinians do not share.[7]
Further, the world of Jew-hatred—and
let us not sanitize it by calling it antisemitism—is also a world in
which reason and law do not apply. All racial hatreds defy law and reason. The
widespread teaching of Jew hatred in Palestinian textbooks,[8]
political statements, media,[9]
mosques, and so on is testimony to a world that must be faced, not denied. Yasser
Arafat was a Holocaust denier. Mahmoud Abbas, his successor, wrote a book on holocaust
denial.[10]
The Egyptian media have released films based on Jew-hatred. The July 2005 Pew
Global Attitudes Project report entitled, “Islamic Extremism: Common Concern
for Muslim and Western Publics,” found “unfavorable” views of Jews at the
following percentage rates in the countries surveyed: 60, 74, 76, 99, 100, and
88.[11]
One might also add the well-documented reports of Palestinians standing
on the rooftops celebrating the falling of Scud missiles on Israeli towns
during the first Iraq war; or the cruelty with which an Israeli soldier was
publicly executed in a Palestinian town, an event that was recorded by European
television. No amount of denial of
Jew-hatred in the Arab world will erase these facts. The Realpolitik
that acknowledges them is better.
It should also be emphasized that the United
Nations has surely not been the embodiment of the ideals of reason and law. The
“Zionism is racism” vote, the Durban conference, and a host of other votes and
policies pursued by the UN are proof of this.[12]
Blindness to these outcomes is a repetition of the blindness of the Shoah
generations.
4. Most
Palestinians want a state that will exist side by side with the Israeli state. This belief, reinforced by occasional
statements by the Palestinian leadership, including Mahmoud Abbas, is widely
believed in Israel and the West. Indeed, the “two-state solution” would seem to
be the reasonable solution—indeed, even the only solution.
It seems to me that this belief, too, is very
naive. There are certainly some Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas, who want
a Palestinian state even if that means recognizing a Jewish state alongside it,
for there cannot be a Palestinian state without a Jewish state. However, it
must also be remembered that, over the past half century, the official
Palestinian representatives have rejected every offer to create a Palestinian
state precisely because acceptance would also recognize the Jewish state.
The reason for this refusal is that, in
Islamic thought, land once conquered by Islam always remains Islamic; it can
never be ceded to a non-Islamic entity.[13]
The classic instance of this policy is the crusader conquest of the Holy Land.
From an Arab point of view, the crusaders were invaders who ruled the land
temporarily and were justifiably expelled by force. Arguably, Saladin, the
Islamic leader who expelled the crusaders, is the only man in Islamic history
generally known to westerners. Every
Arab leader aspires to be the modern-day Saladin who will expel the foreigners,
the Jews, from the Islamic land of Palestine. The converse is also true: No
Palestinian leader can recognize the moral right of the Jews to a homeland
anywhere in Palestine—from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea—without
being a traitor to Arab history.
For these reasons and others,[14]
there has been no real Palestinian peace movement, no popular political base
for making peace with Israel, although there have been a few members of the
elite, including Mahmoud Abbas, who have thought it useful to pursue
peace-making policies. For the most part, however, advocates of peace with
Israel have been intimidated, persecuted, and even killed.[15]
While this situation has created sympathy for the silence of such persons, it
also has contributed to a double standard that demands western civic courage
from Israelis but not from Palestinians.
Finally, Palestinian belief in a
“demographic time bomb”—that the population growth of the Palestinians
will make them a majority of the Israeli population by 2010 or 2020—means
that many Palestinians neither need nor want a Palestinian state. They simply
need to wait and let majority rule do the work that is necessary. The purpose of this strategy is to
erase the Jewish presence in the Holy Land, to do away with the Jewish state.
Certainly, one must give peace a chance, but it must also be remembered that
the belief that most Palestinians want a two-state solution is just that—a
belief.
