‘Finally, it cannot be too often repeated that somehow and at some time the Jews and Arabs in Palestine will have to learn to live together in peace.’
Neville Chamberlain, 19401
During the first Arab/Israeli war, about 750,000 Palestinian Arabs left their homes in the newly created state. Some of this was at the urging of Arab leaders, who expected they could send them back after a certain Arab victory over the new Jewish State and included some who did not wish to live under Israeli rule, whilst others were victims of individual or extreme Jewish groups. It is regrettable that the latter action was from a people who themselves had experienced similar treatment and did no credit to the new Israel. This action was out of fear and indeed may have contained an element of revenge, but it was also part of a strategy of the new army concerned with the infiltration of fighters from other Arab areas. General Yigael Yadin, Chief of Staff in 1948, said:
‘The aim of the plan is the control of the area of the Jewish State and the defence of its borders [according to the UN partition plan] and the clusters of [Jewish] settlements outside the boundaries, against regular and irregular enemy forces operating from bases outside and inside the Jewish State.’
About a third of those who left went to the West Bank under Jordanian control, a third went to the Gaza Strip, under Egypt’s control, and the rest went to Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The Arab nations refused to allow any of these Palestinians to become citizens of their country and settled them into refugee camps. Only King Abdullah of Jordan conferred citizenship on the 200,000 Palestinian living in Jordan and the Jordanian-controlled West Bank and East Jerusalem. On the establishment of the State of Israel, from 1948-1951, almost 800,000 Jews were expelled from their native Arab and Moslem countries or forced to flee as a result of state-sponsored anti-Zionist violence from the nations attacking Israel. They were stripped of their property and the lives they had built in these lands over hundreds of years were destroyed. As many as 500,000 of these refugees fled from Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, Libya and Morocco and were welcomed with open arms by the new State of Israel. Others fled to Europe and North and South America.
In 1951, Israel declared Jerusalem as its capital, but this was seen as unacceptable by many and today it remains a divided city.2 Israel moved to a parliamentary democracy comprised of legislative, executive and judicial branches. The population as of 2015, were 74.8 per cent Jewish, of which 75.6 per cent were Israel-born, 16.6 per cent Europe/America/Oceania-born, 4.9 per cent Africa-born, and 2.9 per cent Asia-born. 25.2 per cent were non-Jewish (mostly Arab).3 Many make the mistake, similar to those made about Ireland, of making the issue simply a religious one, which ignores the wider dimensions of cultural, social and political factors and how they relate to religious attitudes. The issue is one of a people who for millennia have been persecuted and slaughtered in millions and who wanted to return to the land from where they were driven, so that they can live in peace and security in religious, cultural, social and political freedom. The danger, again like Ireland, is that the concept of memory can often dominate and blur solutions. Do people want to recall the terror incidents and the dates that this or that happened and continue to add more dates to the bloody calendar? Or do they sit down and reason that enough have died and it is time for peace so that no more die from violence?
In Judaism, every fifty years is considered a year of Jubilee, a year of freedom and release and for many the last Jubilee was in 1967, the year that Israel went to war and reclaimed a great deal of territory. Therefore, 2017 would be a jubilee year but yet there is still no peace or release for Israel and her people and she finds herself continually attacked by rockets, suicide bombers and random assaults were death and injury result. There have also been Israeli attacks against the source of these incidents, resulting in many deaths on either side. It has to be said that Israel has not always responded evenly or appropriately and there indeed have been occasions where the boundaries of justice have been transgressed. The tragedy is that many get caught up in counting of bodies as if that is the important point rather than an examination of the human tragedy and loss and how all violence in that region can be ended.
