Have you ever noticed that when we, Westerners, discuss the motivations behind the Israeli Palestinian conflict, there seems to be an “elephant in the room”, an awareness that hovers in the space but all pretend doesn’t exist? The elephant is the role that religious ideologies and religious sentiment play in perpetuating the conflict. The details of Islamic religious ideology are the most avoided. How come?
The prevailing narrative among Western progressives, of which intricacies we frequently debate, is the ownership Jews and Arabs claim for the same stretch of land “from the river to the sea”. Thus, this struggle has been dubbed by some a land dispute or worse-off a colonialist takeover. The Jews had migrated en masse from Europe to Palestine colonizing the latter during the early decades of the 20th century, goes the argument. Then in 1948 Israel forced Palestinian Arabs off their lands into exile. About 700,000 Palestinian Arabs, indeed, migrated to neighboring areas as a result of the 1948 war. A war the Israelis call the “War of Independence” and the Palestinian Arabs call “Nakba”, the Catastrophe. Based on this historical framing, many progressives say that Palestinian Arabs understandably continue to fight for return to their lost lands, referring to it as a Palestinian liberation effort against the Jewish colonialists.
The Jewish ideology and national movement formalized in Basel Switzerland in the late 19th century that called for the establishment of Jewish national sovereignty in their ancestral land, is called Zionism. The “Palestinians” claim to resist Zionist occupation of Palestinian territory and frequently refer to Israel as “The Occupation”. The term occupation, readily used in debates about the conflict, often is ambiguous as it is not clear if the Western debater is referring to the West Bank and Gaza areas, that were conquered in 1967, or whether he or she is also referring to the entire land of the modern state of Israel established in 1948.
Palestinian Arabs and their advocates in the West will claim that their struggle is not against Jews or the Jewish religion but is rather limited to a fight against Zionists and Zionism. They further claim that the Zionist enterprise is an extension of historic European colonialism, which other Muslim countries have successfully resisted, for example Algeria’s resistance to French colonialism. Thus, Palestinian Arab Resistance is not a religious war but a political struggle to secure their right for national self-determination in their ancestral land of Palestine.
This narrative of Palestinian victimization at the hands of the colonizing Zionist perpetrators seems straightforward and easy to comprehend by the conscientious onlooker. The narrative readily invokes our deepest sympathies. Restoring justice to Palestinian Arabs as well as effecting peace and prosperity for all inhabitants of the land would be a cause worth supporting, if the narrative as told was complete.
I too once accepted the land dispute narrative if not the entire colonialism one, until I began to discover that this Western-friendly framing of the conflict had been sanitized by leaving out an abundance of historical facts as well as critical context. Who sanitized the narrative so artfully? University educated Muslim Arabs, chief amongst them the late Yasser Arafat, the original articulator (since 1964) of Palestinian nationhood.
The elephant in the room is the religious context the Palestinian purveyors of the land-dispute narrative ignore and deny when communicating to their Western audiences. Passionate Muslim religious ideology happens to be at the core of their war. If the Israel Palestine conflict was indeed simply a land dispute between “colonizing” Europeans and “indigenous” Arabs, it could have been resolved long ago through compromise.
Several serious rounds of peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at settling the land dispute, some including generous land-for-peace offers by Israel, have failed over the decades – in 1948,1993, 2000, 2008, and 2014. These failures point to an issue much deeper. The deeper issue is the entrenched religious ideology that motivates life and war in the Muslim world, most especially in the Middle East.
The one hundred year long violent conflict between Jews and Muslims began under the “British Mandate” or Occupation of parts of the former Ottoman Empire. The British controlled the area that today consists of Israel proper, the occupied West Bank, the entire kingdom of Jordan, and the Gaza Strip. The British named this area Palestine-Transjordan for their own purposes. The term Palestine comes from the Latin and has no etymological nor cultural link to Muslim Arab language or life.
