The Triangle Frame
To solve a problem one needs to understand its true nature. The perspective I will suggest on the Israel Palestine conflict focuses primarily on the religious motivations for it. Both Muslim Arabs’ and Jewish Israelis’. We have observed that religion is rarely considered neither in public debates nor by policy makers, to all our detriment. Let’s clarify what we mean by “the religious aspect”. It is the core sacred mythological framework that uniquely animates each side of the conflict. Whether consciously or unconsciously.
When a young artist would request feedback on a grossly subpar piece of work from my friend’s father, he in turn would spread wide the thumb and pointer finger of both hands and touch them in the shape of a triangle. He would draw his fingers-triangle close to the canvas, framing a small area he thought looked good enough. Then he would famously say “this is beautiful”. Artists knew what that meant – the rest was subpar.
Inverted Metaphor
I would like to use this triangle as an inverted metaphor to illustrate the simplistic and deficient narrative we, liberal progressives, have adopted for explaining the conflict. Our common narrative – Palestinian dispossession and oppression by aggressive Zionists – frames out the rest of the canvas. Namely the religious motivators, which matter most. This colonialism-occupation-apartheid-genocide narrative only appears factual and compelling when religious ideology is excluded from the analysis. This leaves us with a misleading narrative that is incomplete at best. Considering the deep mythological frameworks that energize both Muslim Arabs and Jewish Zionists provides a rather wholesome understanding of a hundred years of war between Arabs and Jews in the land of Israel.
Collective Unconscious
Why is understanding and acknowledging the mythological foundations or the religious deep architecture of the conflict critical for achieving peace?
Jung teaches: “… in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature…, there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature….” (Jung lecture, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious”, London,1936). To understand the drivers for war one needs to understand the psychic motivations behind it. According to Jung’s insights, we recognize that these hidden dimensions of our collective lives are the greater determinants of our preferences and behaviors, especially religious and ideological ones.
Thus, religious myths, archetypes, and passions are the essential constructs that inform and energize warrior activity. Furthermore, the collective unconscious is a motivator that is by an order of magnitude greater than national, geo-political, or economical agitations. Most peace negotiations fail when the deep mythological forces and religious motivators at play go unacknowledged, the Oslo accords (1994) a prime example.
The Soul of A Nation
Rabbi Alan Lew’s title for his book about the High Holidays “This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared” (Lew, 2003) is telling. This title applies to waging battle over sacred land as much as it is to the High Holidays. Each in its own way are a matter of life and death. We have underestimated the significance of the collective stories and symbols, conscious and unconscious, that fire up the warrior. When we ignore the reality of the collective-mythical and choose instead to analyze the conflict through the linear and pragmatic, we remain unprepared for peace-work, dooming it to failure.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook discusses the concept of “soul of a nation” (Orot HaKodesh Volume III Mussar HaKodesh). He explains that just as individuals each have a soul, so too nations and religions each have their own animating soul. While Jung, however, suggested a universal collective-unconscious, Rav Kook applies the same principle to sub-collectives, such as nations and religious traditions. We will refer interchangeably throughout this essay to the terms: collective unconscious; nation-soul; mythological framework; and religion. In the context of our discussion, they mean approximately the same thing.
Be it as it may, the screeching disagreement between the collective souls of Islam and Israel generates the psychic heat expressed in our current conflict. This is real and we are likely unprepared – even as the terrible impact is inescapable. The path to solving the Israel Palestine conflict must include a deliberate excavation of the deeper mythical layers.
Lived Experience
This new understanding of our relations with our neighbors has largely sprung from reflection and review of my own life story, in addition to researching relevant literature.
Born and raised in Israel, I was influenced by a Zionist, socialist, secular, and politically active home. My father participated in the War of Independence (1948), the Six Day War (1967), and the Yom Kippur War (1973). He also fought politically for Palestinian rights and for peace as an active member of the Israeli Zionist left. My mother built bridges by organizing dialogue groups of Jewish and Palestinian women in our hometown of Haifa.