5. Islam is a
religion of tolerance with occasional aberrations of fanaticism. The West wants very much to believe that
this proposition is true, and thus this belief—that Islam must be, like
all religions, basically humanistic—has become a fundamental premise in
western culture. Westerners point
to the scientific achievements of the early Islamic period and to the tolerance
often found in Muslims who are in the Muslim diaspora, while Jews point to the
“golden age” of the medieval Islamic-Jewish symbiosis as evidence for the “true”
Islam.
This belief, however, is another that I
find to be very naïve. Throughout Islamic
history, the phenomenon of dhimmitude has existed; that is, Jews and Christians were awarded
protected status but, as minorities, they were subject to special taxes and
regular humiliation.[16]
Such treatment is not tolerance, and its actual practice was worse than its
theory. Further, as Joel Kraemer has shown, even at its intellectual height,
Islam sought to persecute its own philosophers who were often accused of heresy,
punished, and sometimes executed for their teachings.[17]
The principle that land once conquered by Islam must always remain Islamic is
indicative of intolerance too.
The reasons for this Islamic intolerance
are many and complicated. Perhaps the most crucial, however, is a very long
tradition of the lack of self-criticism. As Lazarus-Yafeh has demonstrated,[18]
even the biblical stories retold in the Koran are distorted to eliminate the
prophetic critique of society that is so crucial to biblical religion. This lack of self-criticism generates the widely observed
phenomenon that Arabs never blame themselves for anything that happens to them;
it is always the Zionists, the Americans, the other who is to blame.[19]
The lack of civic courage in Arab society is clearly seen in the following case:
On March 11, 2005, the Muslim Council of Spain condemned Osama Bin Laden as an
apostate. In July 2005, at a conference on “The Reality of Islam and Its
Role in the Contemporary Society,” 170 Muslim scholars from forty countries
issued a final communiqué that repudiated the decision of the Spanish Muslim
Council: “It is not possible to
declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah, the Mighty and
Sublime, and in His Messenger (may Peace and Blessing be upon him) and the
pillars of the faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any
necessary article of religion.” [20]
The lack of self-criticism in Islamic
society, including Palestinian society, stems also from the irreducible
patriarchy of Islamic society. Disempowered economically and politically, Arab
men are left with only one source of personal power: power over women—a
power so absolute that, in most Arab societies including Palestinian society,
men are permitted to kill women in their family who defy the sexual taboos of
the society. These “honor killings” (note the term) are not considered crimes.[21]
Such a deeply patriarchal society must do two things: It must honor the whole
patriarchal hierarchy, suppressing all resistance, and it must avoid liberty
and freedom for all at all costs. The assumption that Arab Islamic society is
tolerant, or will be any time in the foreseeable future, is delusional and must
be resisted.[22]
6. A government is “legitimate” only when it
derives from the participation of the governed. This belief, one that I share, should also be watched
closely because trust in its authority and credibility can be dangerously
naïve. Consider, for example, the
position of Dennis Ross, the United States representative in the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process from the Oslo talks to the second intifada. In the well-informed analysis of his 2004
book, The Missing Peace,[23]
Ross maintains that the primary obstacle to peace was Arafat himself.[24]
With Arafat’s death, it seemed, peace should have followed in a reasonable
period of time. Ross, however, points to other factors that prevented peace. Primary among them is that Arab
leaders lack legitimacy.