The bloody Jewish Muslim conflict continued after the British withdrew from Palestine in 1948 and the State of Israel was founded. The reasons for the current conflict between Israeli Jews and Muslim Arabs only fully cohere when viewed through the lens of Muslim history and theology, which sanctifies Jihad (Arabic for holy war) against the Jews (and Christians).
In fact, the precedent for Muslim aggression against the Jews begins with the prophet Muhammad in the seventh century C.E., which is bluntly articulated in the Quran, the Muslim sacred book. Thus, a political dispute over land, and a fight for national self-determination alone cannot explain the ferocity and duration of the Israeli Palestinian wars as well as the failure of multiple attempts at resolving it.
Once we include the religious factor into our analysis, we will begin to understand the discourse of Palestinian Arabs amongst themselves in their own language, i.e. the Hamas founding charter, the charter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and many other publications and transcripts of Muslim sermons and speeches. By doing so we can begin to include facts that are typically left out when they don’t fit the simplified European colonialism explanation.
Some examples would be the Muslim pogroms of the 1920s, or the Palestinian Mufti (chief cleric) Haj Amin Al Husseini’s long visits to Nazi Germany, and his extensive collaborations with Hitler on resolving the shared “Jewish problem” during the 1930s and 1940s. Understanding the Muslim religious motivations for the conflict reveal the “colonialism narrative” for what it is, a patronizing ruse by Arab intellectuals and activists that underestimates (if not totally insults) the intelligence of the Western observer.
Furthermore, a holistic understanding of all dimensions of the conflict will allow for contemplation of meaningful paths to real conflict resolution. I humbly submit that any attempt at a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs that is not first openly preached from the Imams’ and Rabbis’ pulpits and widely accepted by their respective people’s is doomed to fail, as it has repeatedly thus far.
I will attempt to paint a broader picture of the conflict based on my study of Muslim history, and Islamic ideology as well as my life experiences as a native Israeli. I will articulate as clearly as I can the glaring “elephant in the room”, the violence-ready Arab Islamic zeitgeist. But beforehand a trigger warning. The term “Muslim holy war” is most likely hard to digest. In fact, you may be triggered already, and thus I appreciate you reading this far.
As a native Israeli Jew of European origins, and once a passionate activist in the Israeli peace camp, I considered any reference to Muslim brothers and sisters as “holy war mongers” to be racist and prejudicial. I believed that most Muslims, just like myself, were essentially peace seeking good people (and indeed my personal experience has been that many individual Muslims are). I willfully blinded myself to the prevalent tenets of Muslim Arab cultural and religious ideology by projecting my Western education and progressive sensibilities onto Muslim society.
Claims about a Muslim-supremacy construct that justified their violent conquest and forceful suppression of “inferior religions” seemed the stuff of medieval tales but not part of modern (Western) reality. I used to mentally and emotionally resist the consideration of such arguments when presented.
My well-meaning progressive heart unwittingly resorted to forcefully squeezing my Muslim neighbors’ worldview into the narrow confines of my progressive values system, a sort of “Western chauvinism” if you will. By doing so I would fail to take seriously, and honor, their pious beliefs, including the sincere glorification of holy war, Jihad, and admiration for the martyr, the Shahid. I had selfishly deconstructed normative Muslim Arab culture into a deformation that would help me dodge the challenge it posed to my own value system. I was not honoring Islam on its own terms.
We, Western secularists, tend to view the world through an objective and scientific lens. Our lives are motivated by thoughtful consideration and logical analysis (at least in principle), and as such we devalue and underestimate the role of religious narratives, religious impulses, and religious passions. We pride ourselves on liberalism, openness, and clear separation between church and state, religion and politics. We relegate holiness to the realm of individual choice and individual “business”. Islam doesn’t.
We too fight wars but not for religious purposes, or so we claim. We rationalize our aggressions and justify them on the grounds of assuring our economical or security interests. We aspire to manage our political life based on facts and logic. Our democratic values and standards call for resolving disputes through orderly debate and reasoning. And, in my opinion, we, Westerners, are better for it.