When I came of military age (18), influenced by the values at home, I considered myself a pacifist. My internal deliberations about whether to dodge the draft as a conscientious objector were agonizing. In the end I chose to enlist in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) despite my ideological leanings and served as a military paramedic.
As a young adult after my military service, I attended many a Peace Now rally in support of a two-state solution. Growing up, violent aggression by our Arab neighboring countries and ongoing Palestinian terrorism were a constant feature of life in Israel as it remains to this day.
October 7th
On October 7th, 2023, I was in Netanya, Israel, leading Simhat Torah services. In the early afternoon I reached out to my cousin Avraham and his wife Monika of Kibbutz Nir Itzhak, near the Gaza border. They were hunkered down in their safe room reporting in real time that they hear gun fire and shouts in Arabic outside their window. Luckily their house was passed over by the terrorists thus they emerged unharmed.
My neighbor on the fifth floor, Roni, then 21 years old, survived the Nova Festival massacre. He and a friend hid in bushes while Hamas fighters around them were on an active killing and raping spree. He heard the blood curdling screams of a young woman nearby: “help, help, help they are raping me”. “She kept screaming until she stopped”, Roni recounts.
The Relevant Questions
As we, Israelis, were processing the mental and emotional shock and horror of the October 7th attack, something in me was shifting towards greater clarity and a new and fresh perspective.
The Israeli political left had been organized around a core question, based on a strong shared conscience and humanism. We asked: “How can we address the Palestinians’ expressed grievances, such that they and us can find compromise and live in peace”? We searched for common ground with our Arab neighbors. We fiercely opposed the loud Israeli minority that was maximalist, reactionary, and militant. We were driven by humility, humanity, and a deep desire for peace.
After October 7th, I began to doubt whether we, on the left, have been asking the right question, as three alternative questions began to crystallize:
- What does the Palestinian Muslim Collective really want?
- What is the source of the Muslim Collective’s unyielding motivation for brutal, even if suicidal, confrontation?
- Why has the Palestinian Muslim Collective walked away from 5 negotiated peace deals, three of whom involved left of center Israeli prime ministers:
- Oslo Accords (1993–1995) prime minister (PM) Yitzhak Rabin
- Camp David Summit (2000) PM Ehud Barak
- The Taba Summit (2001) PM Ehud Barak
- The Annapolis Conference (2007–2008) PM Ehud Olmert
- The Kerry Initiative (2013–2014) PM Benjamin Netanyahu
The Role Of Religious Ideologies
Deep reflection and a search for truth have led myself, and many other Israelis, to recognizing the critical role that Islamic religious ideology and Islamic history played in perpetuating the conflict. We were realizing too that knowing the role of Zionist religious ideology also contributes to a clearer understanding of the conflict dynamics. Details on those to follow.
A new clarity has been emerging that the core goals of the Palestinian Muslim Collective are restoration of Islamic pride, restoration of Islamic supremacy, and restoration of Islamic supersession. The Palestinian struggle is not a mere contest for land or a fight for national self-determination but rather a deeply religious struggle informed by Muslim sacred text and custom. Furthermore, Muslim religious passions are a zero-sum approach, and result in Jihad, holy war.
Ignorance Based Solutions
We on the left have been deaf and blind to the powerful mythological framework driving these Palestinian passions, choices and actions. The Quran instructs: (Surah Al-Qital, 47:35) “So do not weaken and call for peace while you are superior; and Allah is with you and will never deprive you of [the reward of] your deeds”. The collective Muslim does not consider conceding control of the Waqf (land controlled by Muslims) an adequate solution to their grievance with Israel. Thus, Hamas’ rejection of compromise, as expressed in its charter (1988) Article 11: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.”
The ignorance-based solutions we, Israeli peace activists, have been proposing, such as the two state one, do not address our neighbors’ deepest mythological needs, hence the repeated failure of peace negotiations.
Let us now examine the Jewish and Muslim core mythological frameworks in greater detail and unpack their conflicting dynamics.
