Bruce Ledewitz: Does God want his children to kill each other?
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The struggle between Israel and the Palestinians is a religious struggle. That is why compromise is so difficult and peace so elusive.
Israel and Hamas are not equivalent. Hamas sent its forces into Israel specifically to kill and kidnap as many civilians as possible. That is barbarism, not warfare. In contrast, Israel has always — always — tried to avoid civilian casualties, even at the cost of potential harm to its own soldiers.
Nevertheless, in their respective religious visions, Hamas and dominant elements in Israeli society and government are exactly the same. Hamas says that Palestine must be free from the river — the Jordan — to the sea — the Mediterranean. This means there is no room for a Jewish State. Many Israelis would have to be killed or expelled for this vision to be achieved.
But those who oppose a two-state solution, and expand settlements to make a Palestinian State impossible, while they also push Arabs out of East Jerusalem, similarly believe that Israel must be a Jewish State from the river to the sea. That means annexation of the West Bank and the expulsion of its Palestinian inhabitants. Only through such an expulsion could an enlarged Israel maintain its Jewish character.
Ironically, both sides are devoted to the pious lyrics that a Christian — Pat Boone — added to the Exodus song in 1961: “This land is mine; God gave this land to me.”
That is why a Hamas fighter can proclaim “God is great” when committing unspeakable atrocities. That is why Israel refers to the West Bank, which is not Israeli territory, by the Biblical names, Judea and Samaria, to demonstrate God’s original gift of the land.
That is why, peculiarly in the Middle East, and elsewhere where conflicts are religious in nature, the more religious a person is, the less open that person is likely to be to compromise and sympathy for the suffering of the other side.
The religious nature of the struggle also explains why moderate Palestinians — there are many — and secular Israelis — who were once the majority in Israel — could never solve the conflict. A religious struggle can only be resolved with a religious reconciliation.
There will not be peace in the Middle East until rabbis and imams in significant numbers insist that it is not God’s will that one group of his children dominate the other. No peace until there is a religious consensus that there is room in the Holy Land for both groups to share the holy places.
Until that occurs, arguments about whether the other side wants peace are irrelevant. Until that occurs neither side really wants peace.
Is a religious reconciliation possible? Muslims and Jews are both children of Abraham. He weeps at the blood they are spilling. Both religions counsel peace. Historically, Islam and Judaism have lived together without conflict. They have shared territory and government. The Spanish Golden Age is just one such episode. The welcoming of Jews in Muslim lands after expulsions in Europe is another.
It may come as a surprise that in the late 1950s I was taught in cheder — an orthodox Jewish school — that Muslims were the friends of the Jews.
Of course peace is possible. If there is a religious will to peace, there can be peace. There cannot be peace in any other way.
But today that religious will to peace is utterly lacking on both sides. Perhaps Pope Francis could convene the parties. He could call Muslim and Jewish religious leaders to meet.
Maybe it would take a miracle.
The rest of us can only pray that the God both sides so often invoke will intervene and open the hearts and minds of these two warring religions.
As they say, with God all things are possible.
Bruce Ledewitz is a professor and the Adrian Van Kaam C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Scholarly Excellence in the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University.