According to Ross, this lack accounted for the failure of Arab leaders
to criticize Arafat and also for Arafat’s
inability to “take historic decisions.” This same lack of legitimacy is also
the basis for the inability of almost all Palestinians and the Arab world to
recognize “the moral legitimacy” of the State of Israel, whose existence is
seen as only an unwanted necessity.[25]
As
a result of this “lack of legitimacy” and the consequent inability to
“recognize the moral legitimacy” of the State of Israel, there has been no
“transformation” of the Palestinian and Arab world, no change in the underlying
attitudes of the Palestinian and Arab world toward Israel and Jews. The basic
Palestinian narrative of victimhood and entitlement remains. It is taught in
the schools, the media, youth camps, the mosques, in public statements by
leaders, and elsewhere. Violence is enshrined instead of being denounced. There
is no “conditioning” of the Palestinian and Arab public to peace.[26]
Ross also faults the United States, and himself as an integral part of the
peace process, for not enforcing accountability.[27] He also holds Israelis accountable, but,
because Israel is a democratic society and hence its government has
“legitimacy,” a majority of Israelis do question their own myths of victimhood
and entitlement, hold their leaders responsible, vote them out of office if
needed, and are ready to take historic decisions.
Detailed, learned, and at times
perceptive thought it is, Ross’s analysis is naive because of the trust it
places in the belief that a government is “legitimate” only when it derives
from the participation of the governed. As one brought up in America, I agree
that government should be “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Indeed, I firmly believe that the blessings of technology, prosperity, freedom,
liberty, and the protection of human rights all derive from the democratic
process. In addition, I believe it is laudable that the American government
wants to export freedom and democracy to others. But that idea will work only in
some contexts and not in others. Government in Islamic society has never
derived its “legitimacy” from the people. One must grant Ross the chance to be
right about legitimacy, but, at the same time, one must beware of putting too
much trust in a political philosophy that counts on arguments about legitimacy
to set things right. Ross’s belief
about legitimacy is only that—a belief.
We Jews want peace. We want the acceptance of our moral legitimacy by Arabs, Palestinians, and the West. Culminating in the Shoah, so many centuries of persecution, so many years of fighting for our survival, have formed our psyches. But our yearning cannot be allowed to blind us as it did during the Shoah. We must resist our own yearnings and question the beliefs that are generated by those longings while, at the same time, maintaining an intelligent and critical view of the workings and policies of all governments and political entities involved. We must resist the six beliefs listed above, each of which seems to me to be very naïve. Allowing our policy to be guided by them endangers Jewish existence, a danger that Jews cannot risk in the post-Shoah period.
Contributors’
Questions for David Blumenthal
You speak about a fundamental intolerance in Islamic society, and you imply that fanaticism is not aberrational but rather something inherent in the nature of this religious tradition. You speak of “Islamic thought” and “an Arab point of view.” But is there one “Islam” (or one Arab perspective) with the fixed characteristics you attribute to it? Are there not many Islams? Are you not in danger of putting forward a specious essentialist claim? Might this be one instance of your failure to apply the same measure of critical acumen regarding your own assumptions that you have attempted to apply to the assumptions you are challenging?
On the one hand you claim that there is no Palestinian peace movement and on the other you assert that there can be no such movement because rejectionism is inherent in Arab/Muslim society. How, then, is it logically possible for Palestinians to serve as partners for peace? You claim that failing to examine the six beliefs you articulate in your chapter endangers Jewish existence in a post-Shoah world. But what kind of policy derives from your rejection of these beliefs? How would your own beliefs allow for any possibility of peace in the region?
Response
by David Blumenthal
My
dialogue partners have focused their comments around two points. The first is
my view that Islamic fanaticism is not aberrational but inherent in the nature
of Islam. They maintain that this is a “specious essentialist claim” about
Islam—“But is there one
Islam (or one Arab perspective)
with the fixed characteristics you attribute to it?”—and that, in so
characterizing Islam, I am myself not being sufficiently critical.