The Jewish Framework
Our Jewish Mythological framework (religious myths, symbols, and values) possesses three defining assets and two scripturally rooted missions. Our sacred symbolic assets are land, language, and legacy or Israel, Hebrew, and Torah. We possess two missions, one external and the other internal:
- The external mission is to serve as a “light onto the nations” ונתתיך לאור גוים להיות ישועתי עד־קצה הארץ (Isaiah 49:6). Living upon our land, equipped with our ancient language and legacy, we are charged to create the epitome of a spiritual community. The array of classical Jewish texts spell out the intricate details. Our mission is exclusive in its nature. In other words, we are asked to cohere amongst ourselves as a nation that practices justice, truth, and spirituality as a model that inspires humanity.
- The internal mission is summarized by Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag (Maamar L’Siyum HaZohar, d. 1954). Rav Ashlag teaches that our essential purpose is expressed in the concluding words of Deuteronomy 11:22, ״ולדבקה בו״, “attach to Him (God)”. The Talmudic sages, however, questioned why the Torah would give such an impractical instruction, as physically attaching to God is impossible?
They answered: ״הדבק במדותיו, מה הוא רחום אף אתה רחום…״, don’t attach to Him physically, rather “Attach to His qualities: ‘as He is merciful so too you must be merciful…’” (Tractate Sotah, Midrash Sifri, and elsewhere). Our internal mission is emulating the qualities of the Holy One. The collective Jew is thus required to engage in proactive inner work both spiritually and ethically.
The Zionist Effort
Driven by these imperatives, both consciously and unconsciously, Jews began a mass return to their ancestral land in the 20th century as geo-political conditions had ripened. The Zionist effort culminated with the foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Until that time and for most of a millennium the land had been under Muslim rule albeit inhabited by Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other minorities.
Our tradition considers the multitude of nations on the land הגר הגר בתוככם, “the alien amongst you” (Leviticus 16:28). While we emerge as a renewed people-of-Israel in our ancestral land, for the benefit of all peoples, the “alien” serves as a mythical witness, if you will. Zionist Muslims, Christians, and others in modern Israel/Palestine have a constructive and collaborative part to play in the Jewish mythological framework.
The Muslim Framework
The Muslim guiding mythological framework (religious myths, symbols, and values) as represented by the Quran and Hadith claim that Allah has rejected His covenant with the children of Israel, and with the Christians, as they failed to uphold God’s commands. i.e. (Surah An-Nisa 4:155) “And (We cursed them, Jews and Christians) for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right…”. Therefore the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in the 7th century CE appeared as the final prophet of God in order to supersede Moses, Jesus, and all other prophets, i.e. (Quran 33:40) “Muhammad is not the father of [any] one of your men, but [he is] the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets (final one)…”. Supersession is the rai·son d’ê·tre (purpose for existence) in the Islamic mythological framework.
The Umah, Universal Nation of Islam, is created by Muslims as a political structure facilitating a worldwide social order of justice, compassion, and spirituality. The means for achieving such an order is by converting non-believers to Islam, as instructed in the Quran and Hadith. The ultimate goal is a world that is entirely Muslim, i.e. (Hadith, Sahih Bukhari and Muslim) “I (the Prophet) have been commanded to fight the people (of the world) until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah… If they do that, they have saved their lives and their property from me…”
Submission
“Islam” is Arabic for submission. The Quran charges Muslims to spread belief in, and submission to, Allah to all of humanity by persuasion or by the sword, i.e. (Surah At-Tawbah 9:5) “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush…”. Or (Surah At-Tawbah 9:29) “Fight those who do not believe in Allah… from among those who were given the Scripture (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) until they pay the Jizyah (tax) willingly while they are humbled.”
Islam divides the world into two conceptual geographies, Dar Al Islam, house of Islam and Dar Al Harb, house of war. The classical Islamic scholar Abu Hanifa (d. 767 CE) defined Dar al-Islam based on security. If Muslims are safe under Islamic law, it is Dar al-Islam.
The goal of the pious Muslim leader is to expand the realm of the house of Islam, Dar Al Islam, through Jihad, holy war. According to the Quran, Muslims are especially obligated to wage war against those who reclaim land after it had been conquered and ruled by Muslims, such as Zionist Israel. (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:191) “And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, for fitnah (persecution) is worse than killing…”.