It is hard for the Western educated mind to imagine a culture and society that moves to a tune different than its own. We, Westerners, cannot make sense of wars fought to the death from a deep and abiding loyalty to Allah’s command, as it is not our way. Our ability to recognize and accept that other cultures are animated by different values and sensibilities is woefully lacking. When you live in Israel and reach outside of your Western Israeli bubble you discover that Middle Eastern Muslim culture certainly does move to its own tune, a deeply emotion centric and religiously oriented one at that.
An authentic narrative of the Jewish Muslim conflict honors the complexity of the religious and cultural ideologies of Arab Muslims who value and prioritize violence and self-sacrifice for a religious cause. Muslim theology does not teach “turning the other cheek”, as Western theology purports to. An authentic narrative of the conflict would also acknowledge and honor the Jewish religious sentiment and theological construct.
It is imperative that we, Westerners, educate ourselves about the full story, because our Muslim Palestinian activist friend or academic associate on the college campus will not do so. They won’t because they know how to communicate appropriately in our language while we are deaf and blind to theirs. This imbalance renders us naïvely uninformed.
Ahmad, an Arab Muslim, and I were fellow construction laborers in Israel for a time. Ahmad was in his early midlife, and a family man. I was a young-adult Ashkenazi (Western oriented) Jewish Israeli who had just completed mandatory military service. Ahmad and I enjoyed working together and made an excellent team on the construction site. At lunchtime we generously shared treats from our respective packed lunches while delighting in friendly banter. We developed a genuine and heartfelt construction worker’s bond over those months.
I was raised as an atheist, and a secular Israeli, but at this juncture I was becoming curious about God, religion, and the meaning of life. Thus, it had occurred to me one sunny morning to ask Ahmad about his take on such matters. “Do you believe in God?” I asked directly. He stopped laying his brick and gazed at me quietly for what seemed to be a very long moment. Ahmad’s facial expression held a mix of disorientation and curiosity. He seemed as if asked whether the sun was up in the sky or whether water was wet. “Yes” he finally answered and went back to laying the next brick. This exchange had etched itself into my memory as it opened a window into another view of the world, the Muslim view.
While for me, a secular Jew, God was a topic for philosophical inquiry, for Ahmad “Allah” was an axiom, a reality, the air he and his community breathed. For him the question was a non-question if not outright blasphemy. Here I was a Middle Eastern Jew raised on questioning and intellectual hairsplitting encountering a Middle Eastern Muslim raised on “sacred submission”, the literal meaning of the Arabic word “Islam”. Indeed, I was touched and grateful to Ahmad for gifting me with this insight into another cultural paradigm that viewed submission as paramount and questioning as sacrilegious.
Later I would come to discover that my friend, Ahmad, was raised not only on an absolutist perception of divine reality, but too on a theology of Arab Muslim supremacy. Theologians call it replacement-theology. Muslim brothers and sisters are taught that Islam was the third and final revelation of God on earth. According to them, the first covenantal revelation was the Jewish one with “prophet Moses”. However, God terminated it when the Jews strayed from the righteous path. The second was the New Testament, the covenant with “prophet Jesus”, which too ended in disgrace. Muhammad was the true and last prophet in the succession, according to Islam.
Subsequently, the ultimate religious aspiration of the Muslim is bringing about a world in which believers of Allah lead all of humanity through Sharia, Islamic law. Furthermore, Muslim believers are obligated to either convert or exterminate “by the sword” pagan believers. However, Muslims are also obligated to protect the People of the Book, Jews and Christians, as long as the latter consent to subjugation under benevolent Islamic rule.
During the height of the Muslim empire the special status of Jews (and Christians) living in the Muslim sphere was coined Dhimmi, Arabic for “protected person”. The Dhimmi was a second-class citizen who paid a special “Jizya” tax. Dhimmis were forced to publicly display their inferior status in several ways, such as a restriction on travel by horse, a prohibition on visibly carrying arms, symbolic dress code restrictions, to name just a few.