A fresh acceptance of the reality of the problems and the conflict in the Middle East, free from political correctness, is required. International and national legal restraints need to be imposed to stop incidents occurring that inflame the situation, accompanied with education of all involved with regulations on behaviour that are rigorously enforced against offending parties. Britain’s problem in trying to find a solution was trying to ensure neither side was offended or seeking not to offend the side that could give them a national advantage, which disastrously failed. This was combined with unclear promises to both Jews and Arabs. The UN opted for a solution that was designed to fail, with partition already being a deadly choice as seen in Ireland and India. One complicating factor has always been that the majority of Arab nations refuse to accept the right of Israel to exist or to sanction the terrorists who also will not accept her legitimacy. They are the key to a solution. Nelson Mandela wisely said, ‘I cannot conceive of Israel withdrawing [From Gaza] if Arab states do not recognize Israel, within secure borders’.4
If political barriers were erected that stopped the attacks on Israel and the Arab nations enforced it and Israel agreed to sit down (as they have done many times already) without the threat of rockets and terrorism, then movement to peace could happen. A reformed Menachem Begin was correct in saying:
‘My colleagues and I have gone in the footsteps of our predecessors since the very first day we were called by our people to care for their future. We went any place, we looked for any avenue. We made any effort to bring about negotiations between Israel and its neighbours, negotiations without which peace remains an abstract desire.’5
There would also be the need for clear declarations from all nations of Israel’s right to exist and to remain in her native land. On both sides, from children to adults, a programme of education is needed that begins to explain ‘the other’ without judgement and in universities, mosques and synagogues, serious reflection on truth, forgiveness and the true evaluation of history, unclouded by bias. Some of these things are already happening and need greater recognition and support. Finally, there need to be both International and National regulations with sanctions that stop extreme behaviour and these must have the support of all nations involved in the Middle East. In asking this from the world it should also be recognised that Israel has been a tremendous blessing to that world and over the past 70 years she has contributed great scientific and medical advances and inventions that have brought benefit to millions (See Appendix 1 for some examples). Israel has not been inward-looking and many countries have been given assistance they needed to develop and grow. Even in places where there are no Israeli embassies, Israeli experts have taught developing nations many skills on improving medical facilities, schools and food growing. Israel, despite its size, has given many foreign assistance programs to the world.
Israel understand the genocide of the Jewish people and in both Rwanda and Sudan she provided humanitarian aid to the refugees. In Rwanda, a field hospital was built and several doctors, nurses, medical supplies and vaccinations were sent. $5 million in aid was sent to relieve the plight of Sudanese refugees. Israel contributed to relief efforts after earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters hit many areas, sending medicine, water, food and other supplies in tragedies such as the tsunami in 2004, the victims of the New Orleans suffering after Hurricane Katrina and the 2010 Haiti earthquake that affected that country. Since 1959, Israel has established medical outreach programmes, including eye clinics in developing countries, such as Nepal, Mauritania, Tonga, Liberia and Micronesia. This demonstrates that Israel had not just demanded a home but from that home has given to the world with great generosity.
As to the future, it is right to acknowledge that the problems of the Middle East are more than just religious divisions, but it has also to be faced that religion does drive much of the hate against the Jewish people and therefore society also needs to address the area of ‘freedom of religion’ and the issues that arise when one religion or group seeks to impose its ideas on others by force. There has to come a time when an individual is free to choose their belief system or way of life in accordance with their conscience without threat and that liberty must take priority over the freedom to practice a religion or lifestyle that would seek to impose itself on others with violence.
‘Religious freedom, as currently understood, is the condition in which individuals or groups are permitted without restriction to assent to and, within limits, to express and act upon religious conviction and identity in civil and political life, free of coercive interference or penalties imposed by outsiders, including the state.’
There must be liberty in how one decides to, or not to, practise a religion. The three major religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam have their views on this freedom of religion. For Judaism, they have their internal belief that all Jews should follow the precepts of that religion and that all non-Jews should obey the Noachide laws6 which they believe God gave as universal principles for mankind to follow. However, neither of these should be imposed by the State but freedom to follow a religion should be guarded by the State. Israel itself has a law that gives freedom of religion. Christianity has a chequered past on religious freedom, believing that the tenets of Christianity were necessary for the preservation of society and for the salvation of souls of men and women. The Catholic Church’s attitudes in enforcing their belief system resulted in the horror of persecutions of both Jews and Moslems over many centuries, whilst the emergence of Protestantism had its own branches that sought to impose belief by force on others. Today, modern Christianity has evolved into an understanding that seeks to preach their ideas on religion, but no longer seeks to use force to gain acceptance and as with Judaism looks to the State to protect its practices. With Islam, the situation is more complicated in these modern times:
‘As it stands today, religious freedom is a contested human right within Islam. While Qur’an 2:256 famously states that there is to be “no coercion in religion,” other texts seem to endorse contradictory principles, appearing to enjoin coercion, sometimes even violent coercion, in matters of conscience and religious practice. Modernist Muslim interpreters increasingly advocate an approach toward the Qur’an and Islamic jurisprudence that would place Islam on a path toward broader appreciation of religious freedom, including equality under the law for all religious individuals and groups. On the other hand, some Islamists invoking these same texts urge a return to an earlier, “purer” Islam that forbids conversion from Islam, as well as proselytization on the part of non-Muslims. This interpretation of Islam denies both non-Muslims and disfavoured Muslims equal status in law and society.’