As things stand now, the Muslim and Jewish mythological agendas are inherently incompatible. When viewing the larger mythological and religious landscape the dissonance that fuels the parties’ waring passions especially on the Palestinian side is apparent. According to Islam, equality, reasonableness, and compromise with non-believers are undesired. Thus, the repeated failures of well-meant Western mediated peace treaties over the last seven decades.
Historical Crisis
In addition to the disparity between Jewish and Muslim religious values and goals, the ongoing historical collapse of the Muslim empire exacerbates the Muslim penchant for Jihad, holy war. The Middle East has been in deep social and religious angst since the beginning of the Ottoman Empire’s unraveling about three hundred years ago (starting with the treaty of Carlowitz signed between Austria and the Ottomans, 1699). After a millennium of world dominance, from the 7th to 17th century, Islam began losing its hegemony to a rising Europe. Ever since, most Muslim countries have been declining socially, economically and militarily.
The late professor Bernard Lewis, a Princeton University Islam expert, researched the reactions of Muslim scholars to their own empire’s decline (Lewis, What Went Wrong? Phoenix 2002). He found that two schools of thought have emerged, the Modernizers and the Fundamentalists. The fundamentalists (such as the Wahabis and Salafists) not the modernizers, won over Muslim public opinion as well as financial and political support for their Jihadist causes (i.e. oil money and other material resources from Saudi Arabia and Qatar).
Trauma Based Sensitivities
A thriving Jewish state established on land considered by the Muslim Collective as Dar Al Islam, House of Islam, would appear highly sacrilegious. Additionally, it adds insult to the injury of a mythological community in unfolding historic crisis and humiliation. It is apparent how the existence of a modern Israel triggers the trauma-based sensitivities caused by Islam’s fall from glory. The sense among Muslim clerics and their followers that a correction of destiny and dignity is imperative, dominates the Muslim Palestinian collective psyche. This explains why their internal deliberations are about the restoration of Islam’s lost prominence through suicidal Jihad against Israel and the West, i.e. the Hamas charter.
The Israel Palestine conflict has no path to resolution without an honest acknowledgement of the mythological, the theological and Islam’s historical crisis. The conflict is not merely over Palestinian or Israeli land rights, indigenous rights, or national self-determination. It is rather a clash between dissonant narratives of sacred destiny on a mythological scale.
What Can We Do?
Let us, therefore, consider a two-pronged mitigation strategy that responds to the conflict’s root cause.
The first is handing any future peace negotiations to the practitioners and scholars of sacred mythology on both sides, the Imams and the Rabbis. The dialogue must occur at the mythological, and religious levels. A new narrative of shared sacred destiny and shared mission might arise from this a challenging conversation. Entrenched religious teachings that exclude and deride the other need to be reexamined and reformed on both sides. Consequently, a new cooperative theology needs to be preached at the mosque and synagogue
It may be prime time for Isaac and Ishmael to heal their mythic family trauma and create the framework for collaboration. Both might want to jointly focus on the fulfillment of the sacred mission assigned for perpetuity to their parents, Abraham and Sarah.
Religious Evolution
To date, peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been handled primarily by Western educated secular politicians on both sides. Hence their repeated failure. The historical record demonstrates that religious traditions evolve and reform over time. This conflict may be offering us an opportunity for a religious evolutionary leap into greater theological collaboration and cooperation between Jews and Muslims.
The second strategy is a deliberate Jewish refocus on, and deepening of our collective sacred mission – serving as a “light to the nations” as we proactively attach to the Divine. This is real….
The Opportunity
Conscientious humans instinctively want to resolve conflict. However, we can only resolve a conflict we accurately understand. The narrative we on the left have favored of “Zionist colonialists oppressing Palestinian natives” is incomplete at best and grossly misleading. Furthermore, this is a made-to-fit narrative for Western audiences by university educated Arab intellectuals in the 1960s (Yasser Arafat, Walid Khalidi, Eduard Said, Ghassan Kanafani) and in the 2000s, (Rashid khalidi). They developed a narrative that was palatable to the Western “ally”.