One can imagine the theological dissonance and the humiliation experienced by Muslims whom after a millennium of worldwide dominance found themselves under Christian rule for the first time as the British and French defeated the Ottoman Empire during World War One. Imagine the religious insult added to political injury when Jewish pioneers in early 20th century former Ottoman empire (later known as Palestine), were building modern independent settlements, riding on horseback, and visibly carrying arms.
To the Muslims these societal shifts were akin to the apocalyptic “Rise of the ‘Dhimmis’” (pun intended). Keep in mind that Jews held no political power over Muslims of the former Ottoman Empire until Israel was founded in 1948. When the Turks (Ottomans) were defeated during World War One the British and French ruled the newly conquered Muslim lands, which in and of itself caused great humiliation. Jews during this time had no active part in these world events. However, the mere fact that Jews were now living free of Muslim dominance and successfully asserting their independence was triggering enough. It created immense spiritual confusion and consequent hatred amongst a broad swath of the Muslim pious in the land of Israel. This animosity had nothing to do with a contest for land or political power but rather with Muslim religious crisis and disorientation.
Jews had confiscated no Arab lands before 1948, contrary to otherwise false claims about colonialist land theft. However, the confident and competent modern Jewish national emergence in Israel injured the Muslim soul. Their deeply entrenched replacement-theology was now under assault, their fundamental sense of divine reality and divine preference was crashing and burning. Muslims were going through a mega crisis of faith along with identity breakdown that would morph into a violent campaign, led by Muslim clerics, against the party that initially stood most vulnerable and mythically most reviled, the Jews.
Ahmad, my fellow construction pal was also taught to recite the Quran and assimilate its Surahs (sections). Many of the Quran verses of the second Surah, Al’Baqarah, belittle and deprecate the Jews (and Christians) as nonbelievers, wrongdoers, and “rebellious against Allah”. This Surah also articulates the call for Muslims to fight and kill for “the cause of Allah”. And indeed, the signature battle cry of Muslim terrorists world over is “Allah Wa’Aqbar”, Allah the great, while they loyally perform their murderous and or suicidal religious duties.
Ahmad must have also learned as a young child, as most Muslim children do, the following Hadith, teaching of the prophet Muhammad: “Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind the stones and the trees, and the stones and the trees will say, oh Muslims, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew hiding behind me – come and kill him” (Hadith of Abu Hurayrah).
One of the common misnomers often expressed by Western commentators on the massacre of October 7th refers to Hamas fighters as cruel and inhumane barbarians. Once we understand the religious training of these warriors, we recognize that they were not barbarians but rather deeply pious believers who were exercising their obligations to exterminate the “rebellious Jews” as ordered in the Q’uran and Hadith. These fighters were brave and self-sacrificing Shahids, martyrs, who in the name of Allah engaged in the imperative holy war or Jihad. What to us, Westerners, seems barbaric, in Muslim Arab theology, ideology, and culture are acts of sacred duty.
The Hamas Founding Charter reads: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.” (Article 6)… “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” (Preamble)… “The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it.” (Article 11)… “Palestine is an Islamic land… Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be.” (Article 13)… “The day the enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.” (Article 15)… “Ranks will close, fighters joining other fighters, and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty, loudly proclaiming: ‘Hail to Jihad!’. This cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah’s victory comes about.” (Article 33)
To Ahmad and his family these passionate articles are consistent with the language and culture with which their worldview was formed. To them we, Jews, are not colonialists participating in a geopolitical scheme for power and greed, but rather disrupters of their god’s grand plan for a better world ruled by Islam. We, Jews, are but weeds that need to be removed from the perfect Islamic Garden for the glory of Allah. There is no room for compromise or compassion when god’s honor and his believers’ sacred “rights”, including a right to the land, are concerned, according to the Arab Islamic prevailing mindset.