I
could not disagree more with my dialogue partners. Every religion, indeed every
culture, does have a set of “essential” claims. Authorities within the religion
may differ on the exact meaning of these claims, but it is precisely those
claims that define the religion, that give it its identity. To point to those
claims is, indeed, to do honest scholarship. It is to focus the attention of
the reader on doctrines or practices that are definitive of the religion or
culture under study. Thus, it is hard to talk about Christianity without some
interpretation of Christ, or of Judaism without some interpretation of Torah,
or of Islam without some appreciation of the centrality of the Koran. Further,
the “essential” identity of these traditions is not limited to the three
parameters I have listed. One could add: crucifixion, resurrection, and
salvation to the definition of Christianity; or halakha, teshuva, and
peoplehood to the definition of Judaism; or, shari’a, Mohammed, and worship to
that of Islam. To do this is not to distort in a “specious essentialist” way
the religion or culture under study; it is to attempt to delineate a series of
parameters that define it, that enable a discussion of it. While one must be
aware of the differences of opinion within each tradition, that awareness and
those differences do not deny that each tradition really requires an
“essentialist claim” to describe it.
There
are two kinds of essentialist claims: the intellectual and the sociological.
The intellectual essentialist claim would have to argue that certain ideas are
“essential” to the proper definition of the religion or culture under study,
allowing for some variations in interpretation. The sociological essentialist
claim would have to argue that, independent of the formal teaching of the duly
constituted authorities, the actual populace believes certain claims and
practices them accordingly. In all
cultures and religions, it is surely the case that the intellectual and the
sociological claims overlap in some areas and differ in others.
Intellectually,
it is the case in Islam that territory once under Islamic rule always remains
Islamic even if it is temporarily in the hands of others called “infidels.”
This is classic Islamic doctrine, and it is still taught as such.[28]
Furthermore, and perhaps more important, this idea is the center of all popular
Islamic claims to territory that was once Islamic, beginning with the claim to
the Holy Land that was once redeemed from the Christian crusader infidels and
now needs to be redeemed from the Jewish infidels who occupy it. This essential
claim also includes the liberation of Iraq (where this idea has particular
force) from the American “occupation,” as well as the reconquest of the Balkans
and Spain. While talk of reconquering Spain and the Balkans is not taken
seriously by the West, it is taken very seriously by Muslims even if that goal
is not on the top of their current political-military agenda. Meanwhile, Muslim
talk about reconquest of the Holy Land and Iraq should be taken very seriously
indeed. From the point of view
held by many Muslims, recovery of territory that is properly Islamic is
precisely an essentialist claim of Islam as well as of popular Islamic
culture. Such territorial ambition
is even a part of nationalist secular Arab culture, where calls for the
reconquest of the whole of Palestine are common in the media, including
websites, the press, and textbooks, as I have indicated.
Politically
correct, prior beliefs about the good will and tolerance of Islamic religion
and Islamic peoples should not allow scholars to shrink from pointing to the
reconquest of the whole of Palestine as a central element in popular and
intellectual Islam. A failure of
that kind points to false scholarship that is especially dangerous in the post-Shoah
world.
The
second critique of my position points out that, given the lack of an actual
Palestinian peace movement and given the lack of a possible Palestinian peace
movement due to the deep popular and intellectual roots of Palestinian
nationalism in Islam, how can I believe at all in peace between Israelis and
Palestinians? “How, then, is it logically possible for Palestinians to serve as
a partner for peace?” And again: “How would your own beliefs allow for any
possibility of peace in the region?”
Given
my early history, I have come reluctantly to the conclusion that almost all
Palestinians are not partners for a real peace, at least not in the sense in
which the word peace is used in the
West. In the West, we usually use that word to refer to a state of ceased
hostilities followed by a state of developed commercial, political, social, and
other inter-people and inter-governmental ties. As I see it, these
relationships will never happen in Israel / Palestine. There will never be a
cessation of hostilities, not to speak of the development of constructive
inter-state and inter-people ties. I think this for all the reasons I have
outlined in my essay.
The best I would
hope for is two separate states with borders clearly defined and policed and
with a relatively low death toll on both sides. There will be some commerce and
labor exchanges, but they will not be central to either economy and will
largely be developed in spite of the existence of the two states. There will
also be some people who will cross the cultural and political borders and
genuinely interact with one another, but they will be, as they have been, very
few in number and with no appeal to the masses, particularly the Palestinian
masses who subscribe to the exclusivist teachings of intellectual and popular
Islam.
