Rejoinder to Drs. Pearl & Ahmed: Part II

April 6th, 2007
Rabbi Gary S. Creditor 

Last Friday I spoke about my reaction to the presentation of Dr. Judea Pearl and Dr. Akbar Ahmed at the University of Richmond which occurred the previous Monday evening. When that Monday evening finished I was left with a sense of disquiet and upset. I couldn't quite put my finger on it exactly. I could have asked them a question during the Q & A but it would not have come out as a question but rather an extended diatribe. That wasn't appropriate. After the presentation and during the repast I was engaged in several different conversations. I began to understand what was bothering me. But it wasn't until I sat down to commune with my computer and compose last week's remarks was I really able to put in words that which was troubling me so deeply.

I realized that I could not include all that I wanted to say in the time frame of one sermon. So last week I spoke mostly about that which I truly believe applies to us living as Jews in America. Namely, we have every necessity and moral obligation to forge bonds of understanding with our Moslem fellow Americans. Eighty years ago it was we who were seen as threatening to Americans, we were only immigrants ourselves or just a generation removed. Now we have been here for multiple generations and for the most part are seen and accepted as an integral part of the American landscape. We still, though, despite a reported decline, experience anti-Semitism. At times we might still feel as strangers in a strange land. We share that with the Moslem community. The words of the Haggadah are haunting. We also have a shared agenda vis-à-vis the Christian community. And altogether, we can find common ground on social, economic and ecological agendas. It is to our betterment and that of America and maybe even for the world that we forge positive relationships and strong communications. As Dr. Imad Damaj spoke that Friday night, the American Moslem community works through interpretation of the Quran to have their Islam accompany them on their American journey. Through mutual understanding we can assuage our fears and come to know one another as kinsmen, brothers and sisters, descendants of Abraham. We can be a positive influence on their weaving of their faith. Maybe the way that American Moslems reposition their Islam due to their interaction with us as American Jews, bonded together by being American, related as we tell our stories, can create a model for Islam throughout the world. This I affirm and avow.

That is what I said last week. This is where I begin anew.

The good doctors strayed, and in my opinion erred grievously, in their focus on Israel and the issue of the "Right of Return" by Arabs to within the Green line, the armistice line that existed from 1948 to 1967.

Their discussion ignored the historical records that exist from the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate from the League of Nations.

 It was aloof from the autocratic decision of Britain to severe off two-thirds of the Palestine Mandate which was designated as part of the Jewish homeland by the Balfour Declaration and creates the country of Trans-Jordan as a reward for the Hashemite Family from the Arabian Peninsula for their assistance in defeating the Turks.

It also ignored the annexation by the first King Abdullah after his invasion of the remainder of Palestine – now called the West Bank - in 1948.

Where was it mentioned that the Yishuv accepted the United Nations decision to partition the one-third, really a smaller percentage than that, between them and the Arabs so that each could have a national, sovereign existence and live in peace, a decision rejected the Arabs.

            
Why?

They had nearly ninety percent of the land called Palestine.

They had independence.

It was yet to be seen if the Jewish settlements, even if they lived in peace, could have survived in such a truncated existence that the partition plan created.

Why didn't they say 'whom invaded whom' in 1948; who attacked whom in 1947; who continued to attack whom without let up ever since?

Maybe because at some point in that 'conversation' it would have to be admitted: there has yet to come the time when the Arab world will have to accept unambiguously the Jewish right to sovereignty on whatever shtickle piece of land called Israel, no matter how large or small. Egypt and Jordan have signed papers that are as cold as a corpse. Whatever Israel does that might be deemed good/right/correct are glossed over in silence. Whatever Israel does that might be deemed bad/wrong/incorrect is trumpeted from the mastheads of every newspaper.

Why didn't they discuss the disproportionate way that Israeli children are taught about Arabs and Arabs are taught about Jews? How Jews are portrayed in textbooks and media, no better than evil Nazi propaganda.

Even that language is imbalanced because the counterpart to Arab is Israeli and the counterpart of Jew is Moslem.

It would not be much of a conversation if Dr. Ahmed was just a Pakistani parrot of Dr. Pearl, but why were none of these subjects raised if this was going to be a full, complete, inclusive conversation on politics and political history?

It is not that Israeli hands are totally clean. The Jewish Palestinian community was under siege before the War for Independence began in May, 1948. The British were stripping them of arm and handing them over to the Arabs. They were handing over to them the Taggert forts that dotted the landscape and controlled the roads. You don't need revisionist history to accept the fact that there were Israeli military decisions made that indeed cost innocent lives or did encourage, even force, Arabs to leave certain areas. It was war for survival. The Jews, then Israelis did not declare that war. Israel's Declaration of Independence

            The extended hand,

            The live and let live,

has never been matched by an Arab document, rather by the continued staccato drumbeat by one Arab group or another to destroy the State of Israel by one means or another. It is no weakness to admit that our hands shed blood. All hands are bloody.

            But whose hand has ever reached out to grasp ours for peace?

I also have much to question about Israeli decisions over the years, which accounts for the fact why I did not preach about Israel for many years. I would never say publicly some of my inward feelings. Different administrations clearly did not abet a peace process.

            But did we blow up their buses?

            Did we blow up their religious feasts?

            Did we blow up their market places?

It is hard to not sound self righteous, which is the furthest thing from my mind. I can find many places on the Israeli side of the ledger to place blame. But what I can say with clearest conscience: Israel never said that they were out to destroy them.

And lastly, a subject by itself, the issue of refugees, upon which that Monday night turned. I was very disturbed that Dr. Pearl accepted the grounds of the conversation. There are two sets of refugees created in 1948 and onwards, Jewish and Moslem. While the Moslem Palestinians at least lived in the combat zone and have some justifications about why they fled, nearly three quarters of a million Jews were forced to flee the Arab lands and leave most of their possessions and all of their property without any compensation. And for all these years, none has been sought. Only ten thousand Jews now remain. It is not a matter of "tit for tat." It is not to say "my refugees hurt more than yours."  We don't need to get into the subject of how Israel absorbed them and the Arab countries kept them to fester and suffer. But there are not justArab/Moslem refugees. An honest, true justice accounts for them both. 

If the Arabs really want to live in peace, then they can't use refugees as a knife in Israel's back. 

If they really want Israel to deal with the lingering afterbirth of its own birth, then they need to hear our voices, our pain, our suffering from Arab lands, not from Europe and not from the Holocaust, but in Arabia.

I think the telling of the tale occurred this week was when Olmert said, in my Biblical idiom, "Come let us reason together" and it was met with stone cold silence.

I was deeply disturbed by the conversation of the two doctors, not because they didn't want to do well, not because I doubt whether or not they want peace. I was upset because the historical record that informs a real conversation was omitted and thus any cliché is acceptable. That is not so. Peace will never be built on lies.

In tomorrow's haftarah Ezekiel prophesizes over the dead dry bones. God asks him, "Can these bones live?" There are many dead bones scattered throughout the Middle East. New ones are added daily in fratricidal killing never seen on these scale before. Israel lives in a very dangerous neighborhood. I can only pray that some day the killing will stop. Mothers won't glory nor tremble in their sons going off to war. Fathers will not glory nor tremble in seeing their daughters trained to kill or strapping on explosives. One day some body will finds verses in the Quran, in the Tanakh, and in the New Testament that will compel people to live in peace. Some day, may these bones live.

Shabbat Shalom.