This also explains the strange fact that the most egregious and widespread violence in the Islamic world is perpetrated by Muslims upon Muslims, whether in Yemen, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, to name a few. Within each one of these Muslim countries the government or leading religious movements have committed Muslim-on-Muslim atrocities murdering hundreds of thousands of human beings. Why? It is perfectly justified when one Muslim sect or nation views its rival sect or nation as unbelievers, thus deserving the wrath of a holy war. The Sunni branch of Islam has detested and invalidated the Shia branch and vice versa, ever since the passing of the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. As I have come to learn this is currently part and parcel of the mainstream Muslim way.
If the Palestinian grievance was simply about stolen lands, how come Muslim countries that possess no territorial claims in Palestine have over the years taken aggressive action against Israel, such as attacks from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt? How come Muslim countries that possess no shared border with Israel such as Iraq, Iran, Sudan, and Yemen have attacked Israel with deadly rockets and otherwise, ever since the foundation of the state in 1948?
One would be hard pressed to explain these aggressive actions as merely resisting colonialism. One could claim that the non-Palestinian aggressors have been demonstrating natural solidarity with their oppressed Palestinian brethren. Where then has this caring solidarity been when other Muslims have experienced troubles around the world, such as in Bosnia, China, India, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, etc.? We have seen nothing but indifference to Muslim suffering by other Muslims except for great concern about the Palestinian cause. What makes the Palestinian cause deserve so uncommon and such passionate solidarity?
The only explanation is a religious ideology that calls for anti-Jewish and anti-Western Jihad. There lies the uniqueness. This conflict is not an Israeli Palestinian conflict but a religiously based Muslim Jewish one, which raises its temperature to another order of magnitude for the Muslim believer. The compelling West-facing narrative of Arab Palestinian victimization turns out to be a cover for a much deeper and older pan-Islamic raw nerve with the Jews and with the Christians.
Jewish sovereignty, Jewish independence, Jewish power, Jewish success, and Jewish resiliency profoundly challenges the veracity of the Muslim replacement-theology belief system. In other words, if the holy Quran belittles the Jews and replaces them with the new and true carrier of god’s revelation, the Muslim, how could Muslims, who dominated the sinful Jews and others for centuries, have their god-given dominance turned on its head?
As a result, a significant portion of the Muslim world has chosen to handle its religious crisis, its cognitive dissonance, and its impassioned grievances by doubling down on Muslim supremacy beliefs along with a return to the traditional holy war remedy, inevitably leading to elevated levels of Muslim aggression, both internal and external.
We witness various Muslim sects and nations around the world engaging in violent campaigns against one another, such as the civil war in Lebanon (1970s), the Iran-Iraq war (1980s), Iraq-Kuwait war (1990), civil war in Syria (2010s until now), Yemen (2014 to present), and so on. We have also witnessed abundant Muslim aggressive activity against Western symbolic targets. The Twin Towers in New York as well as sites in hospitable European communities, have been targets for Arab Jihad. Most poignantly Arab Muslim aggression has turned against their prophet’s original enemy, the Jews. Since 1948 the greatest symbolic manifestation (not cause) of Muslim theological and political crumbling has been the foundation of the state of Israel, which has become a favorite target for widespread pan-Muslim obsession and aggression.
Bernard Lewis, Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, describes the signing in 1699 of the Karlowitz treaty, which ended a war nearly half a century long, during which the Ottoman Empire (Muslim) lost battle after battle and ceded control of much of the European lands (Christian) previously under its control. “The peace signed at Karlowitz (Austria) drove home two lessons (for the Ottomans). The first was military, defeat by a superior force (Europe). The second lesson, more complex, was diplomatic… (Muslims were learning for the first time in centuries how to compromise instead of dominate)” (Lewis, “What Went Wrong?”, Phoenix 2002, page 21).