The full story of Muslim supersession, supremacy, and Jihad, that animates the Palestinian collective is an anathema to Westerners. Yet, it is incumbent upon us to step into the shoes of the collective Middle Eastern and encounter their narrative on their own terms in its full rawness. Otherwise, we will continue to miss the forest for the trees as well as our chances for conflict resolution.
Conflict in general, at all levels, is an opportunity for self-reflection, self-correction and evolution for all involved. What opportunity is available for self-reflection and self-correction on the collective level for both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims? Wrestling with this question in direct inter-mythical dialogue between Rabbis and Imams may provide the answer along with a true path to peace.
Religion, Mythology and the Israel Palestine Conflict
The Triangle Frame
To solve a problem one needs to understand its true nature. The perspective I will suggest on the Israel Palestine conflict focuses primarily on the religious motivations for it. Both Muslim Arabs’ and Jewish Israelis’. We have observed that religion is rarely considered neither in public debates nor by policy makers, to all our detriment. Let’s clarify what we mean by “the religious aspect”. It is the core sacred mythological framework that uniquely animates each side of the conflict. Whether consciously or unconsciously.
When a young artist would request feedback on a grossly subpar piece of work from my friend’s father, he in turn would spread wide the thumb and pointer finger of both hands and touch them in the shape of a triangle. He would draw his fingers-triangle close to the canvas, framing a small area he thought looked good enough. Then he would famously say “this is beautiful”. Artists knew what that meant – the rest was subpar.
Inverted Metaphor
I would like to use this triangle as an inverted metaphor to illustrate the simplistic and deficient narrative we, liberal progressives, have adopted for explaining the conflict. Our common narrative – Palestinian dispossession and oppression by aggressive Zionists – frames out the rest of the canvas. Namely the religious motivators, which matter most. This colonialism-occupation-apartheid-genocide narrative only appears factual and compelling when religious ideology is excluded from the analysis. This leaves us with a misleading narrative that is incomplete at best. Considering the deep mythological frameworks that energize both Muslim Arabs and Jewish Zionists provides a rather wholesome understanding of a hundred years of war between Arabs and Jews in the land of Israel.
Collective Unconscious
Why is understanding and acknowledging the mythological foundations or the religious deep architecture of the conflict critical for achieving peace?
Jung teaches: “… in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature…, there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature….” (Jung lecture, “The Concept of the Collective Unconscious”, London,1936). To understand the drivers for war one needs to understand the psychic motivations behind it. According to Jung’s insights, we recognize that these hidden dimensions of our collective lives are the greater determinants of our preferences and behaviors, especially religious and ideological ones.
Thus, religious myths, archetypes, and passions are the essential constructs that inform and energize warrior activity. Furthermore, the collective unconscious is a motivator that is by an order of magnitude greater than national, geo-political, or economical agitations. Most peace negotiations fail when the deep mythological forces and religious motivators at play go unacknowledged, the Oslo accords (1994) a prime example.
The Soul of A Nation
Rabbi Alan Lew’s title for his book about the High Holidays “This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared” (Lew, 2003) is telling. This title applies to waging battle over sacred land as much as it is to the High Holidays. Each in its own way are a matter of life and death. We have underestimated the significance of the collective stories and symbols, conscious and unconscious, that fire up the warrior. When we ignore the reality of the collective-mythical and choose instead to analyze the conflict through the linear and pragmatic, we remain unprepared for peace-work, dooming it to failure.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook discusses the concept of “soul of a nation” (Orot HaKodesh Volume III Mussar HaKodesh). He explains that just as individuals each have a soul, so too nations and religions each have their own animating soul. While Jung, however, suggested a universal collective-unconscious, Rav Kook applies the same principle to sub-collectives, such as nations and religious traditions. We will refer interchangeably throughout this essay to the terms: collective unconscious; nation-soul; mythological framework; and religion. In the context of our discussion, they mean approximately the same thing.
Be it as it may, the screeching disagreement between the collective souls of Islam and Israel generates the psychic heat expressed in our current conflict. This is real and we are likely unprepared – even as the terrible impact is inescapable. The path to solving the Israel Palestine conflict must include a deliberate excavation of the deeper mythical layers.