Still, as the
Bible itself records, forty years of reduced hostilities is an accomplishment,
a goal to be striven for. I, for one, and I think many other Jews and Israelis,
would be content with such a “peace,” which is really a smoldering armistice,
one that requires continued alertness and, unfortunately, the continued
sacrifice of innocent lives on both sides. I think, too, that “peace” as I have
outlined it might be a realistic short-term possibility at this time because of
the peculiar historical juncture of the American insistence on democratizing the
Middle East. This effort has a tendency to bring to the surface those who are
ready for compromise, although it is not at all certain that they will survive
long enough in Palestinian society to take the reins of power and make any
significant changes in Palestinian society. Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian
realists would do well to seize the moment and work diligently toward whatever
“peace” is possible while post-Shoah western scholars would do well to disabuse
themselves of the beliefs listed in my essay. Those beliefs do not further the cause of peace, but
actually inhibit it through an overly optimistic view of the possibilities that
lie before us.
* This appeared in Anguished Hope: Holocaust
Scholars Confront the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict, ed. L. Grob and J. Roth (Eedermans,
Grand Rapids MI: 2008) 50-67. It is composed of my article, questions by the
readers, and my response. It is my custom, for ethical reasons, never to
capitalize “nazi,” “shoah,” and “holocaust.” The editors, however, capitalized
all of them in accordance with usual style rules. I have reversed that here.
[1] David R. Blumenthal, Facing the Abusing God: A Theology of Protest (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993); David R. Blumenthal, The Banality of Good and Evil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1999); Alex Gross, Yankele: A Holocaust Survivor’s Bittersweet Memoir (Lanham, MA: University Press of America, 2001); and David R. Blumenthal, ed., Emory Studies on the Holocaust, 2 vols. (Atlanta: Emory University, 1985, 1988).
[2] During this period, I conceived an exemplary textbook in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim trialogue. I have never succeeded in finding a Muslim, Palestinian or otherwise, who would write the section on Islam. Every Muslim I have met has been afraid of any kind of “cooperation”—that is, collaboration—with me.
[3] I once interviewed a well-educated Muslim from the United Arab Emirates for the MA in Jewish Studies at Emory University. His interest was in modern Hebrew literature. He plainly told me that only literature written by Jews from Islamic lands was legitimate; the rest of modern Hebrew literature had too much “Yiddishkeit” (his word, not mine) and, hence, was simply not properly Hebrew literature.
[4]
For more on this topic, see my Response below.
[5] "In the Shadow of the Holocaust," Jewish Spectator 1981 (Winter), pp. 11-14; reprinted in expanded form as, "Memory and Meaning in the Shadow of the Holocaust," in David R. Blumenthal, ed., Emory Studies on the Holocaust (1985), pp. 114-22; available on my website davidblumenthal.org.
[6] Haim Harari, “A View from the Eye of the Storm,” in a speech given in April 2004 and widely distributed on the internet: http://www.freeman.org/m_online/jul04/harari.htm.
[7] The very prestigious Palestinian public opinion survey, PSR – Survey Research Unit, in its Public Opinion Poll #13 from September 23-26, 2004, indicates that, while 83 percent of all Palestinians want “mutual cessation of violence,” fully 77 percent supported the then-recent Beer Sheva bombing attack; that fully 48 percent “viewed armed attacks against Israelis as effective;” and that there was “widespread support for: firing of rockets into Israeli settlements in the Gaza Strip, firing of rockets from Beit Hanoun into Israel, and the ‘liquidation’ of Palestinians accused of being Israeli spies.” See the PSR website: http://www.pcpsr.org/index.html.
