A War of Religions? God
Forbid!
By Uri Avnery, 18.2.06
ONE OF our former Chiefs-of-Staff, the late Rafael
("Raful") Eytan, who was not the brightest, once asked a foreign
guest: "Are you Jewish or Christian?"
"I am an atheist!"
the man replied.
"Okay, Okay,"
Raful demanded impatiently, "but a Jewish atheist or a Christian
atheist?"
Well, I myself am a 100%
atheist. And I am increasingly worried that the Israeli-Palestinian struggle,
which dominates our entire life, is assuming a more and more religious
character.
THE HISTORICAL CONFLICT began as a clash between two national
movements, which used religious motifs only as a decoration.
The Zionist movement was
non-religious from the start, if not anti-religious. Almost all the Founding
Fathers were self-declared atheists. In his book "Der Judenstaat",
the original charter of Zionism, Theodor Herzl said that "we shall know
how to keep (our clergymen) in their temples." Chaim Weitzman was an
agnostic scientist. Vladimir Jabotinsky wanted his body to be cremated - a sin
in Judaism. David Ben-Gurion refused to cover his head even at funerals.
All the great rabbis of
the day, both Hassidim and their opponents, the Missnagdim, condemned Herzl and
cursed him ferociously. They rejected the basic thesis of Zionism, that the
Jews are a "nation" in the European sense, instead regarding the Jews
as a holy people held together by observance of the divine commandments.
Moreover, in the eyes of
the rabbis, the Zionist idea itself was a cardinal sin. The Almighty decreed
the exile of the Jews as punishment for their sins. Therefore, only the
Almighty Himself may revoke the punishment and send the Messiah, who will lead
the Jews back to the holy land. Until then, it is strictly prohibited to
"return en masse". By organizing mass immigration to the country, the
Zionists rebel against God and, worst of all, hold up the coming of the
Messiah. Some Hassidim, like the Satmar sect in America, and a small but
principled group in Israel, the Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City) in
Jerusalem, still adhere to this belief.
True, the Zionists
expropriated the symbols of Judaism (the Star of David, the candlestick of the
Temple, the prayer shawl that was turned into a flag, even the name
"Zion") but that was only utilitarian manipulation. The small
religious faction that joined Zionism (the "Religious Zionists") was
a marginal group.
Before the Holocaust, we
learned in the Zionist schools in Palestine to treat with pitiless scorn
everything that was "exile Jewish" - the Jewish religion, the Jewish
Stetl, the Jewish social structure (the "inverted pyramid"). Only the
Holocaust changed the attitude towards the Jewish past in the diaspora,
referred to in Hebrew as "Exile".)
Ben-Gurion made some
concessions to the religious factions, including the anti-Zionist Orthodox. He
released some hundreds of Yeshiva-students from military service and set up a
separate "state-religious" school system. His aim was to acquire
convenient coalition partners. But these steps were based on the assumption
(common to all of us at the time) that the Jewish religion would evaporate
anyhow under the burning Israeli sun and disappear altogether in one or two
generations.
All this changed in the
wake of the Six-day War. The Jewish religion staged an astounding comeback.
ON THE Palestinian side, something similar happened, but
against a quite different background.
The Arab national
movement, too, was born under the influence of the European national idea. Its spiritual fathers called for the
liberation of the Arab nation from the shackles of Ottoman rule, and later from
the yoke of European colonialism. Many of its founders were Arab Christians.
When
a distinct Palestinian national movement came into being, following the Balfour
Declaration and the setting up of the British Government of Palestine, it had
no religious character. In order to fight it, the British appointed a religious
personality to the leadership of the Palestinian community in Palestine: Hajj
Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who quickly assumed the
leadership of the Palestinian struggle against the Zionist immigration. He
endeavored to give a religious face to the Palestinian-Arab rebellion. Accusing
the Zionist of designs on the Temple Mount with its holy Islamic shrines, he
tried to mobilize the Muslim peoples in support of the Palestinians.
The
Mufti failed miserably, and his failure played a part in the catastrophe of his
people. The Palestinians have all but obliterated him from their history. In
the 1950s, they idolized Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the standard-bearer of secular,
pan-Arab nationalism. Later, when Yasser Arafat founded the modern Palestinian
national movement, he did not distinguish between Muslims and Christians. Right
up to his death, he insisted on calling for the liberation of the "mosques
and churches" of Jerusalem.
At
one stage of its development, the PLO called for the creation of a
"Democratic secular state, where Muslims, Jews and Christians will live together".
(Arafat did not like the term "secular", preferring
"la-maliah", meaning "non-sectarian".)