Lived Experience
This new understanding of our relations with our neighbors has largely sprung from reflection and review of my own life story, in addition to researching relevant literature.
Born and raised in Israel, I was influenced by a Zionist, socialist, secular, and politically active home. My father participated in the War of Independence (1948), the Six Day War (1967), and the Yom Kippur War (1973). He also fought politically for Palestinian rights and for peace as an active member of the Israeli Zionist left. My mother built bridges by organizing dialogue groups of Jewish and Palestinian women in our hometown of Haifa.
When I came of military age (18), influenced by the values at home, I considered myself a pacifist. My internal deliberations about whether to dodge the draft as a conscientious objector were agonizing. In the end I chose to enlist in the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) despite my ideological leanings and served as a military paramedic.
As a young adult after my military service, I attended many a Peace Now rally in support of a two-state solution. Growing up, violent aggression by our Arab neighboring countries and ongoing Palestinian terrorism were a constant feature of life in Israel as it remains to this day.
October 7th
On October 7th, 2023, I was in Netanya, Israel, leading Simhat Torah services. In the early afternoon I reached out to my cousin Avraham and his wife Monika of Kibbutz Nir Itzhak, near the Gaza border. They were hunkered down in their safe room reporting in real time that they hear gun fire and shouts in Arabic outside their window. Luckily their house was passed over by the terrorists thus they emerged unharmed.
My neighbor on the fifth floor, Roni, then 21 years old, survived the Nova Festival massacre. He and a friend hid in bushes while Hamas fighters around them were on an active killing and raping spree. He heard the blood curdling screams of a young woman nearby: “help, help, help they are raping me”. “She kept screaming until she stopped”, Roni recounts.
The Relevant Questions
As we, Israelis, were processing the mental and emotional shock and horror of the October 7th attack, something in me was shifting towards greater clarity and a new and fresh perspective.
The Israeli political left had been organized around a core question, based on a strong shared conscience and humanism. We asked: “How can we address the Palestinians’ expressed grievances, such that they and us can find compromise and live in peace”? We searched for common ground with our Arab neighbors. We fiercely opposed the loud Israeli minority that was maximalist, reactionary, and militant. We were driven by humility, humanity, and a deep desire for peace.
After October 7th, I began to doubt whether we, on the left, have been asking the right question, as three alternative questions began to crystallize:
The Role Of Religious Ideologies
Deep reflection and a search for truth have led myself, and many other Israelis, to recognizing the critical role that Islamic religious ideology and Islamic history played in perpetuating the conflict. We were realizing too that knowing the role of Zionist religious ideology also contributes to a clearer understanding of the conflict dynamics. Details on those to follow.
A new clarity has been emerging that the core goals of the Palestinian Muslim Collective are restoration of Islamic pride, restoration of Islamic supremacy, and restoration of Islamic supersession. The Palestinian struggle is not a mere contest for land or a fight for national self-determination but rather a deeply religious struggle informed by Muslim sacred text and custom. Furthermore, Muslim religious passions are a zero-sum approach, and result in Jihad, holy war.
Ignorance Based Solutions
We on the left have been deaf and blind to the powerful mythological framework driving these Palestinian passions, choices and actions. The Quran instructs: (Surah Al-Qital, 47:35) “So do not weaken and call for peace while you are superior; and Allah is with you and will never deprive you of [the reward of] your deeds”. The collective Muslim does not consider conceding control of the Waqf (land controlled by Muslims) an adequate solution to their grievance with Israel. Thus, Hamas’ rejection of compromise, as expressed in its charter (1988) Article 11: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.”
The ignorance-based solutions we, Israeli peace activists, have been proposing, such as the two state one, do not address our neighbors’ deepest mythological needs, hence the repeated failure of peace negotiations.
Let us now examine the Jewish and Muslim core mythological frameworks in greater detail and unpack their conflicting dynamics.