[8] On Palestinian and Arab textbooks, see http://www.edume.org/reports/. See also the discussion by Margaret Brearley in this volume. Friends report to me that there has been effort to eliminate some stereotypes in Palestinian textbooks, but even these attempts do not tell the story of Zionism as a legitimate Jewish nationalist movement.
[9] On Palestinian media, see http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp. See also Brearley’s contributions to this book.
[10] On Holocaust denial, see Deborah Lipstadt, History on Trial (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), pp. 299-300. See also Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, “The Representation of the Holocaust in the Arab World,” The Journal of Israeli History, 23:1 (Spring 2004) pp. 100-15.
[11] The countries surveyed were, in order of the percentages: Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Lebanon, Jordan, and Morocco, leaving Lebanon and Jordan (with its very high number of Palestinians) with the highest percentages. See the Pew website: http://pewglobal.org/.
[12] See Anne Bayefsky, “On the Record: One Small Step,” June 21, 2004, a speech copyrighted by Dow Jones and Company, widely circulated on the internet: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110005245.
[13] This principle is known as dar al-Islam and has, as its counterpart, dar al-harb, the domain of the sword. A Google search for “dar al-harb” yielded 46,800 hits, among them Ahmed Khalil, “Dar Al-Islam and Dar Al-Harb: Its Definition and Significance,” which states: “Dar al-Harb (Domain of War) refers to the territory under the hegemony of unbelievers, which is on terms of active or potential belligerency with the Domain of Islam, and presumably hostile to the Muslims living in its domain” (http://www.bismikaallahuma.org/History/dar_islam-harb.htm). I call the reader’s attention to the expanded definition of dar al-harb, which includes all land that is under non-Islamic control but contains a Muslim population. I further note that, in the pronouncements on the underground bombings in London (July 2005), the term dar al-harb was explicitly used as an Islamic term justifying such bombings as part of the larger mission of Islam to the world. See also Brearley’s contributions to this book.
[14] For example: There is no prima facie reason why Palestinians should recognize the Jewish claim to the Holy Land at all. Also, there is a violently anti-western, anti-imperialist ideology in the Arab world, and Israel is seen as an integral part of the imperialist, western world. And so on.
[15] See the PSR survey cited above on approval ratings for killing of “collaborators.” I am not aware of statistics on intimidation of opponents, but such intimidation is widely reported.
[16] See Bat Ye’or, Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002).
[17] Joel Kraemer, “The Islamic Context of Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” in Daniel Frank and Oliver Leaman, eds., Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 38-68.
[18] Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, “Self-Dialogue Partners in Jewish and Islamic Traditions,” in Benjamin Hary et al., eds., Judaism and Islam: Boundaries, Communication, and Interaction (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2000), pp. 303-20.
[19] See, for instance: http://groups.msn.com/MiddleEastAbrahamicForum/debates.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=67084&LastModified=4675500932346677344.
[20] Reported by J. Pearl, “Islam Struggles to Stake Out its Position,” International Herald Tribune, 7/20/05, p. 8.
[21] For a sharp view of Arabic patriarchalism, see Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988).
[22] See, for example, the statement of Ibn Warraq of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society: “We are confronted with Islamic terrorists and must take seriously the Islamic component. Westerners in general, and Americans in particular, do not understand the passionate, religious, and anti-western convictions of Islamic terrorists” (italics original). See the website: http://www.secularislam.org/. See also, Robert Spencer, The Myth of Islamic Tolerance: How Islamic Law Treats Non-Muslims (New York: Prometheus Press, 2005).
[23] Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus, 2004). See especially pp. 13, 757. For a counter-view, see C. Swisher, The Truth about Camp David (New York: Nation Books, 2004) and R. Malley and H. Agha, New York Review of Books, August 9, 2001, June 13 and 27, 2002.
[24] Ross, The Missing Peace, 13, 757.
[25] Ibid., pp. 762-63.
[26] Ibid., p. 42, 770-73, 766, 769.
[27] Ibid., 770.
[28] See above, note 13.