George
Habash, the leader of the "Arab Nationalists" and later of the
"Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine", is a Christian.
This
situation changed with the outbreak of the first intifada, at the end of 1987. Only
then did the Islamist movements, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, start to take over
the national struggle.
THE ASTOUNDING victory of the Israeli
army in the Six-day war, which looked like a miracle, effected a profound
political and cultural change in Israel. When the shofar sounded at the Western Wall, the religious youth,
which had until then been vegetating on the fringe, occupied the center of the
stage.
Suddenly it was
discovered that the religious education system, which had been set up by
Ben-Gurion as a political bribe and contrary to his own convictions, had been
quietly turning out a fanatical religious product. The religious youth
movement, which had suffered all these years from feelings of humiliation and
inferiority, was filled with zeal and started the settlement drive, leading the
main national effort: the annexation of the occupied territories.
The Jewish religion
itself underwent a mutation. This mutant shed all universal values and became a
narrow, militant, xenophobic tribal creed, aiming at conquest and ethnic
cleansing. The religious-Zionists of the new sort are convinced that they are
fulfilling the will of God and preparing the ground for the coming of the
Messiah. The "national-religious" cabinet ministers, that had always
belonged to the moderate wing of the government, gave way to a new, extremist
leadership with tendencies towards religious fascism.
Israel has not become a
religious state. It still has a large secular majority. According to the
authoritative Israeli Government Bureau of
Statistics, only 8% of Israeli Jews define themselves as
"Orthodox" (Haredim), 9% as "religious" (meaning Religious
Zionists), 45% as "secular, non-religious" and 27% as "secular,
traditional".
However, because of
their role in the settlement enterprise, the "religious" have
acquired a huge influence over the political process. They have practically
prevented any move towards peace with the Palestinians. They have also provoked
a religious reaction on the other side.
THE PALESTINIAN
resistance to the occupation, which reached a peak with the outbreak of the
first intifada in 1987, has given a big push to the religious forces.
Until then, these had been growing quietly (not without the encouragement of
the occupation authorities, which saw in them a counterweight to the secular
PLO.)
The first intifada
led to the Oslo agreement and brought Yasser Arafat back to Palestine. But the
new Palestinian authority failed in its aim of putting an end to the occupation
and establishing a secular Palestinian state. With settlements continually
expanding all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian public
increasingly tended to support armed resistance. In this struggle, and with the
limited means available, the religious factions excelled. A religious person is
more ready to sacrifice his life in a suicide attack than his secular cousin.
The anger of the
Palestinian public over the corruption that has infected sections of the secular
Fatah leadership (but not the ascetic Yasser Arafat, whose reputation remained
clean) has increased even more the popularity of the religious, whose honesty
is unquestioned.
FOR YEARS I have been haunted by a nightmare: that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict would change from a national to a religious
confrontation.
A national conflict,
terrible as it may be, is soluble. The last two centuries have seen many
national wars, and almost all of them ended in a territorial compromise. Such
conflicts are basically logical, and can be terminated in a rational way.
Not so religious
conflicts. When all sides are bound by divine commandments, the attainment of a
compromise becomes far more difficult.
Religious Jews believe
that God promised them all of the holy land. Thus, giving away any of it to "foreigners" is an unforgivable
sin. In the eyes of Muslim believers, the whole country is a Waqf (religious
trust), and it is therefore absolutely forbidden to surrender any part of it to
unbelievers. (When the Caliph Omar conquered Palestine some 1400 years ago, he
declared it a Waqf. His motive was quite practical: to prevent his generals
from dividing the land between themselves, as was their wont.)
By the way, the
evangelical fundamentalists who dominate Washington at this time also see the
Holy Land as a religious property, to which the Jews must return in order to
make possible the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Is a compromise between
these forces possible? Certainly yes, but it is much more difficult. A devout
Muslim is allowed to declare a Hudna (armistice) for a hundred years and more,
without condemning his soul to hell. Ariel Sharon, who began the evacuation of
settlers, spoke about "long-range temporary arrangements". In
politics, "temporary" measures have a tendency to become permanent.
But wisdom,
sophistication and a lot of patience are needed to reach a resolution of the
conflict in these circumstances.
On the day Arafat died,
many Israelis were angry with me for saying (in a Haaretz interview) that we
shall yet long for this secular leader, who was both willing and able to make
peace with us. I said that his elimination removes the last obstacle to the
rise of Islamic fundamentalism in Palestine and the entire Arab world.
One did not need to be a
prophet to see that.