The Jewish Framework
Our Jewish Mythological framework (religious myths, symbols, and values) possesses three defining assets and two scripturally rooted missions. Our sacred symbolic assets are land, language, and legacy or Israel, Hebrew, and Torah. We possess two missions, one external and the other internal:
They answered: ״הדבק במדותיו, מה הוא רחום אף אתה רחום…״, don’t attach to Him physically, rather “Attach to His qualities: ‘as He is merciful so too you must be merciful…’” (Tractate Sotah, Midrash Sifri, and elsewhere). Our internal mission is emulating the qualities of the Holy One. The collective Jew is thus required to engage in proactive inner work both spiritually and ethically.
The Zionist Effort
Driven by these imperatives, both consciously and unconsciously, Jews began a mass return to their ancestral land in the 20th century as geo-political conditions had ripened. The Zionist effort culminated with the foundation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Until that time and for most of a millennium the land had been under Muslim rule albeit inhabited by Jews, Muslims, Christians, and other minorities.
Our tradition considers the multitude of nations on the land הגר הגר בתוככם, “the alien amongst you” (Leviticus 16:28). While we emerge as a renewed people-of-Israel in our ancestral land, for the benefit of all peoples, the “alien” serves as a mythical witness, if you will. Zionist Muslims, Christians, and others in modern Israel/Palestine have a constructive and collaborative part to play in the Jewish mythological framework.
The Muslim Framework
The Muslim guiding mythological framework (religious myths, symbols, and values) as represented by the Quran and Hadith claim that Allah has rejected His covenant with the children of Israel, and with the Christians, as they failed to uphold God’s commands. i.e. (Surah An-Nisa 4:155) “And (We cursed them, Jews and Christians) for their breaking of the covenant and their disbelief in the signs of Allah and their killing of the prophets without right…”. Therefore the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in the 7th century CE appeared as the final prophet of God in order to supersede Moses, Jesus, and all other prophets, i.e. (Quran 33:40) “Muhammad is not the father of [any] one of your men, but [he is] the Messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets (final one)…”. Supersession is the rai·son d’ê·tre (purpose for existence) in the Islamic mythological framework.
The Umah, Universal Nation of Islam, is created by Muslims as a political structure facilitating a worldwide social order of justice, compassion, and spirituality. The means for achieving such an order is by converting non-believers to Islam, as instructed in the Quran and Hadith. The ultimate goal is a world that is entirely Muslim, i.e. (Hadith, Sahih Bukhari and Muslim) “I (the Prophet) have been commanded to fight the people (of the world) until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah… If they do that, they have saved their lives and their property from me…”
Submission
“Islam” is Arabic for submission. The Quran charges Muslims to spread belief in, and submission to, Allah to all of humanity by persuasion or by the sword, i.e. (Surah At-Tawbah 9:5) “And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush…”. Or (Surah At-Tawbah 9:29) “Fight those who do not believe in Allah… from among those who were given the Scripture (Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians) until they pay the Jizyah (tax) willingly while they are humbled.”
Islam divides the world into two conceptual geographies, Dar Al Islam, house of Islam and Dar Al Harb, house of war. The classical Islamic scholar Abu Hanifa (d. 767 CE) defined Dar al-Islam based on security. If Muslims are safe under Islamic law, it is Dar al-Islam.
The goal of the pious Muslim leader is to expand the realm of the house of Islam, Dar Al Islam, through Jihad, holy war. According to the Quran, Muslims are especially obligated to wage war against those who reclaim land after it had been conquered and ruled by Muslims, such as Zionist Israel. (Surah Al-Baqarah 2:191) “And kill them wherever you overtake them and expel them from wherever they have expelled you, for fitnah (persecution) is worse than killing…”.
As things stand now, the Muslim and Jewish mythological agendas are inherently incompatible. When viewing the larger mythological and religious landscape the dissonance that fuels the parties’ waring passions especially on the Palestinian side is apparent. According to Islam, equality, reasonableness, and compromise with non-believers are undesired. Thus, the repeated failures of well-meant Western mediated peace treaties over the last seven decades.