The end of this half-century long Turkish Austrian war, according to Lewis, marked the shift of power and prestige from Islam to Christendom after a millennium of phenomenal Muslim cultural, scientific, as well as political worldwide dominance. At this tipping point rising Europe is taking over the hegemony as the global leading civilization. Lewis’ extensive survey of Ottoman archival materials shows that Muslim thought-leaders at the time engaged in soul searching about their empire’s collapse as well as searched for remedies. As Lewis analyzes: “‘Who did this to us?’ is of course a common human response when things are going badly wrong…. The attempt to transfer the guilt to America has won considerable support… (as well as) blaming ‘the Jews’ for all that goes wrong….” (et al. p. 169, 179). The blame-others approach was not the only voice in the Muslim world during the last three centuries of Muslim decline. Openminded reformers and progressives have also emerged and continue to write and opine until these very days but to no avail. The religiously motivated blame-and-aggression strategy has taken root in the mainstream of Islam, ironically perpetuating a steady succession of military defeats, societal degradation, and growing humiliation.
Lewis articulates the prevailing opinion of Muslim thought leaders about the collapse of Islam as follows: “the failures and shortcomings of the modern Islamic lands afflicted them because they adopted alien (Western) notions and practices. They fell away from authentic Islam, and thus lost their former greatness….” (et al p. 174). This rationalization of the crisis leads “Islamists” to battling the modernizers within their own countries, such as the “Muslim Brotherhood” in Egypt, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and ISIS in Iraq/Syria, to name just a few. In tandem the Islamists have also taken to doing battle with the West, such as Al Qaida flying planes into the twin towers and Hamas slaughtering Jews in the south of Israel on October 7th.
Hence the dominant internal narrative of Palestinian resistance is fueled by the pan-Islamic vision of a grand return to a lost past and a rededication to the “pure faith” that once animated it. As things stand today most (albeit not all) Middle Eastern Muslim societies have continued to make the destructive rather than productive choice. They continue to instigate holy wars, Jihad, against the West and the Zionists, which provide the immediate religious reward of piety and pride, but ultimately perpetuates further degradation, misery, and humiliation for their own peoples. Gaza a case in point.
One of the features that is most difficult for us, Westerners, to grasp is that Islam, then and now, does not separate between religion and politics, as we have traditionally been doing in the West. The Western democratic system requires a reason-based social collaboration, while relegating (religious) passions to the realm of personal endeavor. Not so with Islam. Allah, through the Islamic faith dictates, effectuates, and integrates all areas of life, private and collective, mundane and sublime. Thus, no part of “Palestinian Resistance” is purely political or secular. It is fully Islamic. No part of it is “Intersectional” with other Western oppressed groups, as per liberal academics’ theorizing, not the long game anyway. No part of Palestinian Resistance recognizes pluralism, diversity, human rights, human freedoms in the same way that we regard those in the West.
The Palestinian Arabs in the West have acculturated well and have adapted their messaging to a rationalistic and compartmentalized Western mindset to solicit material and moral support. They do so by leaving out the parts of their core agenda that may conflict or offend Western sensibilities all the while plucking the Western supporter’s heartstrings with a firehose of embellished or false victimhood tales of woe. If you listen long enough to a Palestinian activist discussing her narrative of the conflict, and you are not picking up a whiff of pathological victim syndrome, you are not paying attention (P.S. we Jews suffer from a good dose of that syndrome too).
You will not learn from your Palestinian activist friend about the ultimate Muslim supremacy agenda that considers you a second-class citizen. You will not learn about the dysfunctional cultural dynamics of his or her country of origin that oppresses freedoms in the name of Islam, for which reason she probably came to the West to begin with. It is crucial that Western supporters educate themselves about the cultural and religious core values of Palestinian Resistance at least as much as your activist friend has educated him or herself about your core cultural values. Becoming truly knowledgeable instead of being well-meaning and gullible, I would submit, is the only way to truly make a difference toward liberation and peace in the Middle East.