There is also the injunction in the Qur’an, ‘The truth is from your Lord, so whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve’. Furthermore Sheikh Ali Gomaa of Egypt said, ‘Unto you your religion, unto me my religion’ to pronounce that if a Muslim leaves Islam, no power on earth has the right to punish him or her. This is anathema to many Moslems. Islam is the only religion that has its tenets officially and legally adopted by certain States as the national religion and uses penalties to enforce its observances on their populations. At the time of writing, Afghanistan, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen are examples of states where the tolerance of non-Moslems is in varying degrees allowed but have heavy restrictions and penalties, even death, on any show of non-Moslem religious/atheist expression. Many other countries also have Islamic law as their basis, allowing considerable freedom of religious expression but still imposing restrictions on behaviour in public that offends Islamic principles. The Vatican is the only State where Christianity is imposed as the official religion but there is no persecution advocated by the authorities. Solutions to the Middle East problems are tied up with this position of certain Islamic streams, to cultural, social and political life, being intrinsic to the religion and the demanding of others to conform. This requires modern liberal Islamic theologians to be more vocal as to the interpretation of Islam that demonstrates an understanding and respect of the other to differ and for society at large to become more intolerant of those who will not accept the true freedom of religion. It has to be noted that the state and religion can still clash over specific religious practices.7
There is also the matter of free speech and the right to express whatever one feels like no matter what the cost to others. This has been the cause of anti-Semitism and indeed offence to other religions and peoples. It is an area that regularly sees both Israel and Jews becoming the object of much offensive material and radically incites many to attack them, verbally and physically. It is of note that in recent times of Islamic terrorism, many are wary of offending Islam and the consequences of some stepping out to do so, rightly or wrongly, have resulted in bloody retaliation. Steven Spielberg commented, ‘As a Jew I am aware of how important the existence of Israel is for the survival of us all. And because I am proud of being Jewish, I am worried by the growing anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in the world.’8
There is therefore a need to revisit the concept and to question what exactly ‘free speech’ means. The term can only be understood better if there is another concept understood which I term ‘costly speech’. The latter is any speech that has the direct effect of inciting behaviour that has the potential to result in hatred or violence that ‘costs injury or death’. It is this type of activity that has resulted in so much pain, suffering and death on the Jewish journey to their national home and its peaceful existence. In a debate over Salmon Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, Ronald Dhal controversially wrote, ‘In a civilized world we all have a moral obligation to apply a modicum of censorship to our own work in order to reinforce this principle of free speech’. Whilst Dhal may have been wrong to criticise Rushdie’s book, which did not incite hared or murder, often the ‘moral obligation’ is ignored and the question raised as to whether that obligation needs legal strengthening. There have been steps to try and regulate costly speech, but the evidence is that there is a long way to go.
It is important to note that this does not mean the abandonment of fair criticism of religion or even nations, such as Israel, and peoples, but it does set a limit on how far that criticism can go. Nor does it mean suppressing discussion on difficult issues, such as abortion, same-sex relationships, and homosexuality and so on, but again holds those discussions within boundaries which will not incite hatred and violence. It is legitimate to argue about religious doctrine and belief and to disagree with the tenets of any faith or to argue about political matters and dogma, and even national attitudes of any country, but it is illegitimate to provoke behaviour that would result in violence and death because of disagreements with any area of dispute. Society needs to recognise the boundaries between these two approaches and politics and religion particularly, must not be sacred cows that cannot be passionately discussed and debated but the advocating of violence can never be allowed to silence debate.