Historical Crisis
In addition to the disparity between Jewish and Muslim religious values and goals, the ongoing historical collapse of the Muslim empire exacerbates the Muslim penchant for Jihad, holy war. The Middle East has been in deep social and religious angst since the beginning of the Ottoman Empire’s unraveling about three hundred years ago (starting with the treaty of Carlowitz signed between Austria and the Ottomans, 1699). After a millennium of world dominance, from the 7th to 17th century, Islam began losing its hegemony to a rising Europe. Ever since, most Muslim countries have been declining socially, economically and militarily.
The late professor Bernard Lewis, a Princeton University Islam expert, researched the reactions of Muslim scholars to their own empire’s decline (Lewis, What Went Wrong? Phoenix 2002). He found that two schools of thought have emerged, the Modernizers and the Fundamentalists. The fundamentalists (such as the Wahabis and Salafists) not the modernizers, won over Muslim public opinion as well as financial and political support for their Jihadist causes (i.e. oil money and other material resources from Saudi Arabia and Qatar).
Trauma Based Sensitivities
A thriving Jewish state established on land considered by the Muslim Collective as Dar Al Islam, House of Islam, would appear highly sacrilegious. Additionally, it adds insult to the injury of a mythological community in unfolding historic crisis and humiliation. It is apparent how the existence of a modern Israel triggers the trauma-based sensitivities caused by Islam’s fall from glory. The sense among Muslim clerics and their followers that a correction of destiny and dignity is imperative, dominates the Muslim Palestinian collective psyche. This explains why their internal deliberations are about the restoration of Islam’s lost prominence through suicidal Jihad against Israel and the West, i.e. the Hamas charter.
The Israel Palestine conflict has no path to resolution without an honest acknowledgement of the mythological, the theological and Islam’s historical crisis. The conflict is not merely over Palestinian or Israeli land rights, indigenous rights, or national self-determination. It is rather a clash between dissonant narratives of sacred destiny on a mythological scale.
What Can We Do?
Let us, therefore, consider a two-pronged mitigation strategy that responds to the conflict’s root cause.
The first is handing any future peace negotiations to the practitioners and scholars of sacred mythology on both sides, the Imams and the Rabbis. The dialogue must occur at the mythological, and religious levels. A new narrative of shared sacred destiny and shared mission might arise from this a challenging conversation. Entrenched religious teachings that exclude and deride the other need to be reexamined and reformed on both sides. Consequently, a new cooperative theology needs to be preached at the mosque and synagogue
It may be prime time for Isaac and Ishmael to heal their mythic family trauma and create the framework for collaboration. Both might want to jointly focus on the fulfillment of the sacred mission assigned for perpetuity to their parents, Abraham and Sarah.
Religious Evolution
To date, peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians have been handled primarily by Western educated secular politicians on both sides. Hence their repeated failure. The historical record demonstrates that religious traditions evolve and reform over time. This conflict may be offering us an opportunity for a religious evolutionary leap into greater theological collaboration and cooperation between Jews and Muslims.
The second strategy is a deliberate Jewish refocus on, and deepening of our collective sacred mission – serving as a “light to the nations” as we proactively attach to the Divine. This is real….
The Opportunity
Conscientious humans instinctively want to resolve conflict. However, we can only resolve a conflict we accurately understand. The narrative we on the left have favored of “Zionist colonialists oppressing Palestinian natives” is incomplete at best and grossly misleading. Furthermore, this is a made-to-fit narrative for Western audiences by university educated Arab intellectuals in the 1960s (Yasser Arafat, Walid Khalidi, Eduard Said, Ghassan Kanafani) and in the 2000s, (Rashid khalidi). They developed a narrative that was palatable to the Western “ally”.
The full story of Muslim supersession, supremacy, and Jihad, that animates the Palestinian collective is an anathema to Westerners. Yet, it is incumbent upon us to step into the shoes of the collective Middle Eastern and encounter their narrative on their own terms in its full rawness. Otherwise, we will continue to miss the forest for the trees as well as our chances for conflict resolution.
Conflict in general, at all levels, is an opportunity for self-reflection, self-correction and evolution for all involved. What opportunity is available for self-reflection and self-correction on the collective level for both Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims? Wrestling with this question in direct inter-mythical dialogue between Rabbis and Imams may provide the answer along with a true path to peace.
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