Anwar Al Hatib and I were fellow students at the school of Social Work at Haifa University during the first Intifada (Palestinian uprising in the West Bank). He, a Suni Muslim from a village in the north of Israel. I, a Jewish resident of Haifa. We were best friends during our college years spending much time together and helping each other succeed with our studies. Anwar was an Arab modernist. He felt deeply for the plight of his fellow Muslims as violence erupted around the country during those turbulent days of Intifada but at the same time he did not blame the Jews nor the West for his people’s misery. He chose an alternative response to the conflict, a constructive one. I would hurt deeply for the Jewish casualties of Arab atrocities, but never blamed Anwar nor his entire community for it. We knew that a dialogue between our peoples was possible, even if seemingly remote, because we were in one. We often discussed the irony of inhabiting the contradicting spaces of beloved friends and bloody enemies at the same time.
We did not have a solution, but the experience of our friendship taught us that our basic humanity could easily bridge the divide. Knowing Anwar’s life story, it was clear to me that he would have been justified in supporting the “Resistance”, but he didn’t. I had good cause to support angry Jewish extremists, but I didn’t. We both had chosen otherwise. Too, Anwar was grateful that his grandparents stayed in their village in 1948 rather than have vacated. Anwar was clear that he would have wanted to live nowhere else but in Israel, notwithstanding the challenges of being a Muslim Arab in a Jewish majority nation. For my part, I would have not wanted to live in an Israel void of the cultural and spiritual flavors Anwar’s community added to the rich mix of our shared homeland.
Lewis concludes his research on the decline of the Muslim Empire with these words: “If the (Muslim) people of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bombers may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another domination…. If they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, then they can once again make the Middle East, in modern time as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization” (et al. p. 178).
Ahmad and Anwar and their Israeli Muslim communities have been an important part of my Israeli reality since birth. I utterly reject the replacement theology at the core of their communities’ belief system. This theological approach is foreign to my Jewish religious/cultural upbringing. Torah does not likewise call for negation of Muslims or Arab Palestinians, neither directly nor indirectly, and certainly not by the sword (some minority Jewish opinions notwithstanding).
Peace, I believe, can only be attained when faithful Muslims and faithful Jews are able to articulate their overlapping religious mission for the benefit of the greater good instead of preaching the other’s insufficiencies. Religious collaboration is not impossible, and theologies do evolve over time. Jewish theology certainly has since its inception 3500 year ago. The Arab Muslim community’s belief system can and must transform as it adapts to its post empire reality. For that I pray.
Finally, let us examine the reason we tend to underestimate the role of religion in the Israel Palestine conflict or any conflict for that matter. We, Westerners, excel in compartmentalizing faith, separating it from our political institutions and stately affairs (recent worrying trends to the contrary in the US also acknowledged). This is a strength that allows our democracies to function well, to preserve our freedoms including religious freedom, and to assure social coherence in ethnically and religiously diverse Western societies. Our habit of maintaining a separation wall between religion and politics is now obstructing our view from seeing the deeper root cause of a Middle Eastern war that is essentially religious.
The great psychiatrist and culture researcher, Dr. Carl Jung taught that the mythical and the collective subconscious are a much greater force in human life and culture than the conscious and obvious. These subterranean realms shape our personal as well as our collective worldview, impacting world events, and especially deadly conflict. We must come to accept that the mythical and the collective subconscious are the essential building blocks of all world religions. As such they have a powerful role in our affairs. Including rather than ignoring the religious doctrines and passions that animate most violent conflict assures a deeper and more accurate understanding of those conflicts. Accurate understanding can potentially lead to winning solutions.
It seems as if our progressive hyper commitment to secular values (notwithstanding their merits) has been blinding us to the elephant in the room. No discussion of Israel and Palestine has any value without serious consideration of the religious ideologies motivating the conflict, most especially those of an Islam in crisis. Misinformed support for the misleading “Jewish colonialism” narrative empowers the Muslim “blame-and-aggression” strategy that is concealed behind it. By supporting the former and ignoring the latter, we enable and perpetuate Muslim decline and Palestinian suffering. That is a shame.