I was born into the arena of sectarian division and have personally experienced the discrimination, violence, hatred and persecution of a minority that struggles for self-determination. These life experiences, alongside the study of the psychology of child development, suggest that no child is born to hate or to seek the extermination of the other, rather it is the education and example shown, that forms prejudice or the lack of it. The bankruptcy of Hitler’s perverted application of Darwinian Theory was shown by the observable altruism of many who resisted him to rescue others. In working among a divided community, I have seen people willing to sacrifice themselves for others and have seen many change from hatred to love, from violence to peace, from suspicion to understanding, from rejection to acceptance of the other; these changes of heart can and do happen. Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, speaking of how things should be, wrote:
‘Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good … There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighbourliness’.
Martin Luther King Jr, who gave his life for the emancipation of his people, when preaching to his Baptist church in 1957 said, ‘Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness’. It is only in the light of such wisdom will the Middle East ever see peace.
The final words belong to those who live in Israel today and a research poll carried out in October 2017 suggests that Israel is not an apartheid state where the majority of Arabs are unhappy. Carried out by the Konrad Adenauer Program for Jewish-Arab Cooperation Center at Tel-Aviv University’s Dayan Center, and Kivun, a research, strategy and communications company, the survey asked local Arab residents how they viewed the State of Israel. A 60 per cent majority of Arabs overall said they hold a favourable view Israel, 37 per cent described their view as unfavourable. With Arab Muslims, the view was 49 per cent to 48 percent in favour, and among Christian Arabs the view was 61 per cent to 33 per cent in favour. Of the Druze population, 94 per cent said they view the State of Israel favourably whilst 47 per cent of Arab respondents overall said they ‘felt unequally treated’ compared to the country’s Jewish population. However, 63 per cent said Israel is a good place for Arabs to live. Michael Borchard, Israeli director of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, said that the results once again demonstrated that among local Arabs ‘there is more identification with Israel than with a possible Palestinian state’.9 Ibtisam Barakat brought up in the West Bank, has made that journey from hatred to love, from violence to peace, from suspicion to understanding, from rejection to acceptance of the other. In an interview she said:
‘It is sad how the world lives on misinformation until great violence is carried out extensively. The Holocaust was played down and the Jews were blamed until 6 million people perished. And with Palestine, as well as with many other places too, the world stands silent, or settles for not knowing, or just blames this or that group, until big, indelible wounds are done. There is really no one to blame since everyone has suffered greatly one way or another. But I think we can find ways to prevent the destruction of human beings. First it’s necessary to claim everyone as our people.’10
In her book, Tasting the Sky: A Palestinian Childhood, she wrote:
‘To Alef,
The letter that begins the alphabets of both Arabic and Hebrew - two Semitic languages, sisters for centuries.
May we find the language that takes us to the only home there is – one another’s hearts.
Alef knows that a thread of a story stitches together a wound’.
Speaking with a Messianic Jew in Jerusalem, he was concerned that there should be an awareness of the very different attitudes and the different streams of thought within both the Arab and Jewish groups and that within each group there were differences. He believed that the issue of religion cannot be avoided and ultimately only an individual’s change of heart can determine how the situation in Israel is seen and how the future peace of Israel will be determined. Within the Jewish population there are four groups: Haredi (ultra-Orthodox), Dati (religious), Masorti (traditional) and Hiloni (secular). Surveys suggest that the more orthodox and religious Jews see the Arab population as a problem and would welcome their leaving Israel, whereas the less religious see the need for a solution that allows both communities to exist in peace. This was also true of the Arab population where there were secular, Moslem and Christian Arabs. Christian Arabs held very differing views from Moslem Arabs with Christian Arabs holding more tolerant positions and It is also the case that there is great emotional conflict within the Arab Christian population as to the fact that they wish to identify with their Arab background but recognise that they are free to practice their faith in Israel whereas in Arab lands that becomes quite difficult, if not impossible;
‘Today 60% more Christians live in Israel than in the Palestinian territories. A small new Christian party, B’nai Brith, calls on its youth to serve in the Israeli army and hundreds each year do so. Its leader, Reverend Nadaff, declares, “We love this country”’.
After 70 years of existence, it is therefore time for the Jewish people to be allowed to enjoy their homeland, free from the persecution and suffering that has been inflicted on them and a resolution for those in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza must be found. It is not naïve to believe that a solution is possible with the goodwill and determination for peace of all involved. The whole world, especially Arab nations, needs to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist and for the Jews to live in that land from where they were historically driven. It is not only this but also the six million reasons from Hitler’s brutal attempt at extermination and the additional huge deaths from the terrible journey down the ages that give justification to a Jewish State.